Government programs face budget constraints. If government spending goes up, then either taxes or government borrowing will have to increase. And, what the government borrows, it will have to repay at some later date. In this video, Michael Klein, Executive Editor
...A primary concern raised when one firm dominates a market is that consumers will face higher prices and fewer choices. Yet the existence of big firms at the national level does not necessarily mean that there will be less competition at the local level. Some of
...Only a very small share of U.S. companies export. The Department of Commerce puts the figure at 1% when looking at all incorporated firms across all sectors. Even in manufacturing, where exports are more important and firms on average are substantially larger, only
...The U.S. economy is in its longest expansion on record. As unemployment touches historic lows, a striking feature of this expansion is that contrary to what economic theory would predict, inflation too remains strangely low. Megan Greene (Harvard) and Michael Klein,
...Concerns over whether children will be able to live in their parents' hometowns or whether renters are being displaced by gentrification are prevalent in large coastal cities. Zoning restrictions, such as minimum lot sizes, tend to be set at the city and town level.
...What tools do economists have to measure how well an economy is doing? Michael Klein, Executive Editor of EconoFact and Dan Sichel (Wellesley) highlight the advantages, as well as the drawbacks of focusing on gross domestic product (GDP) - a measure of the value
...For firms such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, the larger the number of people who use their product, the more valuable it becomes for people to use that product. This is one example of the forces at work in the modern, digitized economy that foster the rise of
...Economists broadly agree that the best way to reduce fossil fuel emissions is by putting a price on them. Michael Klein, Executive Editor of EconoFact and Gilbert Metcalf (Tufts) discuss some of the challenges of implementing a carbon tax in the U.S. They highlight
...Those who bought homes in the 1980s and 90s experienced significant gains in wealth. But for families who purchased a home in the years before the 2008 recession, especially those with low income, homeownership did not contribute to wealth accumulation. Jeffrey
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