Mass immigration is demographically essential but politically impossible – so argues Lant Pritchett, development economist and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. As populations age in the rich developed countries, immigrant workers will be needed to help with the burden of providing for the elderly. Removing the barriers might also be the quickest way to raise living standards for people in the developing world. But doing so would require swimming against a rising ti...
Dec 17, 2024•30 min
The US has just overcome one abrupt spike in inflation, which may have cost Kamala Harris her bid for the presidency. But now President-elect Donald Trump’s policy agenda threatens to cause another one. That’s according to Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary and President Emeritus of Harvard University. He speaks to the FT’s Martin Wolf – who is standing in for Soumaya Keynes while she is on maternity leave – about the risks to economic stability posed by Trump’s proposed tax cuts, t...
Dec 10, 2024•32 min
It’s a treacherous time for the Eurozone. Inflation is falling, yes, but at the same time signs of real economic weakness are growing. And there are risks on the horizon, from rising debt to trade wars to real wars. It’s a perfect time to speak to our guest Philip Lane, chief economist of the ECB and a member of its executive board. And this week we have a co-host as well, Frankfurt bureau chief and ECB correspondent Olaf Storbeck. For Philip Lane’s recent speech on monetary policy uncertainty, ...
Dec 02, 2024•27 min
The UK is lagging behind its peers in the Eurozone. Its per capita GDP trails that of France and Germany, and yet its housing and energy is scarcer and more expensive. A recent essay by Sam Bowman, co-authored with Ben Southwood and Samuel Hughes, argues that Britain has struggled over the past 15 years because it has “banned the investment in housing, transport and energy that it most vitally needs.” Sam Bowman is a founding editor of Works in Progress, has served as director of competition pol...
Nov 28, 2024•37 min
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are having heated conversations about whether or not governments can be made more efficient. The results include two new agencies, Elon Musk’s ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency, and Labour’s Office for Value for Money. But when it comes to improving public services, the challenges are neither new, nor easy to navigate. This week, we are asking how to make the government more efficient. And we’re asking the UK’s former chancellor of the exchequer...
Nov 25, 2024•35 min
Trump is returning to office with many of the same policies that characterised his last term. And for economists, none looms larger than the prospect of significant new tariffs. But are tariffs really as destructive as feared? After all, the Biden administration maintained most of them and the economy has remained strong. Today on the show, we put the question to Kimberly Clausing, a professor at UCLA, and formerly lead economist in the Biden administration's Office for Tax Policy. Soumaya Keyne...
Nov 18, 2024•33 min
Michael Clemens of George Mason University is an expert on the economics of migration, and a scholar of its history. With the newly elected President Trump promising to deport millions of immigrants, we thought it was the perfect time to talk about what illegal immigrants mean to the present economy and, more pressingly, what an economy without them might look like. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on A...
Nov 11, 2024•31 min
In 2025, some major provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are going to expire. Meanwhile, spending is likely to rise. That means there is going to be a conversation about tax policy. Natasha Sarin was a counselor to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen at the US Treasury, and is now a professor at Yale and president of the Budget Lab, a research centre analysing US policy. And one thing she has been studying is the tax position of many of the ultra-wealthy. Much of their wealth is in stocks, which ...
Nov 04, 2024•29 min
Intuitively, research and development is a building block of a productive future. But exactly how important is it, and can we put a number on it? Heidi Williams is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, and an expert on innovation policy. She is also a visiting fellow at the Congressional Budget Office. Today on the show, she joins Soumaya Keynes to discuss public and private funding for R&D, how the two sources interact, and what we can know about how much it’s all worth to the econ...
Oct 28, 2024•24 min
With the US election in a matter of weeks, today Soumaya Keynes is joined by the FT’s Washington bureau chief, James Politi. They discuss the Kamala Harris platform – from industrial policy to tax reform to housing – and what it might all cost. They also talk about how Kamala Harris might differ from Joe Biden, and which staff members might stay and which might go. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Ap...
Oct 21, 2024•31 min
The effective altruism movement has been on a wild ride over the past decade. EA started – in the popular consciousness, at least – as a forum for mindful questions about where best to put charitable dollars. Think bed nets and de-worming pills. But, since then, EA seems to have devolved into rationalisations for making tons of money, freak-outs about AI and the end of humanity. Today, on the show, Soumaya and guest Martin Sandbu, the FT economics editorial writer, discuss EA’s evolution, its fu...
Oct 14, 2024•31 min
Race and gender have dominated headlines about economic outcomes in the past decades, but class … not so much. Class is often invisible, hard to describe and awkward to talk about. Anna Stansbury, an assistant professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, sought to shed light on class in the US in a recent paper, co-written with Kyra Rodriguez. They found that independently of race or gender, people’s family circumstances can hold them back. And that is even after they have done enough work to ...
Oct 07, 2024•33 min
Jamaica’s economy struggled for decades, and at one point it had amassed debts worth more than 140 per cent of GDP. Even the IMF wouldn’t return its calls. But somehow, in the 2010s, it managed to halve its government debt – over just seven years. Today on the show, we ask how they did it, and what lessons Jamaica can teach much larger economies. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple , Spotify , Pocket Ca...
Sep 30, 2024•28 min
This campaign, candidate Donald Trump is promising even more extreme versions of the policies that marked his first term. But what would higher, and more widespread, tariffs actually look like? And in what form would any retaliation come? Today on the show, Soumaya and the FT’s senior trade writer Alan Beattie discuss the candidate’s campaign promises on trade, and where they might lead. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's...
Sep 23, 2024•31 min
Jared Bernstein is the chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. Today on the show, Soumaya gets to put him in the hot seat. She grills him about everything from price caps to inflation to the recent jobs numbers. They even get into the mysterious problem of the vibes. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple , Spotify , Pocket Casts or wherever you listen. Read a transcript of this episode on...
