508 Videos

Financial fragility does not fall from the sky. That’s why treating risk as if it comes from exogenous shocks can’t capture the reality of financial markets.

Did the industrial revolution increase the relative demand for skilled labor, or decrease it?

How do economists make their models work? By assuming that investors have rational expectations and that every market participant is alike. However, things quickly get messy once economists start to acknowledge that people are different, interact with each other, and change heuristic forecasting strategies based on recent performance.

What do you get when you put two of the most well known and most widely cited economists in the world, both Nobel laureates, on stage together? A healthy dose of economic reality.

The British Corn Returns data provided the empirical basis for the fierce debate around the introduction and repeal of the 19th century British Corn Laws. Contemporary readers, like David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, followed them as closely as stock market prices of today. Much of 19th century political economy rested on contemporaries’ interpretations of this data.

Climate change policy is caught in a stalemate between those who fear the environmental consequences of not doing enough and those who fear the economic consequences of overreacting. But controversy over the extent and sources of climate change need not stand in the way of a positive economic policy response.

Financial stability, or the lack thereof.

George Soros, Axel Leijonhufvud and Perry Mehrling in Berlin, Germany (2012).

At least since Joseph Schumpeter we know that credit is good for economic growth. At least since 2007 we know that too much credit foreshadows financial turmoil.

Inequality did not increase during the early stages of economic development in Japan and the East Asian Tigers. But in India and China it did. Why is that?

Over the past two hundred years, poor countries have become faster at adopting the technologies of rich countries. So why is it, the economist asks, that poor countries have remained poor, by and large?

Strong enforcement of property rights is good for economic growth, says the conventional wisdom. The link may not be as clear cut, says Suresh Naidu

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff tell the history of financial crisis as a tale of excessive public debt. But what more commonly drives financial instability, says Moritz Schularick, is excessive private debt.