Inflation is currently the highest it's been in 40 years, and inflation ranks as a top concern among basic income skeptics. To shed empirical light on this question, Ioana Marinescu shares her study of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend on inflation, and Claudia Sahm shares her research on cash transfers and inflation.

Universal Cash Transfers and Inflation by Ioana Marinescu

Ioana Marinescu, University of Pennsylvania

Ioana Marinescu is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research expertise includes wage determination and monopsony power, antitrust law for the labor market, the universal basic income, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, and employment contracts. Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and the Journal of Public Economics. She is an associate editor at the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and a podcast host at the “Just Economics” podcast. She testified for policy makers, including Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. Her research has been cited in many media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal.

Claudia Sahm, Founder of Stay-At-Home Macro Consulting, former Federal Reserve economist

Claudia Sahm is the founder of Stay-at-Home Macro Consulting and Substack. She is (on leave) at the Jain Family Institute. Sahm has policy and research expertise in macroeconomics, consumer spending, and household finance. She created the "Sahm Rule," an automatic trigger for stimulus payments in recessions. Previously, she was a section chief at the Federal Reserve, where she oversaw the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking. Before that, she worked for ten years on the staff’s macroeconomic forecast. She was a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Sahm holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan (2007) and a bachelor’s degree in economics, political science, and German from Denison University (1998).

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Would basic income raise prices?