With the global ascendancy of neoliberalism, shared growth has been in sharp decline, vividly illustrated by the post-1980 American case: a half century of wage stagnation and rising wage inequality, increasing job insecurity, and a growing affordability crisis in housing, education, and health care for working families. How do we measure, understand, and address these outcomes? We will begin with an examination of the recent evidence for and against ‘competitive market’ and ‘institutional political economy’ explanations. Is the widely perceived downward mobility of those without elite college degrees explained by the failure of the supply of worker skills to keep pace with rising employer demands as workplaces have automated? Or is the explanation that there have been major shifts in bargaining power that directly reflect management and policy choices that have led to the shredding of protective labor institutions? We will then turn to how and why these outcomes often vary dramatically across locations with different institutional regimes. Students will explore these questions with cross-metropolitan and cross-country case studies.