Economics & Well-Being

Economic policy isn’t just about numbers—it’s about people. This session delves into the economic foundations of well-being, from labor protections and social safety nets to the politics of universal basic income. Our speakers will examine how economic structures and incentives shape human flourishing, inequality, and democratic participation.

With Amy Castro & Ioana Marinescu. Moderated by Karim Sharif.

Can’t attend in person? Watch the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/gZOP_EmTK_8

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Speaker Biographies:

Amy Castro, PhD, MSW is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the School of Social Policy & Practice and is the Co-Founder and faculty director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research. Her work explores economic mobility, guaranteed income, innovation, and disparities in housing and lending. She served as the Co-PI of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration under former Mayor Michael Tubbs which, lead to a proliferation of experimentation with unconditional cash across the U.S. Dr. Castro is the Co-PI of 30 applied cash-transfer studies housed at CGIR where she currently advises more than 20 Mayoral teams, state, and county legislators on unconditional cash research. Her work on guaranteed income has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, the Monarch Foundation, the City of Los Angeles, LA County, the City of Newark, the Yellow Chair Foundation, the City of Oakland, the Social Impact Fund, and the Economic Security Project. Dr. Castro’s research is featured often in the popular press including the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, the Economist, the LA Times, CNN, NBC, PBS, and National Public Radio.

Dr. Castro is also known for her work on women and risky lending during the foreclosure crisis. She was awarded the GADE research award, the Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Dissertation Award, and the Nina Fortin Award for her work on the gender and racial contours of predatory lending. She was the 2017 recipient of the SP2 teaching award, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Penn’s School of Nursing (AY 19/20), is an affiliated faculty member of the Alice Paul Center and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and is a member of the LGBTQ faculty working group. Prior to her time at Penn, she spent more than a decade working with non-profits and community-based agencies in Philadelphia and New York City. Her research has been published by Social Service Review, The Gerontologist, Social Science & Medicine, Social Work, The American Journal of Public Health and JPAM. She earned a PhD in Social Welfare and a Master of Philosophy from the City University of New York, a Master of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Social Work from Cairn University.

Ioana Marinescu is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, with secondary appointments in the Economics Department and the Wharton School of Business (BEPP), and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Marinescu’s scholarship links labor economics, antitrust, and technological change to study how market power and innovation affect wages, employment, and inequality. Her pioneering research on wages and monopsony power led to her Congressional testimony on labor market competition and her subsequent appointment as principal economist at the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division (2022-2024). There, she helped integrate labor market analysis into the 2023 Merger Guidelines, the first version to explicitly address worker impacts.

Her current projects focus on the economic implications of artificial intelligence and on policy tools, such as safety nets and competition policy, that can foster broad-based prosperity in an AI-driven economy. She brings this perspective to Anthropic’s Economic Advisory Council and provides briefings and expert insights on labor markets, antitrust, and AI to policymakers, journalists, and private-sector leaders.

Marinescu publishes in top journals including the Review of Economic Studies and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where she serves as an associate editor. Her research regularly appears in outlets like the New York Times and the Economist.

Karim Sharif is a Research Associate for the Philadelphia Research and Policy Initiative at the Pew Charitable Trusts, and a multimedia artist. Prior to his current position, Karim worked for Dr. Castro at CGIR as a Qualitative Research Coordinator & Assistant, supporting research on his native Los Angeles, and for CHILD USA as a Social Work Fellow. His independent research focuses on digital social spatiality, the downstream effects of internet policies, and the real-world implications of digital social environments; his current artistic practice makes use of his research background to explore sound’s capacity for world-building. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Occidental College, and Master’s Degrees in Social Work and Social Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.