Pavlina Tcherneva — The Case for a Job Guarantee

Pavlina R. Tcherneva will join the Rhodes Center to discuss her new book, "The Case for a Job Guarantee."

One of the most enduring ideas in economics is that unemployment is both unavoidable and necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy. This assumption has provided cover for the devastating social and economic costs of job insecurity. It is also false.

In this book, leading expert Pavlina R. Tcherneva challenges us to imagine a world where the phantom of unemployment is banished and anyone who seeks decent, living-wage work can find it – guaranteed.


This is the aim of the Job Guarantee proposal: to provide a voluntary employment opportunity in public service to anyone who needs it. Tcherneva enumerates the many advantages of the Job Guarantee over the status quo and proposes a blueprint for its implementation within the wider context of the need for a Green New Deal. This compact primer is the ultimate guide to the benefits of one of the most transformative public policies being discussed today. It is essential reading for all citizens and activists who are passionate about social justice and building a fairer economy.


PAVLINA R. TCHERNEVA, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, NY. She specializes in Modern Monetary Theory and public policy.

Her book "The Case for a Job Guarantee" (2020) is the ultimate guide to the benefits of one of the most transformative public policies being discussed today. She has collaborated with policy makers from the US and abroad on designing and evaluating employment programs. Her early work assessed Argentina’s adoption of a large-scale job creation proposal she had developed with colleagues in the United States. She also worked with the Sanders 2016 Presidential campaign after her research on inequality had garnered national attention.

Tcherneva frequently speaks at Central Banks on Modern Monetary Theory and macro-economic stabilization policies. Her current research evaluates the impact of unemployment on growth, income inequality, and public health. Tcherneva’s first book Full Employment and Price Stability (2004) is a rare collection of writings on employment and inflation by Nobel Prize winning economist William Vickrey, adapted for the modern day.

In 2006, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, U.K., where she immersed herself in J.M. Keynes’s collected writings and personal papers. She developed an interpretation of Keynes’s policy approach to full employment for which she was recognized by the Association for Social Economics with the Helen Potter Prize (2012).