Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
Episodes
Has the CHIPS Act created jobs?
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 h...
Is the neutral rate of interest going to start climbing after years of decline?
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monetary and fiscal policymakers use a variety of metrics to inform their decisions, but among the most important is the neutral rate of interest, als...
What jobs will be most affected by AI?
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout history, human work has been augmented by technology. But the emergence of artificial intelligence tools have led many to ask whether an un...
Are fertility rates falling because of social comparisons?
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fertility rates are falling in many countries around the world, with births failing to keep pace with deaths in nearly half of countries. Researchers ...
How much is climate change costing US households?
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
How do tariffs hurt the dollar?
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Roughly two thirds of countries on Earth stabilize their currency against the U.S. dollar. The relationship has benefits in both directions: Smaller c...
Do American workers still move to find work?
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Was the economic recovery from COVID-19 unique?
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck national economies like a hammer. As the disease spread, workers went home, businesses were empty, and eco...
What is driving up housing costs across the US?
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Housing prices nationally are at an all-time high, including in many metro areas that were previously considered affordable alternatives to coastal ma...
How does the Federal Reserve affect the Treasury market?
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Why does the US have a trade deficit?
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 Don...
How will the Federal Reserve revise its monetary policy framework in 2025?
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Reserve's "Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy"—commonly referred to as its monetary policy framework—is compos...
How will the clean energy transition affect wages?
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 prod...
How does Congress react to budget deficit projections?
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fiscal deficit projections are used by policymakers to understand the trajectory of U.S. debt. Between 1984 and 2003, Congress was responsive to these...
What is the value of dynamic scoring for legislators?
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Congress considers legislation, nonpartisan agencies provide estimates of the law's potential economic effects to policymakers, a process known a...
What role should sanctions play in foreign policy? The case of Russia.
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 effi...
What is the efficient rate of unemployment?
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The full-employment rate of unemployment may seem like a contradiction, but in fact, economists have long understood that some unemployment is necessa...
Did behavioral changes reduce COVID-19 deaths?
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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, ...
What should regulators do about the risks to mid-sized banks?
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
What global factors could make inflation less stable?
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 Re...
What do Americans think about inflation?
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many indicators suggest that the U.S. economy is thriving, yet Americans continue to have a negative overall economic outlook. Stubbornly high inflati...
Do US states have different recoveries from economic shocks?
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-20th century, U.S. states experienced recessions very differently from one another, which resulted in many workers migrating between states...
How did Jamaica halve its debt in 10 years?
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many countries have faced harrowing debt burdens, and reducing the national debt is usually a lasting challenge. But in just five years, the Jamaica r...
What do we miss in standard supply chain measures?
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on supply chains, with shortages in everything from baby formula to microchips. This spurred an on-going polic...
How worried should we be about wage-price spirals?
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Economists have long debated the potential for rising wages and prices to push each other increasingly higher, driving inflation out of control—the ...
Is the post-pandemic surge in business dynamism here to stay?
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Predictably, the rate of new business formations and business expansions at the beginning of the pandemic plummeted. But, in two waves, applications f...
How have Fed interest rate hikes affected other national economies?
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In an effort to quell post-pandemic inflation, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates eleven times since March 2022, with the federal fu...
How did Germany fare without Russian gas?
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
Why is life expectancy falling faster for adults without a BA?
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ha...
What's BPEA's role in shaping economic policy?
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 econ...
Why haven't workers returned to the labor force after COVID-19?
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Labor force participation plummeted by more than 3 percentage points during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, representing a decl...
What is the evidence for deglobalization?
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It is widely understood that the global economy has become increasingly interconnected over the last century, with especially rapid globalization tren...
How much will the climate provisions in the IRA cost, and what will they achieve?
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 se...
How did credit market interventions affect macroeconomies during COVID-19?
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In addition to large fiscal packages, governments around the world utilized credit market interventions to support their economies during the pandemic...
How did pandemic payments affect the US economy?
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 Economic Impact Payments were not the first time the federal government has provided fiscal support to Americans during a crisis, but the...
Will a strong dollar hurt emerging markets?
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 Act...
How bad will the economy get before inflation gets better?
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While President Biden has officially declared the COVID-19 pandemic "over," America now faces a new challenge in the form of an overheating economy an...
What does more remote work mean for workers and the economy?
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
Introducing the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity is a new podcast that connects listeners to cutting edge economic policy research and the renowned economis...