Sep 16, 2024•27 min
When presidential candidate Kamala Harris proposed legislation to ban price gouging, we naturally thought to interview Isabella Weber, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Weber’s paper on the subject lit up economic discussion in the wake of gas and food market disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Weber calls for governments to examine capping prices on certain staples, and amassing supplies to even out pricing. But is this prudent oversight of th...
Sep 09, 2024•33 min
Daron Acemoğlu is an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity . Today on the show, he and Soumaya discuss artificial intelligence and productivity growth, querying how and why AI will change the trajectory of the world economy, and how the workers and the middle class will be affected along the way. It’s a wide-ranging conversation about the past and the future of technology, a...
Sep 02, 2024•31 min
Computer chips power toys and control nuclear reactors. They are in phones, cars and planes, getting us to work and keeping us safe. And they are at the centre of a growing tech war between the US and China, with many other players. Governments around the world are throwing money at industry and erecting barriers to trade, trying desperately to onshore a multitrillion-dollar global industry. This week Soumaya discusses the geopolitics of chips with Chris Miller, associate professor at Tufts Univ...
Aug 26, 2024•34 min
How much would it take for you to retire? The question is fun to think about, but also central to a serious conversation happening in economics about the cost and wisdom of a universal basic income. Today on the show, Soumaya is joined by FT editor and columnist Pilita Clark to discuss basic income, and an interview Soumaya did with Mouhcine Guettabi, who studied how Alaska’s payments to its citizens changed how much they worked and when. To take part in the audience survey and be in with the ch...
Aug 19, 2024•32 min
Recent events, including a weak US jobs report, a pullback in Japan, and volatility in US markets have made life trickier for central bankers around the world. In the UK, moderating inflation led the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee to cut rates on August 1. The vote was 5-4, with member Catherine Mann voting to hold. Today on the show, Soumaya Keynes and Mann discuss the case for holding steady in a time of volatility and falling inflation. To take part in the audience survey a...
Aug 12, 2024•31 min
A recently released research paper calls into question many of the assumptions about the rate at which income inequality has grown in the US over the past 75 years. Today on the show, Soumaya and the FT’s economics commentator, Chris Giles, discuss this bombshell report, and what it means for economists thinking about wealth and income in the US. To take part in the audience survey and be in with the chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones, click here . Click here to fin...
Aug 05, 2024•32 min
The GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, closed during the financial crisis in 2008, ending decades of production – and 3,000 steady, highly paid jobs. Journalist Amy Goldstein wrote about the town as the plant’s workers hurried to make new lives. Her book, ‘Janesville: An American Story’, won the Financial Times and McKinsey Book of the Year in 2017. This summer, Goldstein returned to town for the FT, and now joins Soumaya Keynes to talk about what Janesville lost and what it has gained in the ye...
Jul 29, 2024•30 min
NOTE: This podcast was recorded before Joe Biden announced he was stepping down from the US presidential race Both the Republicans and Democrats are talking tough on economic competition with China. But is this wise? Today on the show, Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, discusses why a hard line on China might not be the best line. To take part in the audience survey and be in with the chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphone...
Jul 22, 2024•36 min
Hyun Song Shin is the economic adviser and head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, the “bank for central banks,” based in Basel, Switzerland. Today on the show, they talk about the possibilities and final limits of monetary policy. It’s a wide-ranging discussion about the machinery of international finance, covering everything from how much credit central bankers should get for the recent fall in inflation, to what would happen if we returned to a low-rates world. To take par...
Jul 15, 2024•29 min
Sir Angus Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015. So when he says he is rethinking many of his assumptions about the field, it matters. Today on the show, Soumaya discusses what we are getting wrong about everything from inequality to immigration to the role of globalisation in the reduction of poverty. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple , Spotify , Pocket Casts or wherever you listen. Read a ...
Jul 08, 2024•34 min
For years, pollsters described elections as referendums on the economy. But recently, voters have started to change how they talk about the economy, and how they vote. Today on the show, data reporter John Burn-Murdoch joins Soumaya to discuss shifts in how voters are thinking, and what that means for democracy. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple , Spotify , Pocket Casts or wherever you listen. Read a ...
Jul 01, 2024•30 min
Our guest this week, Zoe Cullen, joins FT columnist Pilita Clark and Soumaya to discuss the benefits and hazards of revealing all about pay. Cullen is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who has been studying the economics of pay transparency for years. She finds that pay transparency doesn’t necessarily mean more money for everyone . . . but it can! It all depends on what kind of pay transparency you choose. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can...
Jun 24, 2024•27 min
Olivier Blanchard is the former chief economist of the IMF and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. He collaborated with former Fed chair Ben Bernanke to study the responses of 10 central banks to the recent bout of inflation, what we know about its causes, and whether finally getting it back to 2% will require a hard landing. In a wide-ranging chat with Soumaya, he also discusses areas where he has changed his mind, as well as the recent tilt...
Jun 17, 2024•30 min
Today on the show, the FT’s chief economics commentator joins host Soumaya Keynes to discuss why the US is racing ahead of Europe and whether the trend could reverse. They also discuss the outlook for interest rates, China’s future, AI and productivity. Plus, Martin shares his most controversial opinion. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it here Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple , Spotify , Pocket Casts or wherever you listen. Read a transcri...
Jun 10, 2024•26 min
Today on the show Soumaya Keynes talks about macroeconomic mistakes and the interest rate outlook with Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. FT economics commentator Chris Giles joins them to discuss what the Fed got right and wrong about inflation, and Neel’s journey from dove to hawk. Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple , Spotify , Pocket Casts or wherever you listen. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Fi...
Jun 03, 2024•26 min
