More than 70 progressive economists form alliance to promote a fairer distribution of wealth

How do you make a growing economy deliver for those who need it most? That is the challenge a group of several dozen progressive Spanish economists has set out to tackle. Organized under the banner Accelerating Shared Prosperity, the initiative is being launched in Madrid on Tuesday. While they remain open to expanding the platform, they have already brought together 70 economists and established a Scientific Council that includes prominent figures such as Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, Dani Rodrik, and Gabriel Zucman.

The network has been spearheaded by Spanish economist Mònica Martínez-Bravo, a professor at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI), who returned to academia after leaving the Catalan regional government. She holds a PhD in Economics from MIT and has assembled a broad range of experts united by a common goal: improving public-policy tools to ensure that prosperity is shared.

“The initiative seeks to mobilize the best scientific evidence for public debate with an explicit objective: to improve the material well-being of the working class,” its organizers say. The group has been formed independently of any institution, although two cabinet ministers, Pablo Bustinduy and Carlos Cuerpo, are expected to take part in the initiative’s official launch.

The challenge of ensuring that the wealth generated by an expanding economy reaches all segments of society has become one of the most pressing concerns in economics in recent years. Traditional indicators such as GDP and GDP per capita fall short when it comes to measuring whether prosperity is being shared fairly across the population.

Economists have been studying the link between periods of rapid economic growth and income inequality since the 1960s, after observing that in emerging economies, particularly in Latin America, strong expansions often went hand in hand with a persistent failure to distribute the gains equally.

In recent years, however, the phenomenon has spread to advanced economies as well. Increasingly, the benefits of growth are being captured by those at the top of the income ladder, while the middle class has been hollowed out and faces growing difficulties in maintaining its purchasing power. Against this backdrop, South Africa’s G20 presidency commissioned an international panel on inequality chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, and numerous proposals have been put forward to tax wealth.

Other initiatives are moving in a similar direction. Among them is the United Nations-led Beyond GDP initiative, which aims to develop new economic indicators that better capture societal well-being. Another example is the Global Council for the New Economy for the Common Good, co-chaired by Carlos Cuerpo and economist Mariana Mazzucato. The council seeks to bring together academic research and real-world policy experiences and plans to publish a roadmap in the final quarter of 2027 on how to achieve more broadly shared prosperity.

The so-called affordability crisis has become the defining challenge facing Western countries. “The initiative links the Spanish debate to the cutting edge of global economic knowledge and brings to the international conversation the experience of a country that has made remarkable progress in employment and wages, but that continues to face a deep wealth and generational divide,” the organizers told EL PAÍS. Their aim, they added, is to build bridges between economic research and political action.

The speakers chosen to launch the network reflect the diversity of its membership. They include Judit Vall, professor of economics at the University of Barcelona; Nacho Álvarez, professor of economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid and a former economic adviser to the left-wing party Podemos; and Miguel Almunia, professor of economics at the private CUNEF University.

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