Sometimes as economists we need to analyse complex decisions to understand what the outcomes might be. On the more baffling end of the scale we have Saudi Arabia spending billions on football, golf and Formula 1 stars who are mostly a little past their prime to come and play in the largely unknown Saudi leagues. Is this simply sports-washing (a PR stunt) or is there something more clever going on? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 25, 2023•16 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Niger's coup has set a lot in motion. It's rich in uranium which has gotten France involved, and China's belt and road initiative was set to draw oil from Niger, which could help grow their desperately poor economy, and somehow Russia's Wagner group is involved. But with its suspended membership of ECOWAS, things are about to ge...
Oct 18, 2023•18 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Trade wars are costing the world trillions of dollars every year, but far less attention is paid to the movement and control of the movement of skills and labour. It is much easier than ever before to take an education and move to a country where workers can benefit personally, but at a certain cost to the country that trained t...
Oct 12, 2023•22 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Brunei is a welfare state, where the government basically pays for everything from national defence to schools, energy to heavily subsidised housing. But their oil reserves are running out and they aren't diversifying their export industry quickly enough to prepare for the day when they no longer have a free lunch. Learn more ab...
Oct 11, 2023•13 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. We wanted to highlight the paradox of global economic growth alongside isolated national crises. Why do certain economies like Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan face collapse when the global economy is reaching unprecedented highs? We'll identify common factors behind these failures, and discuss potential solutions to safeguard o...
Oct 06, 2023•16 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Economists can't seem to decide if we need more or fewer children? Does overpopulation drain Earth's resources too much or does an ageing population threaten economies? What challenges does either option present and can we solve this paradox? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 04, 2023•15 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. AI raises concerns for jobs and society. As machines surpass human abilities, a growing number of complex jobs are being outsourced to machine who can do better work for a lower cost. This prompts questions about how economic systems can adapt to most people having a net negative economic value." Learn more about your ad choices...
Oct 02, 2023•13 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. What has prevented Iran, teeming with natural resources and a young, educated population, from becoming a world-leading economy? How did it go from rapid growth to economic failure, and why is it still unable to fulfil it's potential? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 29, 2023•16 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. BRICS, an influential economic alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is reshaping the global economy. Plans for increased trade and a common currency may challenge the West, leading to concerns about political and economic shifts globally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 27, 2023•16 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Singapore, once a poor nation, rose to the 33rd largest economy in 50 years, inspiring other countries globally. Yet, its unique journey, often misunderstood to be solely based on glamorous industries, is not easy to replicate, and many economists forget the draconian measures it took to build Singapore into the wealthy country ...
Sep 25, 2023•14 min
Michael Burry, the investor made famous when he shorted the US housing market before the crash of 2008, has recently bet against the US Bond market. Why would he do that and what relationship between the economy and the stock market made him think this would work? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 19, 2023•16 min
With billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos setting their sights on space exploration and development, there must be some commercially viable industries in space and on Mars, right? Well, it's a little more complicated than just mining the asteroids that contain trillions of dollars of value, or building heavy things in micro-gravity, and certainly a base on Mars might cost more than it's worth. Making Mars a viable economy might not even be possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
Sep 13, 2023•19 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Is $2.2 trillion per year wasted on the military, or is this massive spending necessary to defend the freedoms we enjoy? In this video we explain why military spending may be a necessary evil using the prisoner's dilemma and reframing some narratives about military spending you may have heard. Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...
Sep 08, 2023•14 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. It might sound absurd, but some economists are talking about the possibility of the US defaulting on its debts, closing off to global trade and using its own domestic industries and energy production to save its economy, which currently is tipping further and further into unsustainable national debt (Fitch just downgraded the US cre...
Sep 07, 2023•15 min
LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/ee. Terms and conditions apply. Unfortunately for theoretical economists, we are not allowed to run economics experiments on the whole of society to see definitively whether or not certain economic policies or systems work in practice. Millions of lives hang in the balance, so this is an ethical non-starter. But we can study countries that have experimented with s...
