Democrats are closing their eyes and throwing the dice. Congress is passing President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill with shockingly little information about whether the US economy can safely absorb it. The Federal Reserve isn’t helping. Its signals to markets, businesses and households have been surprisingly blasé about the possibility of the economy overheating and inflation accelerating. Predictions ...

The American Petroleum Institute is debating whether to support a price on carbon. It’s not every day that a top lobbying group contemplates taxing itself. That’s big news, and it’s tempting to call it a win for the climate. Not so fast. While API’s expected endorsement is indeed a sign of the times, it’s not a good one. For one, ...

Sometimes economists are just flat-out wrong. According to economic theory, annuities and reverse mortgages should be very popular for managing risk and liquidity — yet both products struggle for mainstream acceptance. Another favorite of economists is prediction markets: contracts with payoffs contingent on some real-world event. Their future is also highly uncertain. In essence, prediction markets let people “bet” on ...