EconoFact Chats

Are policies from over a century ago that addressed concerns about large trusts like Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company appropriate today? Or does the source of the market power of high-tech companies like Meta and Alphabet require a new paradigm? Naomi Lamoreaux joins EconoFact Chats to discuss the historical shifts in anti-trust policy from the late 19th and early 20th century to toda...

The United States economy surprised many in 2023 with its low inflation, high employment, and strong economic growth. In spite of this, American consumer sentiment had been relatively negative until recently, but now has begun to improve in line with this good performance. Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times, Scott Horsley of NPR, Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal, and Heather Long of The Wa...

Distrust is based on experience – and there are many historical experiences that give rise to distrust among African-Americans of economic institutions in the United States, including the laws of the Jim Crow era and discrimination in hiring, lending, and access to education and health care. Trevon Logan discusses historical experiences, and the long shadow cast by them, in this EconoFact Chats ep...

About one-fifth of women who graduated from college between 1900 and 1920 were in the labor force in their mid to late twenties. In contrast, more than four-fifths of women graduating from college between 1980 and 2000 worked outside the home in their mid to late twenties. A flip side of this is the proportion of women married by age 30; 50% for those who graduated college between 1900 and 1920 an...

The federal government’s debt is just under 100 percent of GDP – and it is projected to grow to 115 percent of GDP in a decade, and 180 percent of GDP in thirty years.  Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, discusses the reasons debt increased significantly before the pandemic, its dramatic rise since then, and its expected further increase. He also explains how high debt adversely aff...

Zero-sum thinking - the belief that gains for some necessarily come at the expense of others - can shape support for economic redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and immigration policies. Drawing on new survey data, Stefanie Stantcheva joins EconoFact Chats to discuss her research on what determines whether people view the world as zero sum. Her analysis demonstrates that vi...

Working from home was relatively rare before COVID. It became a necessity as the pandemic raged. Today, it remains more common and, to some extent, a choice. But is it a choice that both workers and employers agree upon? More than three years after the start of the pandemic, what do we know about the preferences for working from home for employees, and for employers? What do we know about its effe...

In 2021, Americans donated nearly $500 billion to charity. One-quarter of all Americans also report volunteering their time. What does economic analysis add to our understanding of volunteering time and giving money to charities, activities typically considered moral or religious duties? To what causes do people donate time or money? And what makes people more or less likely to give to a particula...

The very highest-income individuals and families typically pay lower taxes, as a share of income, than middle-class individuals and families. Part of the reason is that much more of their income comes from investment and business incomes that are tax-favored as compared to wage and salary income. The very wealthy also benefit from tax rules and regulations that diminish taxes paid on inheritances....

The income tax was established in 1913 with the ratification of the single sentence of the 16th amendment. Tax rules and regulations have undergone many revisions and changes in the 110 years since then, including the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. One provision of that act, concerning multinational corporations repatriating income, is being challenged in the case Moore v. United States. Oral argument...

In what ways are children particularly hard hit by poverty? How does growing up poor affect early-life development? Lisa A. Gennetian joins EconoFact Chats to answer these questions, drawing on preliminary results from 'Baby’s First Years,' a large-scale, multi-decade interdisciplinary study on the impact of poverty on brain development among infants. A Principal Investigator at 'Baby's First Year...

The U.S. Congress has stated its intention to extend many of the tax cuts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act beyond 2025. But, as Kim Clausing highlights, Congress is also likely to rethink some of the act's provisions. Kim joins EconoFact Chats to discuss which parts of the act made for good tax policy, which didn't, and what policy changes could put the U.S. on a path of greater fiscal sustainability....

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...