Matthew Soener

My research combines classic themes from political economy, economic sociology, and inequality to understand contemporary socio-economic problems. I am broadly interested in the way global capitalism has transformed over the last half century. At the heart of this change is a major shift in the balance-of-power and material distribution. I follow these threads in three research tracks. First, I have studied "financialization" in relation to the restructuring of global production, corporate power, and state theory. Second, I have done research on inequality including between labor/capital across various projects as well as several focused on workplace wage gaps. Third, and more recently, I apply some of these themes to climate change. I am interested in forces driving in greenhouse gas emissions including exploitation, austerity, and stagnating growth. Going forward, I will explore the historical roots of some of these dynamics in a project on US state's economic and energy policies from the postwar period through the 1970s.