EconoFact Chats

Do admissions committees of the most selective colleges consider family income along with applicants’ academic accomplishments, athletic achievements, legacy status, and extra-curricular activities? Given the outsized benefits of attending an “Ivy-plus” college (the eight Ivy league colleges plus Chicago, Duke, Stanford, and MIT), understanding whether children from highest-income families enjoy higher rates of admission compared to middle-class applicants with similar credentials is critical for understanding ongoing privilege and for considering policies to broaden opportunity and promote social advancement. David Deming joins EconoFact Chats to discuss his findings on these issues, drawing on his latest paper 'Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges,’ co-authored with Raj Chetty and John Friedman. David is the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Economists tend to think of technological change as a good thing. But, as Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson highlight in their new book 'Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity,' the path technological development takes has, for millennia, been linked with political power and to prevailing ideas of how to attain progress. And often the political and social milieu served to concentrate the gains from technological change to a privileged few. Simon Johnson joins EconoFact Chats to discuss his new book, highlighting what the driving vision for technological progress has been over various periods of development, the broader social impact of inventions that come about, and whether technological progress can be made more responsive to broader societal needs. Simon is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He served as Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund in 2007-08.

Founded with the mandate of overseeing a stable international currency system in the Bretton Woods era, over the last decades, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has seen its role shift to coordinating debt relief. Often, such debt relief has been contingent on spending cuts, and other measures that put a stressed country's balance sheet on more stable footing. IMF conditionality is viewed by some as necessary medicine, and by others, as punitive. But how did the IMF come to be the arbitrator of crisis countries' policies? How does the IMF operate? And has it been capable of self-analysis, and when necessary, change its approach? Charles Collyns joins EconoFact Chats to discuss these issues. A Senior Advisor at EconoFact, Charles previously served as the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund, and before that, as Chief Economist at the Institute of International Finance. He was the Assistant Secretary for International Finance at the US Treasury Department from 2010 to 2013.

While much of the recent debate about the U.S. debt ceiling centered on spending cuts, debt and deficits can also be addressed through raising revenue. One source of government revenue is taxes on corporations. What are the arguments for raising the corporate tax rate? What would be the effects of higher corporate taxes? A substantial increase in revenues? A fairer tax system? Reduced entrepreneurship? Greater offshoring? Lower wages? And which companies would be affected by higher taxes? Kimberly Clausing joins EconoFact Chats to discuss these issues. Kim is the Eric M. Zolt Professor of Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a fictional portrayal of the KKK's founding, is America's first blockbuster. It's also a film laden with racist overtones, and, as Desmond Ang of Harvard University highlights in a recent American Economic Review article, a film that has had marked effects on racially-motivated violence. Desmond joins EconoFact to discuss how the relative novelty of cinema at the turn of the 20th century, and the limited number of counties that had the wherewithal to show films, make it possible to identify how screenings of The Birth of a Nation increased the frequency of racial violence, and support for the KKK. He also highlights how news, and entertainment media today might be polarizing audiences. Desmond is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

The recent U.S. debt-ceiling negotiations included demands for cutting funding for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. How much would cuts to these and other social safety net programs reduce government spending by? And at what cost to its beneficiaries, that comprised about 3 in 10 people, including nearly half of all U.S. children, in 2019? Melissa Kearney joins EconoFact Chats to discuss these and other issues concerning the U.S. social safety net. Melissa is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. She is also the director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group.

EconoFact Chats regularly hosts a panel interview with the distinguished economic journalists Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times, Scott Horsley of NPR, Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal, and Heather Long of The Washington Post. In this latest installment, the panel has a wide-ranging discussion, including on the topics of: the fight over the debt limit, its resolution, and the possible consequences of this political fight (Moody’s notes that the United States has one of the least affordable debt burdens among advanced economies); the debate the over sources of current inflation, policies to bring it down, and whether the Federal Reserve should continue to have 2 percent as its preferred inflation target rate; and the Administration’s arguments for, and possible limits to, reshaping the American economy through policies like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.

These are challenging times for central bankers, not only in the United States but worldwide. Inflation in the twenty countries in the Eurozone was 6.9 percent in March 2023, almost two percentage points higher than in the United States. The European Central Bank (ECB) is responding to inflation in a similar fashion to the Federal Reserve, by raising interest rates. But there are concerns that these policy moves could cause a recession and threaten banks and financial institutions. Higher interest rates also make government debt more expensive to service, at a time when debt is already high in the wake of COVID. A person uniquely well qualified to discuss central bank policy in the Eurozone is Philip Lane, Chief Economist of the European Central Bank and a member of its executive board. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the ECB, he joins EconoFact Chats to discuss the current challenges affecting the Euro Area, as well as the ECB's policies.

This spring, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed and First Republic Bank failed and was sold to J.P. Morgan Chase. The $532 billion in assets of these banks exceeded the inflation adjusted value of assets of the 25 banks that failed in 2008. Why did these banks fail? Are they the first three failures in what could be a string of bank collapses? Or did the action of regulators stem the crisis? What policies are needed to make banks more resilient? EconoFact Chats welcomes back Jeremy Stein to discuss these issues. Jeremy is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 2012 to 2014, and served as a senior advisor to the Treasury Secretary and on the staff of the National Economic Council during the global financial crisis.

The U.S. government could default on its debt obligations by June 1st if Congress doesn't raise or suspend the debt ceiling. This would have far-reaching consequences in the United States and around the world. Why does the U.S. even have a debt limit when virtually no other country does? How often has the debt ceiling been raised in the past? What are the options to avoid default if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling? And what would be the likely consequences of a default? To address these questions, EconoFact Chats welcomes back Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution. Bill is widely recognized as one of the country's top experts on public finance. He is the author of ‘Fiscal Therapy: Curing Americans' Debt Addiction and Investing in the Future.’