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Byline: Peter Coy While the world's eyes are on Gaza, another drama is unfolding in Jerusalem. There, lawmakers and government ministers are tussling over how to pay for the war [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Americans complain that inflation has eroded the value of their money, but the U.S. dollar looks lovely to the people of Argentina, where consumer prices rose 124 [...]

Byline: Peter Coy It's not surprising that Donald Trump viciously insults Letitia James, the New York State attorney general who has taken him to court. What is a little surprising [...]

As the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis expands and the union continues to hold out for big wage increases, some analysts are worrying that [...]

The shutdown of the federal government that appears imminent is not just a political failure but also a failure of the imagination. Driving this particular stalemate is a small group [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Last week I interviewed three prominent Latin American economists, two of them former chiefs of the central banks of Brazil and Mexico and one a former finance [...]

Sian Leah Beilock was playing goalkeeper for an elite soccer team in California, part of the Olympic development program, when she became aware that one of the national coaches was [...]

La semana pasada entrevisté a tres destacados economistas latinoamericanos: dos exdirectores de los bancos centrales de Brasil y México, respectivamente, y un exministro de Hacienda de Chile. El tema era: [...]

Byline: Peter Coy The punishment for murder is more severe than the punishment for attempted murder. But it's not completely obvious why. The person who tried to kill but failed [...]

People tend to be surprised, and sometimes upset, when they find out that interest expenses aren’t included in the Consumer Price Index. It seems only natural that if people are [...]

Members of the United Auto Workers union have a strong hand in their strike against General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis. Their negotiators have reason to believe that they should [...]

Members of the United Auto Workers union have a strong hand in their strike against General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis. Their negotiators have reason to believe that they should [...]

Judging from the emails I get, a lot of readers of this newsletter are sympathetic to the degrowth movement, which holds that humanity must suppress economic and population growth to [...]

On Tuesday the Census Bureau is scheduled to release income and poverty statistics for 2022. It’s safe to say that the report will be hard to interpret. Last year, the [...]

Industrial policy was a punching bag for economists for decades. Governments couldn’t possibly know enough to pick winners and losers, economists averred. And even if policymakers did know, special interests [...]

James and Robert Rebitzer are identical twins who enjoy each other’s company. “We talk. We talk a lot,” Bob said in a video interview I did with the two of [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Economic growth has weakened considerably, but it's still relatively easy for people to find jobs. That's puzzling economists, who are used to seeing job offers disappear when [...]

It’s pretty funny that the Biden administration persists in describing its program to lower what Medicare pays for 10 widely used prescription drugs as a “https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/08/29/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-first-ten-drugs-selected-for-medicare-price-negotiation/” with the manufacturers. If [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Incongruously, Yi Fuxian, one of the world's experts on China's demographic plight, specializes in pre-eclampsia - a complication of pregnancy - and works in Wisconsin. His day [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Gresham's Law says that bad money drives out good. If you have two coins with a face value of $1, you will spend the bad one that [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Two of the world's biggest wheat exporters are at war, and Russia recently redoubled its efforts to prevent exports of wheat from Ukraine, which it invaded in [...]

Byline: Peter Coy You hear two stories about how private companies raise money to grow. One is that the regulations on them are too restrictive, depriving the nation of innovation [...]

Byline: Peter Coy My son is getting married this weekend, so I'm full of happy thoughts about marriage. But I want to get to those happy thoughts by way of [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Gross domestic product is a great measure of the economy, but it would be a gross exaggeration to say it's the only one. The Bureau of Economic [...]

Byline: Peter Coy On Dec. 9, 2021, at the inaugural Summit for Democracy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a stunning admission: Her country had become the world's most sought-after shelter [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Gambling is foolish, we're told, because the house always wins. Better to get rich slowly by putting a little away every day. But boy, do we love [...]

Byline: Peter Coy 'Rockets and feathers' is economists' name for how prices change in some less-than-competitive markets. When companies' input costs go up for some reason, the prices they charge [...]

Byline: Peter Coy More and more economists are dropping their recession calls for the U.S. economy. They are forecasting instead a 'soft landing' in which the economy continues to grow, [...]

Byline: Peter Coy What's the difference between $100 in cash and $100 in a checking account? Nothing - and everything. The two are the same in the sense that they're [...]

As different as California and Florida are, they share one big problem: Insurance companies are curtailing business in the two states. Some aren’t writing new policies. Others are going further [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Preston Mui earned his doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, just last year, but he's already making waves. This month he called out some [...]

Byline: Peter Coy I get why the Biden administration is pushing electric vehicles so hard. To stop the planet from overheating, we'll eventually need motor vehicles to produce zero greenhouse [...]

I get why the Biden administration is pushing electric vehicles so hard. To stop the planet from overheating, we'll eventually need motor vehicles to produce zero greenhouse gas emissions, and [...]

When titans clash, the ground shakes and televisions get a lot cheaper. I’m referring, of course, to this week’s Christmas-in-July sales competition between Walmart and Amazon, the biggest and second-biggest [...]

Economists have an imaginary person they call a “representative agent,” who is about as realistic as the Easter bunny or the Abominable Snowman. The representative agent is supposed to stand [...]

Every intense relationship has frictions, and the one between the Teamsters union and United Parcel Service is no exception. Negotiations have broken down in the final stage of talks on [...]

This issue of the newsletter is about cans, roads, kicking and Social Security. Specifically, it’s about how to deal with Social Security’s impending funding shortfall. Is a 20-year fix good [...]

Biden is counting on it to be a national champion chipmaker, but it still has shareholders to please. Biden’s counting on Intel to spend heavily, but it still has shareholders [...]

Even if A.I. outcompetes humans on everything, he says, we may still have jobs to do. If A.I. outcompetes humans on everything, will we still have jobs to do? Let’s [...]

What I heard wasn’t necessarily reassuring. Whatever the cause, the company has work to do You should worry that a crying baby will be in the seat next to you. [...]

I don’t know whether the Supreme Court’s decision on student loan forgiveness on Friday was right or wrong on legal grounds. I do know that it will most likely cause [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Robert Litterman is a legend on Wall Street. He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1980. In his 23 years at Goldman [...]

Danielle Allen grew up, in her own words, “in an opinionated, fractious, loving family.” Her father, “lean and bald,” was a rare Black Reagan Republican. Her aunt Roslyn, “lesbian and [...]

Factory floors and union halls are President Biden’s happy places. Here’s the president https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/04/20/remarks-by-president-biden-on-his-vision-for-the-economy/ to the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 77 in Accokeek, Md., on April 19: “I [...]

When you throw a yellow beach ball upward, it slows down, comes to a stop for a moment and then comes back down, gaining speed as it falls. Now imagine [...]

People waste time and gasoline cruising for free on-street parking. Some put chairs or traffic cones out to mark spots that they claim as their own. Fights over spots have [...]

Byline: Peter Coy People waste time and gasoline cruising for free on-street parking. Some put chairs or traffic cones out to mark spots that they claim as their own. Fights [...]

Byline: Peter Coy When all hope is lost, hire a woman to take over (and take blame). Studies of the so-called glass cliff have found that companies are more likely [...]

Byline: Peter Coy Sports leagues love competition, except against one another. The leagues make more money when they don't have to compete for talent and audience. That, in a nutshell, [...]