Shows / Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
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.
Episodes
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What really drove post-pandemic inflation?
Post-COVID pandemic inflation is often blamed on broken supply chains and energy shocks. A new BPEA paper argues that unexpectedly strong demand was the…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Cut demand or cut supply? Rethinking climate policy
Should cutting greenhouse gas emissions target the consumption of fossil fuels or their extraction? A new BPEA paper argues the answer is a portfolio of…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
The $10 trillion question: Financing the AI buildout
AI is often described as a software story, but the boom is also a massive physical investment in data centers, power systems, and specialized chips. A new BPEA…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How can we improve noisy labor market data?
Data on labor markets is incredibly important to policymakers, from state and federal legislators to the central bank and Treasury Department. But this data is…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Why is the U.S. outpacing European countries in AI adoption?
The promise and peril of an AI-dominated future have dominated debates among economists, technologists, and policymakers in recent years. But even as the…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Why haven't tariffs significantly damaged the economy?
The tariff increases during the second Trump administration have been historic in their magnitude and scope, dwarfing even those from Trump's first term. Many…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Why is spending on health care slowing?
In 2010, the U.S. government projected that Americans would spend about $6 trillion dollars on health care, a little over 21% of GDP, in 2024. The actual…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How long will China's real estate crisis last?
China's real estate sector and infrastructure account for nearly one-third of economic demand in China. Plus, Chinese households allocate far more of their…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How can the Fed reduce its balance sheet?
Since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has amassed roughly $6.6 trillion in assets, primarily in the form of Treasury securities and…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Has the CHIPS Act created jobs?
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 included funds for billions of dollars in federal investments in U.S.-based manufacturing, a major landmark in the history of…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Is the neutral rate of interest going to start climbing after years of decline?
Monetary and fiscal policymakers use a variety of metrics to inform their decisions, but among the most important is the neutral rate of interest, also known…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What jobs will be most affected by AI?
Throughout history, human work has been augmented by technology. But the emergence of artificial intelligence tools have led many to ask whether an…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Are fertility rates falling because of social comparisons?
Fertility rates are falling in many countries around the world, with births failing to keep pace with deaths in nearly half of countries. Researchers believe…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How much is climate change costing US households?
Studies of the economic impacts of climate change often look at long-term, national costs. A new BPEA study takes a different approach, focusing on the current…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How do tariffs hurt the dollar?
Roughly two thirds of countries on Earth stabilize their currency against the U.S. dollar. The relationship has benefits in both directions: Smaller countries…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Do American workers still move to find work?
Interstate migration has declined in the U.S. in recent decades, suggesting that workers are less likely to move in order to find employment. Such a trend…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Was the economic recovery from COVID-19 unique?
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck national economies like a hammer. As the disease spread, workers went home, businesses were empty, and economic…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What is driving up housing costs across the US?
Housing prices nationally are at an all-time high, including in many metro areas that were previously considered affordable alternatives to coastal markets…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How does the Federal Reserve affect the Treasury market?
At around $900 billion in transactions daily, the market for U.S. Treasuries is massive, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of importance to the…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Why does the US have a trade deficit?
The U.S. trade deficit has long been a source of political consternation, but it has come to the forefront in recent weeks. Just a few months into Donald…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How will the Federal Reserve revise its monetary policy framework in 2025?
The Federal Reserve's "Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy"—commonly referred to as its monetary policy framework—is composed of guiding…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How will the clean energy transition affect wages?
The clean energy transition has quietly pushed ahead in recent decades, with solar and wind energy accounting for almost 15% of total U.S. energy production in…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How does Congress react to budget deficit projections?
Fiscal deficit projections are used by policymakers to understand the trajectory of U.S. debt. Between 1984 and 2003, Congress was responsive to these…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What is the value of dynamic scoring for legislators?
When Congress considers legislation, nonpartisan agencies provide estimates of the law's potential economic effects to policymakers, a process known as…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What role should sanctions play in foreign policy? The case of Russia.
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What is the efficient rate of unemployment?
The full-employment rate of unemployment may seem like a contradiction, but in fact, economists have long understood that some unemployment is necessary. In…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Did behavioral changes reduce COVID-19 deaths?
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What should regulators do about the risks to mid-sized banks?
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What global factors could make inflation less stable?
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What do Americans think about inflation?
Many indicators suggest that the U.S. economy is thriving, yet Americans continue to have a negative overall economic outlook. Stubbornly high inflation has…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Do US states have different recoveries from economic shocks?
In the mid-20th century, U.S. states experienced recessions very differently from one another, which resulted in many workers migrating between states in…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How did Jamaica halve its debt in 10 years?
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What do we miss in standard supply chain measures?
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How worried should we be about wage-price spirals?
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…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Is the post-pandemic surge in business dynamism here to stay?
Predictably, the rate of new business formations and business expansions at the beginning of the pandemic plummeted. But, in two waves, applications for new…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How have Fed interest rate hikes affected other national economies?
In an effort to quell post-pandemic inflation, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates eleven times since March 2022, with the federal funds rate…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How did Germany fare without Russian gas?
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was a heated debate in Germany about whether to embargo the import of Russian natural gas as a sanction against…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Why is life expectancy falling faster for adults without a BA?
In their latest research in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Anne Case and Angus Deaton show that life expectancy for adults without a BA has been on…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What's BPEA's role in shaping economic policy?
For over 50 years, the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity has published research on urgent public policy issues by some of the world's leading economists…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Why haven't workers returned to the labor force after COVID-19?
Labor force participation plummeted by more than 3 percentage points during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, representing a decline of…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What is the evidence for deglobalization?
It is widely understood that the global economy has become increasingly interconnected over the last century, with especially rapid globalization trends for 20…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How much will the climate provisions in the IRA cost, and what will they achieve?
The Inflation Reduction Act is the largest piece of climate legislation ever passed in the U.S. The bill's incentives will affect the entire energy sector…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How did credit market interventions affect macroeconomies during COVID-19?
In addition to large fiscal packages, governments around the world utilized credit market interventions to support their economies during the pandemic…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How did pandemic payments affect the US economy?
The COVID-19 Economic Impact Payments were not the first time the federal government has provided fiscal support to Americans during a crisis, but they did…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Will a strong dollar hurt emerging markets?
A strong U.S. dollar reflects economic and political strength for the United States. But a new study published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
How bad will the economy get before inflation gets better?
While President Biden has officially declared the COVID-19 pandemic "over," America now faces a new challenge in the form of an overheating economy and high…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
What does more remote work mean for workers and the economy?
In the first episode of the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity, Steve Davis of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and co-author of the new…
- Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Introducing the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is a new podcast that connects listeners to cutting edge economic policy research and the renowned economists who…