May 31, Jonathan Levy at Money, Markets, & Governance: From Fiscal Triangle to Passing Through: Rise of the Nonprofit Corporation

We welcome you to join us for the last Wpring 2016 meeting of the Money, Markets, and Governance workshop, co-sponsored with the Politics, History, and Society Workshop, on Tuesday, May 31st, 4:30PM – 6PM, at Social Science Research Building classroom 401.

Jonathan Levy
Associate Professor, History, University of Chicago

From Fiscal Triangle to Passing Through: Rise of the Nonprofit Corporation

Discussant: Carly Knight

PhD Candidate, Sociology, Harvard University

Abstract: This paper seeks to identify a ‘fiscal triangle’, an institutional structure charged with the production and distribution of wealth across the twentieth-century US, consisting of for profit corporations, the federal government, and nonprofit corporations.  It begins with the origins of the for profit / nonprofit distinction in the late nineteenth century, proceeds by demonstrating how and why the federal government fiscalized both corporate forms during the middle of the twentieth century, erecting the fiscal triangle, and concludes by demonstrating that, in more recent decades, the fiscal triangle has begun to disintegrate and that a new chapter in American corporate history has begun.  Rather than fiscal structures, today corporations are increasingly becoming entities through which the wealth, power, and rights of individuals pass through.

Questions about the workshop or accessibility concerns can be addressed to: yanivr at uchicago dot edu