Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity

Oct 22 2024 24 ep. 27 mins 93

Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity artwork

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity connects you to cutting edge economic policy research and the renowned economists who create it. On each episode, the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity editors introduce new BPEA research and present a conversation between the author and a Brookings scholar to bridge the divide between economic theory and practical policy solutions.

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What role should sanctions play in foreign policy? The case of Russia.

Oct 22 2024 33 mins

Since 2022, Western nations have put a number of sanctions on Russia in response to its war in Ukraine. Policymakers and pundits have debated the efficacy of these measures, but this debate is belied by a deeper question: what does it mean for sanctions to “work”? In new BPEA research, Oleg Itskhoki of Harvard and Elina Ribakova of the Peterson Institute for International Econo

What is the efficient rate of unemployment?

Oct 08 2024 26 mins

The full-employment rate of unemployment may seem like a contradiction, but in fact, economists have long understood that some unemployment is necessary. In their new paper, Pascal Michaillat of UC Santa Cruz and Saez of the University of California, Berkeley present a new formula for identifying the efficient rate of unemployment in the U.S. and find that the labor market has been

Did behavioral changes reduce COVID-19 deaths?

Jun 19 2024 26 mins

As COVID-19 swept across the globe, many nations struggled to define a cohesive public health strategy to prevent the spread of the disease. However, in spite of the lack of a clear plan, improvised strategies of behavioral changes—e.g., masking, social distancing—slowed transmission until a vaccine could be developed. The new BPEA paper, “The impact of vaccines and behaviors

What should regulators do about the risks to mid-sized banks?

Jun 05 2024 26 mins

The failure of three mid-sized banks in March 2023—three of the four largest bank failures in history—shook financial markets and could’ve spread to other banks if regulators hadn’t stepped in. Two on-going trends in finance contributed to these failures: an increase in uninsured deposits and the migration of business lending to non-banks. In a new paper, “The evolution o

What global factors could make inflation less stable?

May 22 2024 23 mins

Most advanced economies enjoyed a long period of low, stable inflation prior to 2021, with inflation in the U.S. actually running below the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target for much of the 2010s. This stability was driven in part by factors external to monetary policy, including downward price and wage pressures from globalization and de-unionization. However, the authors of

What do Americans think about inflation?

May 08 2024 31 mins

Many indicators suggest that the U.S. economy is thriving, yet Americans continue to have a negative overall economic outlook. Stubbornly high inflation has played a significant role in this negative sentiment among consumers, even as wage growth has caught up with the rate of inflation. In a new study, “Why do we dislike inflation?” Stefanie Stantcheva fielded a survey to expl

Do US states have different recoveries from economic shocks?

Apr 24 2024 24 mins

In the mid-20th century, U.S. states experienced recessions very differently from one another, which resulted in many workers migrating between states in search of work. But a newly developed dataset shows that economic recoveries have begun to look very similar across states in recent decades. On this episode, Senior Fellow Louise Sheiner talks with Andrew Fieldhouse and David Mun

How did Jamaica halve its debt in 10 years?

Apr 10 2024 29 mins

Many countries have faced harrowing debt burdens, and reducing the national debt is usually a lasting challenge. But in just five years, the Jamaica reduced its debt-to-GDP ratio by 40 percentage points, something only a handful of other countries have done in that time frame. On this episode of the BPEA podcast, Peter Blair Henry of Stanford and UC Berkeley's Barry Eichengreen joi

What do we miss in standard supply chain measures?

Dec 20 2023 36 mins

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on supply chains, with shortages in everything from baby formula to microchips. This spurred an on-going policy debate on the need for the U.S. to shore up its supply chains, in some cases literally moving production back to the U.S. or allied nations. However, new analysis published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity showed that ef

How worried should we be about wage-price spirals?

Dec 06 2023 31 mins

Economists have long debated the potential for rising wages and prices to push each other increasingly higher, driving inflation out of control—the so-called “wage-price spiral.” Concern about such a spiral has been high in the post-pandemic era, with inflation still running notably higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. On this episode of the Brookings Podcast on Eco