Free exchange
Our economics column offers rigorous analysis, insights into global trends and policy debates
Finance & economics
Despite the pause, America’s tariffs are the worst ever trade shock
Reed Smoot, eat your heart out
Finance & economics
What a refugee camp reveals about economics
In Dzaleka, Malawi, everyone receives $9 a month
Finance & economics
America’s Democrats should embrace “abundance liberalism”
Two new books contain much to commend them
Finance & economics
Why “labour shortages” don’t really exist
Use the term, and you are almost always a bad economist or a special pleader
Finance & economics
It is not the economic impact of tariffs that is most worrying
What are the lessons of the 1930s?
Finance & economics
India has undermined a popular myth about development
Extreme poverty in the country has dropped to negligible levels
Finance & economics
Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are absurd
At first glance, they are a bureaucratic nightmare. On a closer look, they are even worse
Finance & economics
The danger of relying on OpenAI’s Deep Research
Economists are in raptures, but they should be careful
Finance & economics
Don’t propose with a diamond
Lab-grown gems may destroy both their own value and that of natural rocks, too
Finance & economics
Tech tycoons have got the economics of AI wrong
Following DeepSeek’s breakthrough, the Jevons paradox provides less comfort than they imagine