Economists cannot avoid making value judgments

AMID the name-calling and bluster that mar many fights between economists are a few common tactics. Belligerents may attack the theory used to support a claim, or the data analysis used to quantify an effect. During the debate over President Donald Trump’s tax bill, to take a recent example, economists bickered over which side had […]

Economists cannot avoid making value judgments

AMID the name-calling and bluster that mar many fights between economists are a few common tactics. Belligerents may attack the theory used to support a claim, or the data analysis used to quantify an effect. During the debate over President Donald Trump’s tax bill, to take a recent example, economists bickered over which side had […]

NAFTA negotiations will end in an agreement, say economists

The North American Free Trade Agreement will probably be renegotiated successfully with only marginal changes, said a large majority of economists in a Reuters poll, despite the Trump administration’s saber-rattling. Only four of 45 economists polled this week said they thought the deal would be terminated, with the rest expecting an updated trilateral agreement that […]

Economists grapple with the future of the labour market

WHY is productivity growth low if information technology is advancing rapidly? Prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s, this question has in recent years again become one of the hottest in economics. Its salience has grown as techies have become convinced that machine learning and artificial intelligence will soon put hordes of workers out of […]

4 Women Economists Reflect on What It’s Meant to Have a Woman Leader at the Fed

When Janet Yellen leaves her role as the chair of the Fed at the end of her term in February, she will have a pretty impressive record to tout. She has led the Fed during one of the longest market rallies in modern history, and presided over one of the biggest declines in unemployment and […]

China’s leading economists are in high demand and short supply

EVERGRANDE, a Chinese property firm, is a big spender. It was until recently the country’s most indebted developer. It also owns a football club with one of the highest payrolls in China. It has extended its largesse to a new field: economics. Having founded an economic-research institute, Evergrande last month poached Ren Zeping, a star […]

Conservative economists rail against the GOP tax plan

mpi43/MediaPunch Senate Republicans narrowly passed their tax plan overhaul. But many conservative economists and former government officials are predicting that the bill will drive up the deficit, destabilize the health care market, exacerbate income inequality, and lead to cuts to social programs. As Republicans in the House and Senate hash out their tax bill differences in a […]

Why Africa’s development model puzzles economists

IT IS easy to buy a rolex in Uganda—albeit not one that will tell the time. Sold at ubiquitous roadside stalls, the Ugandan rolex is a greasy snack, made from an omelette wrapped in a chapati (“roll eggs”). Sellers compete side-by-side for the same custom. So do the motorcycle-taxi drivers, hustling for rides; or the […]