“Why did the market go up today?” “There must have been more buyers than sellers.” That piece of circular logic is a sort of laconic joke among traders, equivalent to saying: “I have no idea.” Naturally, prices will only rise if the enthusiasm of buyers outweighs the fear of sellers. At the same time, it captures a worthwhile nugget of ...

By now, most people who read about economics have heard about the empirical revolution in the field. An economist used to be someone who spun theories out of reasonable-sounding assumptions to tell stories about why the world works the way it does. Nowadays, economists still have to understand theory, but their day-to-day work involves combing through data and crunching statistics. ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. has been debating proposals from Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag’s subordinates to rapidly build out a European trading hub in Paris, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Montag and some of the firm’s most senior leaders recently discussed whether to alter a tentative plan to send a few hundred employees to the French ...