Fixing Finance

A few years ago, while looking at the Journal of Economic Literature, the weighty compendium that tracks economic research, the economist James Galbraith spotted a curious omission. Although the journal monitors work on income inequality and on financial stability, he explains in his new book, before the recent financial crisis, "there was (and is) no category for work relating inequality to the financial system."

Part of the problem is academic tribalism: the type of economists who study inequality tend to be interested in micro-level issues of poverty rather than macroeconomic issues, such as the global supply of credit. But the