War in Europe, again. Ukraine’s President Zelensky showed himself in the streets of Kyiv with his troops, facing death. That’s a commander in chief. …

The enthusiasm with which a year ago we jettisoned 2020 and welcomed 2021 looks pretty silly in retrospect, doesn’t it? Let’s keep that in mind as we get ready to celebrate the new year. I am not feeling very optimistic, and when I look at my friends and family or…

In parts I and II of this blog I’ve reviewed Steven Koonin’s criticism of the climate change debate, setting it against the opposing views of Adam Sobel, another prominent climate scientist. My conclusion is that There is a large degree of uncertainty in climate science and forecasts — and even…

Part I of this blog summarized Steven Koonin’s criticism of the climate debate: he argues that key scientific findings are quite different from the climate reports headlines — for example, that there is almost no evidence that climate change is causing extreme weather events to occur with greater frequency. Now…

This started as a book review, but turned into a three-part blog on climate change: What we know and don’t know, why action falls so much short of the apocalyptic rhetoric, and why we need a more honest debate on the uncertainty, risks, costs and benefits. If you confess to…

An obsessive focus on the demand side of the economy has dominated the years following the 2009 global recession. Most economists embraced the Secular Stagnation hypothesis, which argued that structural forces had caused a permanent shortfall in demand. We agonized over “r-star”, the equilibrium real rate of interest, worrying it…

Ok, I’m cheating a bit because it’s a two-panel chart, but it’s the juxtaposition that makes it striking. This will be a short blog. I have no answers, but would love to know what you think. In the gym the other day I saw a Bloomberg headline saying something like…

Whatever happened to Sweden? I thought maybe you’d be curious too. For a long time, Sweden was the media’s favorite Covid villain. Time called Sweden’s approach to Covid “a disaster”; the Washington Post said “it flopped”; the Guardian proclaimed last January that “it failed”; the New York Times called Sweden…

We have gotten stuck in a Catch-22. After a rapid initial rise, the share of the US population fully vaccinated against Covid-19 has stalled around 50% over the past two months (the chart below is in logs).