The Economics Show

Trump is returning to office with many of the same policies that characterised his last term. And for economists, none looms larger than the prospect of significant new tariffs. But are tariffs really as destructive as feared? After all, the Biden administration maintained most of them and the economy has remained strong. Today on the show, we put the question to Kimberly Clausing, a professor at...

Michael Clemens of George Mason University is an expert on the economics of migration, and a scholar of its history. With the newly elected President Trump promising to deport millions of immigrants, we thought it was the perfect time to talk about what illegal immigrants mean to the present economy and, more pressingly, what an economy without them might look like. Soumaya Keynes writes a column...

In 2025, some major provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are going to expire. Meanwhile, spending is likely to rise. That means there is going to be a conversation about tax policy. Natasha Sarin was a counselor to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen at the US Treasury, and is now a professor at Yale and president of the Budget Lab, a research centre analysing US policy. And one thing she has been...

Intuitively, research and development is a building block of a productive future. But exactly how important is it, and can we put a number on it? Heidi Williams is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, and an expert on innovation policy. She is also a visiting fellow at the Congressional Budget Office. Today on the show, she joins Soumaya Keynes to discuss public and private funding for R...

With the US election in a matter of weeks, today Soumaya Keynes is joined by the FT’s Washington bureau chief, James Politi. They discuss the Kamala Harris platform – from industrial policy to tax reform to housing – and what it might all cost. They also talk about how Kamala Harris might differ from Joe Biden, and which staff members might stay and which might go. Soumaya Keynes writes a column e...

The effective altruism movement has been on a wild ride over the past decade. EA started – in the popular consciousness, at least – as a forum for mindful questions about where best to put charitable dollars. Think bed nets and de-worming pills. But, since then, EA seems to have devolved into rationalisations for making tons of money, freak-outs about AI and the end of humanity. Today, on the show...

Race and gender have dominated headlines about economic outcomes in the past decades, but class … not so much. Class is often invisible, hard to describe and awkward to talk about. Anna Stansbury, an assistant professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, sought to shed light on class in the US in a recent paper, co-written with Kyra Rodriguez. They found that independently of race or gender, peo...

Jamaica’s economy struggled for decades, and at one point it had amassed debts worth more than 140 per cent of GDP. Even the IMF wouldn’t return its calls. But somehow, in the 2010s, it managed to halve its government debt – over just seven years. Today on the show, we ask how they did it, and what lessons Jamaica can teach much larger economies.  Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for...

This campaign, candidate Donald Trump is promising even more extreme versions of the policies that marked his first term. But what would higher, and more widespread, tariffs actually look like? And in what form would any retaliation come? Today on the show, Soumaya and the FT’s senior trade writer Alan Beattie discuss the candidate’s campaign promises on trade, and where they might lead. Soumaya K...

Jared Bernstein is the chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. Today on the show, Soumaya gets to put him in the hot seat. She grills him about everything from price caps to inflation to the recent jobs numbers. They even get into the mysterious problem of the vibes.  Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's...

When presidential candidate Kamala Harris proposed legislation to ban price gouging, we naturally thought to interview Isabella Weber, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Weber’s paper on the subject lit up economic discussion in the wake of gas and food market disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Weber calls for governments to examine capping price...

Daron Acemoğlu is an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity . Today on the show, he and Soumaya discuss artificial intelligence and productivity growth, querying how and why AI will change the trajectory of the world economy, and how the workers and the middle class will be aff...

Computer chips power toys and control nuclear reactors. They are in phones, cars and planes, getting us to work and keeping us safe. And they are at the centre of a growing tech war between the US and China, with many other players. Governments around the world are throwing money at industry and erecting barriers to trade, trying desperately to onshore a multitrillion-dollar global industry. This...

How much would it take for you to retire? The question is fun to think about, but also central to a serious conversation happening in economics about the cost and wisdom of a universal basic income. Today on the show, Soumaya is joined by FT editor and columnist Pilita Clark to discuss basic income, and an interview Soumaya did with Mouhcine Guettabi, who studied how Alaska’s payments to its citiz...

Recent events, including a weak US jobs report, a pullback in Japan, and volatility in US markets have made life trickier for central bankers around the world. In the UK, moderating inflation led the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee to cut rates on August 1. The vote was 5-4, with member Catherine Mann voting to hold. Today on the show, Soumaya Keynes and Mann discuss the case for holdi...

A recently released research paper calls into question many of the assumptions about the rate at which income inequality has grown in the US over the past 75 years. Today on the show, Soumaya and the FT’s economics commentator, Chris Giles, discuss this bombshell report, and what it means for economists thinking about wealth and income in the US. To take part in the audience survey and be in with...

The GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, closed during the financial crisis in 2008, ending decades of production – and 3,000 steady, highly paid jobs. Journalist Amy Goldstein wrote about the town as the plant’s workers hurried to make new lives. Her book, ‘Janesville: An American Story’, won the Financial Times and McKinsey Book of the Year in 2017. This summer, Goldstein returned to town for the...

NOTE: This podcast was recorded before Joe Biden announced he was stepping down from the US presidential race Both the Republicans and Democrats are talking tough on economic competition with China. But is this wise? Today on the show, Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, discusses why a hard line on China might not be the best line.  To take part in th...

Hyun Song Shin is the economic adviser and head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, the “bank for central banks,” based in Basel, Switzerland. Today on the show, they talk about the possibilities and final limits of monetary policy. It’s a wide-ranging discussion about the machinery of international finance, covering everything from how much credit central bankers should get for...

Sir Angus Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015. So when he says he is rethinking many of his assumptions about the field, it matters. Today on the show, Soumaya discusses what we are getting wrong about everything from inequality to immigration to the role of globalisation in the reduction of poverty.  Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find i...

For years, pollsters described elections as referendums on the economy. But recently, voters have started to change how they talk about the economy, and how they vote. Today on the show, data reporter John Burn-Murdoch joins Soumaya to discuss shifts in how voters are thinking, and what that means for democracy.  Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find i...

Our guest this week, Zoe Cullen, joins FT columnist Pilita Clark and Soumaya to discuss the benefits and hazards of revealing all about pay. Cullen is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who has been studying the economics of pay transparency for years. She finds that pay transparency doesn’t necessarily mean more money for everyone . . . but it can! It all depends on what kind of pa...

Olivier Blanchard is the former chief economist of the IMF and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. He collaborated with former Fed chair Ben Bernanke to study the responses of 10 central banks to the recent bout of inflation, what we know about its causes, and whether finally getting it back to 2% will require a hard landing. In a wide-ranging...

Today on the show, the FT’s chief economics commentator joins host Soumaya Keynes to discuss why the US is racing ahead of Europe and whether the trend could reverse. They also discuss the outlook for interest rates, China’s future, AI and productivity. Plus, Martin shares his most controversial opinion.  Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here S...

Today on the show Soumaya Keynes talks about macroeconomic mistakes and the interest rate outlook with Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. FT economics commentator Chris Giles joins them to discuss what the Fed got right and wrong about inflation, and Neel’s journey from dove to hawk. Subscribe to Soumaya's show on  Apple ,  Spotify ,&...