The New Bazaar

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has unusually written an unusual book. The data analysis included in "Who Makes the NBA?: Data-Driven Answers to Basketball's Biggest Questions" normally would have taken Seth, a trained economist, multiple years of writing and running code. But because of new artificial intelligence tools, he finished the book in just thirty days. And he used AI tools not just for the cod...

Martha Gimbel and Gopi Shah Goda were formerly economists within the White House Council of Economic Advisors, or CEA.  They look back on their time inside an important economic policymaking institution, telling Cardiff about: Their favorite projects Toughest assignments The relationship between CEA and other economic policymakers The difference between academia and policy work  What the...

Angus Deaton—Scottish immigrant, Nobelist, and one of Cardiff's favorite economists—has written a new, forthcoming book titled Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explore the Land of Inequality . It’s great, if also hard to categorize. Partly it’s a memoir, about his humble origins in Scotland, where he was born; his studies at Cambridge with better-heeled peers; and his subsequent decade...

We're sharing another episode of a podcast we think you might like. It's called The Closer and it's hosted by executive producer of The New Bazaar, Aimee Keane. In each episode, Aimee speaks to dealmakers and insiders about landmark financial deals that have changed our lives in some way. In this episode, Aimee speaks to writer Abraham Josephine Riesman about Vince McMahon's influential dealm...

These are confusing times for the economy and for financial markets—and for the relationship between the economy and financial markets.  At the moment the economy is doing well. The labor market is still creating hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. Unemployment is low. Inflation has come down over the past year. And economic growth has been stronger than a great many economists and othe...

Within economics, there's a semi-famous quote from the economist Paul Krugman: “Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run, it's almost everything.” Krugman’s point is that ultimately, how much productivity climbs each year—roughly speaking, how much more efficient an economy’s workers become at producing goods and services—is also what determines how much our living standards also rise fr...

We're sharing a special episode of a podcast we think you might like. It's called The Closer and it's hosted by executive producer of The New Bazaar, Aimee Keane. In each episode, Aimee speaks to dealmakers and insiders about landmark financial deals that have changed our lives in some way. In this episode, Aimee speaks to an executive at the center of Whatsapp’s $19 billion sale to Facebook, Neer...

The combination of a markets-based capitalist economy and a liberal democracy with almost-universal suffrage is very young, having existed for barely more than a century. But what we’ve learned in that short time is that there has never been a more successful political and societal arrangement. None of the tyrannies and the plutocracies that have been the default for nearly all of human histo...

This is a special episode from the podcast Macro Musings, hosted by economist David Beckworth. David interviews Cardiff along with Heather Long of the Washington Post and Ryan Avent of The Economist about their reflections on the last three years. What they got wrong, what they got right, what shocked them, and what the lessons of these extraordinary, tumultuous times herald for the future.

Joining Cardiff for this episode is Avi Goldfarb, Rotman Chair In Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare At The Rotman School Of Management, University Of Toronto, and the co-author (with his fellow economists Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans) of an excellent new book, "Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence". In their chat, Avi and Cardiff discuss: Why AI is best un...

This is a special, between-the-seasons episode of the New Bazaar. Right now, the white-to-black wealth ratio in the United States is roughly 6 to 1. Which means that when you add up all the wealth that someone can own—their cash, the value of their house, their investments in the stock market, and so on—the average White American has six times the wealth of the average Black American.  That f...

This is the 50th (!) episode of The New Bazaar, and the Season 1 Finale. Cardiff and Aimee are planning to launch Season 2 later in the fall, and even before then will be airing a few surprise bonus episodes in September and October. Cardiff shares a bit more about future plans at the end of today's episode. The final Season 1 guest is Stefanie Stantcheva. Stefanie is an economist at Harvard, wher...

Benjamin Friedman is an economist and the author of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (2005) and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (2021).   He joins Cardiff to revisit the ideas in Moral Consequences , one of Cardiff’s favorite economics books, which argues that sustained economic growth not only leads to higher living standards but also can make a society more virtuous. They also...

Dakin Campbell is the chief finance correspondent at Insider and, full disclosure, Cardiff's close friend. He joins Cardiff on the show to discuss his new book, “Going Public: How Silicon Valley Rebels Loosened Wall Street’s Grip on the IPO and Sparked a Revolution”. When a company is relatively young… let’s say it’s a startup, and it is privately owned… the owners are usually some combination of...

Here are three things to know about inflation.  First , according to a survey of public opinion by Pew Research taken in May, the public views inflation is the single biggest problem facing the country.  And—this is a direct quote from Pew Research—”no other concern comes close”.  Second , inflation right now is really high. The prices of the goods and services that people buy are m...

Cardiff and Aimee answer your questions about markets, the economy, the first season of the podcast and our company, Bazaar Audio.  Go to bazaaraudio.com to find the full list of recommended links from the episode. 

This episode is all about remote wok. (Or as it is also sometimes known, telework, or telecommuting, or just working from home.) The trend towards remote work has accelerated a lot during the Covid pandemic, as is clear in the data. What we don’t yet know is how much of the trend will last. And if it does last, what kind of economic and societal consequences will it have? What might be its effects...

As a young man in his native Benin, Leonard Wantchekon was arrested for leading a student uprising against the repressive government, tortured in prison, and 18 months later escaped from prison into Nigeria.  Nearly four decades later, he is now a Princeton economist and the founder of the African School of Economics. But the experiences and observations from his astonishing early life embedd...

Skanda Amarnath is the executive director of Employ America, an organization that advocates for strong labor markets. He recently published a research note titled "What Are You Expecting? How The Fed Slows Down Inflation Through The Labor Market", in which he and co-author Alex Williams explores how the Federal Reserve's tools work to influence employment outcomes and the prices of goods and servi...

Martin Sandbu is European Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, where he also writes Free Lunch , a weekly newsletter about global economic policy. And he’s the author of The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All , which has just been released in paperback.  Martin joins Cardiff to discuss:  – How the failures of the soc...

Economic historian Leah Boustan joins Cardiff to discuss her new book, "Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success", co-authored with Ran Abramitsky. This wonderful book complicates and in some cases contradicts many of the prevailing myths and impressions of how immigration works, and it does so using a fascinating and cutting-edge approach to gathering data. Leah and Cardiff ta...

Matt Klein, co-author of "Trade Wars are Class Wars" and old friend of the show, returns for another special collaborative episode. Matt writes the excellent Overshoot newsletter, where he is posting additional commentary and charts to accompany this chat with Cardiff. Check it out and subscribe! Matt is Cardiff's favorite economic-data sleuth, and on this episode they discuss: — The recovery of t...

Mary Childs—author of The Bond King , cohost of the Planet Money podcast, and dear pal of Cardiff and Aimee—joins The New Bazaar to discuss how finance is portrayed in culture and the arts. Mary is both a finance journalist and herself a recreational painter with a comprehensive knowledge of the art world, and Cardiff asked her to choose an example each of a movie, book, song, TV series, painter,...

Cardiff speaks with Jeremiah Johnson, the co-founder and political director of The Neoliberal Project, to discuss the historical evolution of what it means to be Neoliberal, and why advocates and critics of Neoliberalism so often talk past each other. Jeremiah clarifies for Cardiff the current Neoliberal position on taxes, unions, healthcare, Universal Basic Income, privatization of public service...

This week, we're sharing an episode from our friends over at Cautionary Tales. On the show, Tim Harford tells tragic stories from the past, pointing out the valuable lessons in the greatest mistakes, disasters and fiascos.  This episode tells the story of Sir Clive Sinclair, a computer whizz and business mogul to rival Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. He was a visionary who could do no wrong......