Zohran Mamdani, who has won the mayoral election in New York, calls himself a “democratic socialist,” something that does not resonate well with most economists. James A Robinson, the Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economic Sciences in 2024, who is an economist and political scientist and a professor at the University of Chicago, spoke to Sandeep Singh about why Mamdani’s policy prescriptions may not help tackle current problems in the US, such as income inequality.

Do you think the rise of someone like Mamdani in New York is a local phenomenon, or is symbolic of a larger shift in the US?

It is a New York phenomenon. Mamdani is a genuine, serious person, but he has an East Coast kind of politics and policy platform. Maybe these (his policies, such as rent freeze) are all good ideas in Ne

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