EconoFact Chats

In the 1950s and 1960s, the dollar was as “good as gold” – until it wasn’t. The dollar no longer served as the centerpiece of the world’s fixed exchange rate arrangement when the Bretton Woods system broke apart in the early 1970s. But the dollar has remained, to this day, the dominant currency for international trade and global finance. What advantages does the United States enjoy because of the...

College costs are far from straightforward. For the vast majority of students attending four-year private colleges, the amount they pay is not the sticker price. Rather, colleges offer many different types of financial aid. But it's hard for families to figure out beforehand how much aid they're likely to receive. What are the problems that arise from the opacity of college costs for families? And...

As the war in Ukraine continues, sanctions on Russian energy exports have led to a rise in global oil and gas prices. How might the supply disruptions, rising prices, and the growing political urgency in Europe to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas shape our energy future? Are we likely to see environmentally harmful short-run effects as countries scramble for additional sources of hydrocarbon...

The economic impact of the COVID recession has differed widely across groups of people. Pamela Meyerhofer joins EconoFact Chats to discuss some of these differential impacts, focusing on women's experiences in the labor force, as well as those of frontline workers -- those who were providing essential in-person services and facing the biggest risks at the beginning of the pandemic. Pamela is a pos...

COVID-19 has changed much of how we live. For many of us, it's also changed how and from where we work. What have been the effects of working from home on businesses and employees? Now, as many places re-open, will those who had been working from home continue to do so? Will they want to? Will companies be willing to accommodate them? How will working from home affect productivity and people's sen...

In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an alliance of governments announced wide-ranging sanctions aimed at punishing President Putin, members of the Duma, and Russian oligarchs. What impact are these sanctions likely to have? How resilient will the Russian economy be to the withdrawal of foreign partners? And how responsive will President Putin be to hardships facing the Russian people, as...

Unusually frequent droughts and hurricanes are manifestations of climate change; and these events, along with associated wildfires and floods, have important economic consequences. This week on EconoFact Chats, Galina Hale discusses the costs of both, these extreme events, and the costs of a transition to a more environmentally friendly economy. Galina Hale is a professor at the University of Cali...

What are the ways in which public finance -- the study of government taxing and spending -- can and should address issues related to the inequitable racial impacts of government policy? This week on EconoFact Chats Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution discusses recognizing and analyzing racial disparities fostered by public policy and how public finance policies can better address past injustice...

Antitrust laws have been part of U.S. legislation since the Sherman Act of 1890, and the Clayton and Federal Trade Commission Acts of 1914. Does existing legislation provide a useful framework to check anti-competitive practices today? This week on EconoFact Chats, Dan Richards discusses the many forms of monopoly and monopsony power, how U.S. regulatory attitudes towards anti-trust have shifted,...

Union membership has been declining for 60 years but there are incipient signs of a reemergence. Why did unionization decline and what might be prompting its return? How do unions affect wages, as well as the workplace environment? More broadly, what is the evidence on the effects of unions on overall productivity and public policy? Aaron Sojourner discusses these issues in this week’s EconoFact C...

This week on EconoFact Chats, Giovanni Peri, founding director at the Global Migration Center at UC Davis discusses the many roles that immigrants play in the US economy, how current labor shortages are linked to international travel disruptions and immigration restrictions, and what natural experiments like the Mariel boatlift of 1980 can tell us about the impact of immigration on the wages of na...

There has been a widening divergence in mortality rates across states over the past four decades. While this is partially explained by differences in education, income and “deaths of despair” -- those related to alcohol, drugs, or suicide -- there are also place-based effects beyond these factors. This week on EconoFact Chats, Ellen Meara discusses the effect of the health environment and state-le...

Racism in the United States has created an enduring wealth gap between Black and White Americans. This gap is rooted both in slavery itself and in the systematic exclusion of Black people from government assistance and social safety programs beginning after the Civil War and continuing through the Jim Crow era and after. Although it’s not easy to capture the magnitude of this injustice, paying rep...

