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Conversable Economist
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.” In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of c
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- 3,528 from 17 May 2011 to 29 Oct 2026
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Latest
October 2026
- A Primer on Health Care Systems Across Countries
- All About Tariffs
- AI in Development: World Development Report 2026
- Financing the AI Physical Capital Buildout
- A Supply-Shock Era?
- Medicaid’s Expanding Enrollment
- How to Keep Global Agricultural Output Rising
- The Incoherence of the Trump Tariff Announcements
- The Nobel Prize to Hall and Woodford: A Macroeconomic Journey
- 1974: When Both Nobel Economists Proposed Abolishing the Prize
- A Tax-Side Agenda for Addressing US Budget Deficits
- The Challenge of US Rural Development
- Equity in K-12 School Spending
- Financial Literacy: How Many Can Pass the Test?
- Interview with Gita Gopinath: Trade and Currencies
September 2026
- Interview with Ariel Pakes: The Inner Workings of Product Markets
- I Would Like the Value of My Home to Rise, While My Property Taxes Fall
- S-Shaped Utility Curves, Poverty, and Risk-Taking
- A US Federal Budget Chartbook
- US Manufacturing Jobs: The Long Transition
- Energy and Carbon Emissions: Some Global Ground Truths
- Adam Smith: Rule of Law as the Backbone for Markets
- The Dominance of Aquaculture over Capture Fishing
- A Supply-Side Story: The Rising Price of Candy
- The Latent Benefits of Work
- Marge Piercy on Why Work Matters
- Gross and Net US Investment
- US Energy: Source to End-Use
- The Bank of North America (Before Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States)
August 2026
- GAO: One More Warning on US Federal Debt
- Secular Stagnation and Wealth Inequality: Antecedents and Lessons
- Is US Government Debt Getting Riskier?
- Even Sand Isn’t Infinite
- Data Center Spending in US
- “Syntax often breaks down just at the point where a new or significant meaning is beginning to break out”
- The Generalizability Problem, the Natural Field Experiments Answer
- Welcoming First-Year Students with a Wake-Up Call
- Orwell: “It is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.”
- “To Write Well is to Think Clearly”: David McCullough
- Did the Sewing Machine Reduce the Workload for Women?
- Rocks in the Harbor: Beveridge and Robinson
- When Happiness Was Invented
- Growth Effects of AI: Modest for a Decade or Two, At Least
- The Not-so-Fluid, Low-Hire, Low-Fire Economy
- Summer 2026 Journal of Economic Perspectives Freely Available Online
July 2026
- The EU Green Deal: How’s It Going?
- Major Stereotypes
- Occupational Licensing: US and International
- The Job Market for Recent College Graduates
- Chokepoints for Ocean Trade: Strait of Hormuz, and What Else?
- Interview with Christiane Baumeister: Oil Price Shocks
- Is Progress Sustainable? Mokyr’s Nobel Lecture
- How Much Does Federal R&D Pay Off?
- Interview with Joel Mokyr: Big Topics in Long-Run Growth
- Is the Fed Taking it Too Easy on Bank Enforcement?
- Tokenized Finance: What Are the Tradeoffs?
- Shifts in Non-Cash Payments
- Declaration of Independence: Track Changes Version
- What Does the Declaration Mean by Pursuit of Happiness?
- US Exports, Imports, and Tariffs: The 250-Year Perspective
- Interview with Mervyn King: All Things Monetary Policy
June 2026
- Where Will the Jobs Come From in Developing Economies?
- Some Economics of Paid Sick Leave
- Slow Growth: Mexico Edition
- Dairy: Supply and Demand Stories
- How Will Boomer Retirement Affect Jobs for Young Adults?
- Homo Experiens, the Biology of Decision-Making, and Behavioral Economics
- Geoeconomics and Rethinking the Logic of Trade
- Chair Jerome Powell: An Early Retrospective
- Is GDP Failing to Capture AI?
- Does Leniency for First Offenders Pay Off?
