Recent Posts

Why TikTok should worry economists

TikTok is now the most popular website in the world, by one measure, and as such its influence on how young people see and think about themselves is attracting ever more attention. I am an economist, so I would like to focus on a considerably more narrow subject: what TikTok’s videos say about how young people see and think about ...

Read More »

Unilever should know that purpose isn’t strategy

  Pugnacious Terry Smith is throwing punches again. The Mauritius-based fund manager has lambasted consumer-goods giant Unilever Plc for its public posturing. It’s not just that autonomous subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s is to stop selling ice-cream in Jewish West Bank settlements and areas of east Jerusalem. “More ludicrous,” Smith says, is the company’s attempt to define the purpose of Hellmann’s ...

Read More »

As inflation soars, the Fed needs to keep its head

So much for transitory. US prices rose by 7% in 2021, the highest gain for nearly 40 years. Remember: The Federal Reserve’s target for inflation is 2%, a fact that gets less attention than it used to, back when “hawks” and “doves” were measuring deviations in tenths of a percentage point. It’s an enormous overshoot, and some of it is ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend