Views on the dollar shortage controversy

July 02, 2026 2:00am 28 min

In the fifteen years following the end of World War II, Western Europe's capital account surpluses were not sufficient to finance its trade deficit with the United States. Charles Kindleberger of MIT, who helped assemble...

Environmental market design

June 03, 2026 2:00am 30 min

Since the 1990s, developers in Florida who want to build on wetlands have been required to buy offset credits from "wetland mitigation banks," private restoration projects that convert degraded land, often former pasture...

The wrong side of the tracks

May 15, 2026 3:00am 15 min

The place where a child grows up in America shapes their economic future to a significant degree. One long-suspected explanation is racial segregation, but proving whether segregation actually causes worse outcomes—rathe...

Delivering clean water

April 09, 2026 2:00am 21 min

More than two billion people around the world do not have safe drinking water at home. Piped water infrastructure remains out of reach for much of the developing world, and cheaper alternatives like chlorine tablets have...

A short history of Asian immigration

March 11, 2026 2:00am 23 min

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States and are on track to become the largest immigrant group by 2050. Yet, researchers have devoted much less attention to this population than to other...

W. E. B. Du Bois and the history of marginalism

February 11, 2026 2:00am 16 min

W. E. B. Du Bois is remembered as a civil rights leader, sociologist, and author of The Souls of Black Folk. But before he became famous for his empirical studies of Black life in America, Du Bois was a graduate student ...

Diversifying college applications

January 14, 2026 2:00am 21 min

Guidance counselors generally advise college applicants to diversify their applications across schools they believe to be safeties, matches, and reaches. Yet, prevailing economic theories of school choice suggest that su...

Targeted supply-side enforcement in the controlled substance market

December 03, 2025 2:00am 20 min

Between 1997 and 2011, opioid dispensing in the United States more than tripled, fueling what would become the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. This surge in the supply of opioids was concentrated among a sma...

Technological spillovers

November 05, 2025 2:00am 18 min

The launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 1957 led to a geopolitical crisis that reshaped American science policy. Within months, Congress established NASA, and by 1961, President Kennedy committed the nation ...

Housing supply skepticism

October 08, 2025 2:00am 22 min

Most Americans agree that housing costs are too high, often blaming developers and landlords.  Many feel that the problem can be solved with price controls, development restrictions, and mandates on providing below-mark...

Reviewing residential segregation

September 11, 2025 2:00am 31 min

Despite decades of civil rights legislation, many Black and White Americans, as well as other minorities, continue to live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, with significant implications for access to quality school...

Understanding the US net foreign asset position

August 13, 2025 2:00am 26 min

For decades, the United States enjoyed what some called an exorbitant privilege—the ability to spend more than it earned without accumulating much debt to the rest of the world. But that privilege has ended. In a paper i...

Measuring US income inequality

July 16, 2025 9:22am 24 min

US household income has grown significantly, but much of that growth seems to be at the very top of the distribution. Just how much inequality has increased and why it is growing is a topic of debate among economists. P...

Understanding international approaches to drug pricing

June 11, 2025 2:00am 21 min

Drug prices have become a hot-button issue in the United States, with politicians across the spectrum agreeing that American consumers pay too much for prescription medications. But bringing down drug prices raises fun...

The cultural roots of rebellion

May 14, 2025 2:00am 28 min

Civil conflict has plagued much of Africa, with ethnically diverse countries experiencing particularly high rates of violence. Yet within these nations, patterns vary, leading to questions of why some groups rebel while ...

Ep. 86: Reexamining air quality regulations

April 16, 2025 9:29am 24 min

The Clean Air Act has been an essential tool for reducing air pollution in the United States. But standard estimation methods may overstate its impact, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Poli...

America's public safety net

March 19, 2025 2:00am 21 min

The patchwork nature of America's public safety net has evolved over centuries, shaped by political winds and changing views on poverty. Understanding this complicated history may help shed light on the core tensions tha...

Media salience and polarization

February 19, 2025 3:00am 18 min

The returns to industrial policy

January 23, 2025 2:00am 27 min

Between 2006 and 2013, China's government poured enormous resources into its shipbuilding industry through various subsidies—from providing free coastal land to offering financing assistance for ship buyers. But estimati...

Service quality in the financial advisory industry

December 17, 2024 2:00am 18 min

A growing number of US households hire advisers to assist with major financial decisions, such as planning life events or making portfolio choices for retirement. But some advisers exploit the inherent complexity of thes...