{"id":19041,"date":"2026-01-29T17:03:55","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/?p=19041"},"modified":"2026-01-29T17:04:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:04:35","slug":"visiting-scholar-seminar-february-4-ajay-mehrotra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/?p=19041","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Scholar Seminar, February 4: Ajay Mehrotra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dear RSF:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please join us next Wednesday, February 4, at 11 in the library and on Zoom for a presentation by Visiting Scholar Ajay Mehrotra, “American Outlier: Economic Inequality and the Historical U.S. Resistance to the Value-Added Tax.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mehrotra is the Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law at Northwestern University with an additional appointment as Professor of History at Northwestern. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

He’s also a research professor at the American Bar Foundation, where he served as Executive Director from 2015-2022. Prior to Northwestern, Mehrotra was a Professor of Law at Indiana University, Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law. He also held a dual appointment in History at Indiana. He is the co-editor of two edited volumes and a journal issue (Law & Contemporary Problems\u00a0<\/em>86:3).<\/em>\u00a0His book\u00a0Making the Modern American Fiscal State: Law, Politics, and the Rise of Progressive Taxation, 1877-1929<\/a>\u00a0(Cambridge University Press, 2014) won the Society for U.S, Intellectual History Award (2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At RSF, Mehrotra is writing a book examining why the U.S. has historically resisted a broad-based national consumption tax, such as a value-added tax (VAT), and what that resistance reveals about inequality. His historical analysis of tax policy will investigate the role of fiscal experts in advancing or inhibiting a consumption tax, how different political interests have exerted power over the lawmaking process to support or oppose such taxes, and how historical events have created obstacles for supporters of a national consumption tax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear RSF: Please join us next Wednesday, February 4, at 11 in the library and on Zoom for a presentation by Visiting Scholar Ajay Mehrotra, “American Outlier: Economic Inequality and the Historical U.S. Resistance to the Value-Added Tax.” Mehrotra is the Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law at Northwestern University… Read More Visiting Scholar Seminar, February 4: Ajay Mehrotra<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19041"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19046,"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19041\/revisions\/19046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsfintranet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}