Inflation has gone from being a threat to the economy because it was too high in the 1970s, to being a source of concern today because it is too low. Since 2012, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been persistently unable to lift inflation to reach its 2% target. Why
...Politicians often advocate for tariffs in an effort to protect jobs in a particular industry, such as those of steel workers. But positive employment effects are frequently muted, and can be outweighed by job losses -- for instance at companies that use steel as
...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
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