Sep 05, 2023•19 min
California, the US's third largest state, ranks as the world's 4th or 5th economy all by itself. With an output over $3.5 trillion, Californians are among the globe's top producers. But despite its growth, the state faces challenges: global pressures, population decline, and social problems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 01, 2023•19 min
Global inequality is one of the biggest economic issues facing the world today. Global wealth is now thousands of times what it has been for the vast majority of human history, and yet a lot of that wealth is being hoarded by a smaller and smaller group of people. We were lucky enough to speak to Francisco Ferreira from the London School of Economics, an expert on global inequality and its impacts on developing countries, which have the potential to be the economic powerhouses of the future. Lea...
Aug 10, 2023•59 min
Indonesia's economy has been growing rapidly, and thanks to a younger population it could be on track to become one of the biggest economies in the world. There are a few things holding Indonesia back, such as Jakarta sinking into the ocean, but with their natural resource wealth and access to the world's oceans, it could become a huge player in making the goods we all use every day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 08, 2023•17 min
Despite Mexico's strategic advantages and booming manufacturing sector due to global trade shifts, they haven't taken opportunities to replace China as a major manufacturer for the US. What factors stifle Mexico's growth and are there drawbacks to its proximity to the US? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 02, 2023•18 min
When people think of Taiwan, they mostly think of tensions with China and the fact that Taiwan is a major manufacturing centre for the world's semiconductors. But Taiwan's leaders actually made some big bets decades ago that are paying off now, with a GDP per capita roughly 3 times that of mainland China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 26, 2023•15 min
The global wealth disparity has been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic, and there is a concentration of wealth among the top 1.2% of people. We explore factors causing inequality, the role of debt, and finding an optimal level of inequality (because you do need some). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 20, 2023•15 min
Global debt has now topped $300 trillion USD, or three times total global economic output. This is a number that is going to have very real consequences for billions of people around the world, but as scary as the number sounds there is still reason to be optimistic and there are still reasons why most economists handling this issue are not too worried just yet. To help us understand this issue in the course of our research we were lucky enough to speak to Dr. Jason Furman an economics professor...
Jul 14, 2023•40 min
Is the global debt of over $300 trillion really a problem? And does debt for the global economy work in a different way from debt on an individual level? In this video we'll explain who holds all the debt that countries and businesses owe, and whether this will be a big problem in the near future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 09, 2023•18 min
This is a fantastic interview with Prof. Billari (Bocconi University) about education. A better educated economy is usually better, all things being equal, but issues like student debt, skills misalignment, migration and brain drain can put a lot of pressure on an economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 04, 2023•45 min
Education is rightly seen as one of the best ways to develop a country’s economy, as more productive workers can create better living standards for everyone. But is there a limit to the benefits of education and should countries be wary of this double-edged sword? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 02, 2023•17 min
The US has had a much greater level of growth than the EU in the past decade despite the pandemic and Europe having a large collection of advanced economies with highly educated populations. Why is Europe always lagging behind? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 27, 2023•17 min
Tuvalu is a tiny island nation confronting existential threats. Rising sea levels jeopardize its sparse population and limited economy. As the nation becomes inhabitable, this video will explore what the economy of Tuvalu is reliant upon, and the measures to save it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 20, 2023•13 min
North Korea, the most closed-off country on earth. This Asian nation is often the center of intense scrutiny for its aggressive displays of militarism, its internationally condemned nuclear program, and of course its oppressive government dictatorship. A 2014 report by the united nations concluded that the gravity, scale, and nature of these human rights violations does not have any parallel In the contemporary world. What they are ashamed of though, is something that all these media spectacles ...
Jun 15, 2023•14 min
Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) companies are big businesses around the world and they have rightfully attracted much criticism for questionable business practice. Many have called them illegal pyramid schemes, but today these companies continue to operate in most developed countries around the world and rake in billions of dollars in profit in any given year all with the blessing of local trade authorities. So, what are these businesses? Let's park personal opinions on how annoying it is to be rope...
Jun 07, 2023•14 min
Japan became the first of the modern Asian countries to experience massive sustained economic growth. Japan had a lot going for it after the end of the war, it was able to rebuild with the help of the allies and go through its own modern industrial revolution. In the 1960s, Japan was growing at a rate of 10% a year which for a national economy was unheard of at the time, this economic growth continued and japan was able to ride the wave of globalization as the world's low-cost manufacturer. Japa...
May 31, 2023•13 min
