US Economic Experts Panel

 

 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

A substantial source of the value of decentralized private cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, arises from their convenience for use in illegal activities. 

The recent World Cup success of the US women’s national soccer team was swiftly followed by calls for equal pay, and a reminder of the gender discrimination lawsuit that has been filed by the players against the sport’s national governing body, US Soccer. We invited our US panel to express their views on the economics behind this controversy.

 

In May, the US Treasury published a report to Congress on the macroeconomic and foreign exchange policies of major trading partners of the United States. As Stanford economist and former Chicago Booth professor John Cochrane noted on his blog, this made clear reference to the possibility of currency manipulation:

 

How should economics be introduced to undergraduate students? Since the crisis and the Great Recession began more then a decade ago, many young people have complained that what is taught in intro courses seems to bear no relation to the pressing issues that they hoped the subject would help them to understand – poverty, inequality, globalization, environmental sustainability, financial instability, robots and the digital economy.

 

Over the course of 2018, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on approximately $283 billion of US imports, with rates ranging between 10% and 50%. In response, US trading partners, especially China, retaliated with tariffs averaging 16% on approximately $121 billion of US exports.

 

Recent nominations to join the board of governors of the Federal Reserve have raised concerns about political threats to the independence of monetary policy-making. The Economist has explained the dangers of weakened central banks, not only in the United States but also elsewhere in the world. And economists and economic journalists have questioned the economic ideas of President Trump’s latest Fed picks, both of whom have now withdrawn their names.

 

The recent scandal of rich and famous people buying places for their children at elite colleges has led to a renewed public conversation about the system of legacy preference in admissions at many top US universities. We invited our US panel to express their views on the likely effects of legacies on potentially high-achieving applicants from less advantaged backgrounds and on wider society.

 

In January this year, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled a proposal to tax the wealth of the richest 0.1% of Americans. The proposed legislation to tax households with a net worth of $50 million or more draws on analysis by one of our US panel of economic experts – Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley – showing that the richest 0.1% has seen its share of American wealth more than triple from 7% to 22% since the late 1970s. Saez and colleagues have also made calculations of the potential impact of Senator Warren’s proposed tax.