EconoFact Chats

China's rise has been among the most consequential economic events of the past half century. Before the reforms begun by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, China was among the poorest nations in the world. The transformations over the past 45 years have made it a central player in the world economy. But in the last few years, the Chinese juggernaut has stalled. And while many economies slowed during...

Health outcomes in the United States lag behind those in many other rich countries, especially for lower income groups and ethnic and racial minorities. These shortcomings arise even though health care expenditures represent almost one-fifth of this country’s national income. Amy Finkelstein and Liran Einav document the state of health care and health insurance in the United States as well as thei...

Binyamin Applebaum of the New York Times, Larry Edelman of the Boston Globe, Scott Horsley of NPR, and Heather Long of the Washington Post join EconoFact Chats for the 9th edition of the podcast's panel discussion with economic journalists. Binyamin, Larry, Scott and Heather focus on inflation, affordable housing, the temporarily averted government shutdown, the auto-workers strike and what that m...

12.4% of Americans lived in poverty in 2022. The 4.6 percentage point increase over 2021 marks the biggest one-year jump in the poverty rate on record. More strikingly, the rate of child poverty more than doubled from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022. What are the sources of this rise in poverty? What are the human consequences of living poor? And what can be done to reduce poverty? Diane Schanzenbac...

Jeffrey Fuhrer joins EconoFact Chats to discuss his new book, 'The Myth That Made Us: How False Beliefs about Racism and Meritocracy Broke Our Economy (and How to Fix It),' highlighting how the unfounded belief that individual success and failure is just a function of hard work, or the lack of it -- what he terms ‘the myth’ -- has shaped policies and public perceptions in ways that have caused eco...

The Federal Reserve has seen much success in its fight against inflation. The headline rate over the 12 months ending in August 2023 was 3.7%; much lower than the peak of 9.1% in June 2022. Notably, inflation has come down with virtually no rise in unemployment. But it remains higher than the Fed's 2% target. Will reducing inflation by another 1.7 percentage points prove as costless to output and...

How can international trade policy be aligned with global commitments to reduce inequality, transition to a clean energy future, and promote sustainable development? Joel Trachtman, a founding partner of the Remaking the Global Trading System for a Sustainable Future Project joins EconoFact Chats to discuss the group’s new report, focusing on the natural links between trade and sustainable develop...

Do admissions committees of the most selective colleges consider family income along with applicants’ academic accomplishments, athletic achievements, legacy status, and extra-curricular activities? Given the outsized benefits of attending an “Ivy-plus” college (the eight Ivy league colleges plus Chicago, Duke, Stanford, and MIT), understanding whether children from highest-income families enjoy h...

Economists tend to think of technological change as a good thing. But, as Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson highlight in their new book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, the path technological development takes has, for millennia, been linked with political power and to prevailing ideas of how to attain progress. And often the political and social milie...

Founded with the mandate of overseeing a stable international currency system in the Bretton Woods era, over the last decades, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has seen its role shift to coordinating debt relief. Often, such debt relief has been contingent on spending cuts, and other measures that put a stressed country's balance sheet on more stable footing. IMF conditionality is viewed by s...

While much of the recent debate about the U.S. debt ceiling centered on spending cuts, debt and deficits can also be addressed through raising revenue. One source of government revenue is taxes on corporations. What are the arguments for raising the corporate tax rate? What would be the effects of higher corporate taxes? A substantial increase in revenues? A fairer tax system? Reduced entrepreneur...

D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a fictional portrayal of the KKK's founding, is America's first blockbuster. It's also a film laden with racist overtones, and, as Desmond Ang of Harvard University highlights in a recent American Economic Review article, a film that has had marked effects on racially-motivated violence. Desmond joins EconoFact to discuss how the relative novelty of...

The recent U.S. debt-ceiling negotiations included demands for cutting funding for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. How much would cuts to these and other social safety net programs reduce government spending by? And at what cost to its beneficiaries, that comprised about 3 in 10 people, including nearly half of all U...

EconoFact Chats regularly hosts a panel interview with the distinguished economic journalists Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times, Scott Horsley of NPR, Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal, and Heather Long of The Washington Post. In this latest installment, the panel has a wide-ranging discussion, including on the topics of: the fight over the debt limit, its resolution, and the possible cons...

These are challenging times for central bankers, not only in the United States but worldwide. Inflation in the twenty countries in the Eurozone was 6.9 percent in March 2023, almost two percentage points higher than in the United States. The European Central Bank (ECB) is responding to inflation in a similar fashion to the Federal Reserve, by raising interest rates. But there are concerns that the...

This spring, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed and First Republic Bank failed and was sold to J.P. Morgan Chase. The $532 billion in assets of these banks exceeded the inflation adjusted value of assets of the 25 banks that failed in 2008. Why did these banks fail? Are they the first three failures in what could be a string of bank collapses? Or did the action of regulators stem the...

The U.S. government could default on its debt obligations by June 1st if Congress doesn't raise or suspend the debt ceiling. This would have far-reaching consequences in the United States and around the world. Why does the U.S. even have a debt limit when virtually no other country does? How often has the debt ceiling been raised in the past? What are the options to avoid default if Congress does...

The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is three to four times that of comparably wealthy countries. Furthermore, it is much higher for Black women than White women, and for poor women than for rich women. Strikingly, high income Black mothers have the same risk of dying in the first year following childbirth as the poorest white mothers. What accounts for high maternal mortality in the United Sta...

Economic policies affect people's lives, but the policies themselves can seem arcane. Writing about economics in an interesting, accessible, and compelling fashion contributes importantly to the public’s understanding. Catherine Rampell, an award winning columnist for the Washington Post, shares her thoughts on how to convey key insights on economic issues in this episode of EconoFact Chats. Cathe...

2.3 billion people, or 30% of the world's population, are food insecure. This isn't just a problem in low-income countries – an estimated 34 million people in the United States, including one out of every eight children, have constrained diets because of a lack of access to food. Furthermore, malnutrition and obesity are common since most people’s diets have some deficiencies, or some excesses bec...

While China's rapid economic growth has made it an attractive target for foreign investments, it is not straightforward to know how much of one's portfolio includes exposure to Chinese companies. As Matteo Maggiori notes, much of the increasing investment in China is through shell companies in offshore markets like the Cayman Islands. Matteo joins EconoFact Chats to discuss the economic, regulator...

In 2016, immigration to the U.S. began to fall, and after bottoming out at the outset of COVID-19, rebounded in 2021 and 2022. This rebound occurred at a time when labor force participation was at its lowest point in over four decades. Over a longer horizon, the aging of the U.S. population will lead to a decline in the native-born labor force. Could greater immigration help alleviate labor market...

Much of the demand for automation in richer countries - whether it be for self-checkout machines or driverless trucks - is driven by labor scarcity. And as populations in these countries age, this scarcity will become more acute.  Yet, as Lant Pritchett highlights in a recent Foreign Affairs article, globally, labor remains abundant. Rather than devoting vital high-level scientific and technologic...

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank raised the specter of a broader financial and economic crisis. This seems to have been averted by the decision to ensure all deposits; but questions remain about banks’ risk-taking, the adequacy of regulation, and whether continuing interest rate hikes will further imperil the financial system. Moderating the rise in interest rates, however, c...

Inflation in the United States rose above 9 percent in the summer of 2022, its highest rate in over four decades. The Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to combat inflation. While the inflation rate is declining, it remains well above the target rate of 2%.  Did the Federal Reserve react too late to rising inflation? Were its subsequent policy moves appropriately restrictive? W...