May 2026
- Simone Weil on Education and Attention
- Lessons for Central Banks: Interview with Kristin Forbes
- How Medicare and Medicaid Rely on Private Health Insurance
- Agricultural Production Functions Without Prices
- A Foretaste of Warsh as Chair of the Federal Reserve
- How is AI Affecting the Quantity and Quality of New Books?
- Is China Blocking Developing Economies?
- Snapshots of Global Defense Spending
- The World’s Most Populous City Builds Mass Transit
- History of the Disposable Diaper
- How AI Boosts International Trade
- Spring 2026 Journal of Economic Perspectives Freely Available Online
April 2026
- Global Trade Imbalances: Actual Problems, Unlikely Solutions
- World War Trade
- Declining Survey Response and Government Data
- Industrial Policy: A Policy Menu
- AI and Future Growth
- Interview with Ellen McGrattan: Business Cycles and Intangible Capital
- The Austin Experience: More Housing, Lower Rents
- The US as an Innovation Economy
- Globalization: Healthier than the Headlines
- North Korea’s Economy: How to Study a Data Black Hole
- How Federal Spending is Distributed to the Elderly, Working Age, and Children
- Trump’s Tariffs One Year Later: Predictably Disappointing
- India and Its Service Sector
March 2026
- The Flaws of Overconfident AI
- Bending the Curve of Health Care Costs (At Last?)
- When Keynes Did Not Win the Nobel Peace Prize
- The Growth of Big Business: 1900-2020
- Interview with Erika McEntarfer: Firings and Federal Statistics
- Snapshots of “Cross-Border Financial Centers”
- The US Postal Service Hits Its Debt Ceiling
- The Wealth of Nations: What’s It all About?
- StatGPT: The Dangers of Asking AI about Statistics
- Canada’s Economic Challenges
- Who is Buying All the Global Debt?
- When Fiscal and Monetary Policy Row Together–and Not
- The Marketplace Exchanges for Health Insurance
- A Rising Gap Between Older and Young Workers
- The Status of Stablecoins
- Fiscal Rules in Emerging Market Economies
- When Rubber Was the Critical Imported Good
- Can AI Tools Be Pro-Worker?
February 2026
- Laying Off Workers: Cheap vs. Expensive
- Did Negative Interest Rates Work ?
- Effective Taxes on Carbon: An International View
- Trump’s Tariffs Have Not Shifted the Trade Deficit
- Some Evidence on AI, Productivity, and Labor Markets
- US Budget Deficits: Spitting Into the Wind
- What are Folk Economic Beliefs?
- Asian Americans: Two Alternate Histories
- Winter 2026 Journal of Economic Perspectives Freely Available Online
- When Social Security Went Haywire in the 1970s
January 2026
- Tariffs and Inflation: Where Are We?
- The Liminal Status of US Immigration Policy
- China’s Belt and Road Initiative: The Final Act
- How Slavery Held Back Growth: Looking Across the River
- Interdependencies in Federal Statistics
- Snapshots of the US Income Distribution
- US-China Competition for AI Markets
- AI and Jobs: Interview with David Autor
- Standardization as a Tool for Development
- Some Snapshots of the US Demographic Future
- Yellen on Fiscal Dominance
- AEA Distinguished Fellow 2025: That’s Me
- What is Actually the Problem with the Current US Labor Market?
- Economic Inequality Does Not Cause Lower Subjective Ratings of Well-Being
- How Selective Universities Can Increase Socioeconomic Diversity: Admit by SAT Scores
- Is Your Destiny Seeking You?
December 2025
- Hume on the Jealousy of Trade
- Keynes: Free Trade and the Nationalist Impulse
- US Growth: From Hours Worked or Productivity Gains?
- What’s a Widget in the Modern Economy?
- Charles Dickens on Management and Labor
- Charles Dickens on Seeing Poverty
- Economics of the Attention Economy
- How Does Japan Sustain Such High Government Debt?
- The Late 1800s: High Tariffs and Expanding Trade Together?
- Some Snapshots of Global Urbanization
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