The American public has always struggled with immigration policy, particularly as it intersects with race, poverty and economic opportunity. This week on EconoFact Chats, Tara Watson discusses her new book co-authored with Kalee Thompson, The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in the Age of Fear. The book is both an economic analysis of the effects of immigration on the United States econ...

Economic forecasting is rarely easy. This is especially true in the current environment, as the relationship between economic activity and public health metrics such as the percentage of people vaccinated, or the number of COVID cases, remains far from predictable.  Key macroeconomic questions remain. Is higher inflation likely to persist, or will it prove transitory? Will businesses be able to bo...

Even as the initial economic shocks of COVID-19 abate, labor shortages, supply constraints, demand shifts, and inflation continue to cloud the U.S.' macroeconomic outlook. To discuss whether these phenomena might prove transitory, or more durable, EconoFact Chats welcomes back a panel of distinguished economic journalists: Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times, Scott Horsley of NPR, Greg Ip of...

In the wake of the economic crisis of the 1970s, and again, in the aftermath of 2008, macroeconomists have had to rethink their understanding of the drivers of recessions, as well as the most effective policy responses to them. This week on EconoFact Chats, Karen Dynan and Michael Klein discuss how past recessions have shaped today’s fiscal and monetary policy, the role of inflation, and inflation...

Economic theories often inform policy choices, but events can call into question these same theories. In this episode of EconoFact Chats, John Cassidy, Staff Writer for The New Yorker joins Michael Klein to discuss how policies based on the advantages of unfettered free markets were challenged by the 2008 financial and economic crisis.  John also discusses other instances of challenges to theories...

Nationalist economic policies, including rising opposition to free trade, skepticism of international institutions, and anti-immigrant sentiment, are on the rise at a time when the pandemic and climate change are making international cooperation more necessary than ever. This week on EconoFact Chats, Michael Klein speaks with Maurice Obstfeld, widely recognized as one of the world's leading expert...

Even as overdose deaths from opioids in the US reached a disturbing peak of 69,000 in 2020, monthly state-level data for 2021 suggests that overdose deaths are on pace to rise even further; likely driven by a combination of increased stress, reduced access to care, and a greater prevalence of more lethal drugs. This week on EconoFact Chats, Alicia Sasser Modestino of Northeastern University discus...

High inflation has become a central concern. After four decades of low inflation, the so-called ‘great moderation,’ the key question is whether the current situation portends a return to the high and rising inflation of the 1970s, or whether we are seeing a temporary blip due to supply chain disruptions and other effects of the pandemic. Looking at a finer-grained analysis of the price changes of...

How can journalists present statistics in a way that is both understandable and accurate? Why are data visualizations sometimes misleading rather than informative? As newspapers scale up their data coverage, journalists are developing insights into how best to report complex statistics without misrepresenting them. This week on EconoFact Chats, Michael Klein and Ben Casselman of the New York Times...

How do laws affect commerce between nations? Are WTO decisions routinely biased against the interests of the United States? What are the biggest legal challenges to the international trading system? What role do labor standards and the protection of intellectual property play for international trade? This week on EconoFact Chats, Joel Trachtman, a leading scholar of of international trade law, dis...

Even as the popularity of cryptocurrencies grows, debates surrounding their viability as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and as an investment remain contentious. In this episode of EconoFact Chats, Eswar Prasad of Cornell University joins Michael Klein for a discussion of how cryptocurrencies work, the ways in which they differ from central bank digital currencies, issues surrounding the r...

The high and rising inflation of the 1970s caused widespread economic insecurity, raised fundamental questions about the government's ability to manage the economy, and caused macro-economists to doubt many of their theories. Now, as inflation rises after a decades-long lull, economists and policy-makers are faced with a key question: is the current rise in prices transitory; driven by supply chai...