Chris Hughes is the Co-Founder and Chair of the Economic Security Project and a Senior Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School. His research and writing focuses on the history of central banking, economic policymaking and the administrative state, antitrust policy, and guaranteed income studies. Hughes is currently writing a book chronicling the history of the economic policy of the American administrative state. He is enrolled in the PhD program of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, was published by St Martin’s Press in 2018.Hughes has a masters in Economics from The New School of Social Research and graduated from Harvard magna cum laude with a bachelors in History and Literature. He was a co-founder of Facebook. A former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Hughes now serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Washington Square Park Conservancy. He chairs the board of the Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis.
Recent research"Direct Cash Payments in the Next Recession," Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School, December 2023"Marketcrafting: A 21st-Century Industrial Policy," Roosevelt Institute, May 2023"Digital Dollars: Critical Design Choices and Effects of a Central Bank Digital Currency," Roosevelt Institute, May, 2022Recent media"America’s Inflation Villain Gets a Makeover," The New York Times, April, 2023"Has history been too harsh on Arthur Burns?," The Indicator from Planet Money, February, 2023"The argument against the Fed creating a digital currency," Marketplace, June 2, 2022“A Founder of Facebook Says it's Time to Break It Up,” The Daily, May 9, 2019“City Arts and Lectures: with Courtney E. Martin,” November 7, 2019
Articles and EssaysPreparing for the Next Recession: How Policymakers Can Safeguard Families and the U.S. Economy, Economic Security Project, January, 2024The Promise of Marketcrafting, Democracy Journal, May, 2023If Banks Want More Deposit Insurance, They Should Pay for It, TIME Magazine, March 23, 2023Rethinking Arthur Burns, the 'Worst' Fed Chair in History, Democracy Journal, September 26, 2022An American CBDC is not the way to fight China’s financial might, Financial Times, May 11, 2022How to Fix Social Media Wall Street Journal, October 29th, 2021The Free Market is Dead: What Will Replace It?, Time Magazine, April 26, 2021The US Needs Direct Cash Payments Through this Crisis — and the Next, Financial Times, August 18, 2020Why Americans Need a Guaranteed Income, New York Times, May 1, 2020Americans Need Significant and Sustained Cash Now to Avoid Economic Calamity, Time, March 19, 2020The Case for a Wealth Tax, Democracy Journal, Summer 2019Facebook co-founder: Libra coin would shift power into the wrong hands, Financial Times, June 21, 2019It's Time to Break up Facebook, New York Times, May 9, 2019Progressive Economics Are Ascendant—Among Democrats, and at the Ballot Box, The Nation, November 15, 2018