The Clark Center for Global Markets explores economists’ views on vital policy issues via our US and European Economic Experts Panels. We regularly poll over 80 economists on a range of timely and relevant topics. Panelists not only have the opportunity to respond to a poll’s statements, but an opportunity to comment and provide additional resources, if they wish. The Clark Center then shares the results with the public in a straightforward and concise format.
Please note that from September 2022, the language in our polls will use just two modifiers to refer to the size of an effect:
‘Substantial’: when an effect is large enough that it would make a difference that matters for the behavior involved.
‘Measurable’: when the direction of the effect is clear, but perhaps experts would differ as to whether it is substantial.
Employers that discriminate in hiring will be at a competitive disadvantage, if their customers do not care about their mix of employees, compared with firms that do not discriminate.
Rising market wages are an important reason — over and above any changes in medical technology, social norms or preferences — why family sizes have fallen over the past century in rich countries.
Considering both distributional effects and changes in efficiency, it is a good idea to let companies that send video or other content to consumers pay more to Internet service providers for the right to send that traffic using faster or higher quality service.
The recent oversubscribed debt issues of Greece and Portugal suggest that sovereign default by any euro area country is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
If the NCAA let colleges pay athletes with more than scholarships (which currently may cover tuition, books, room and board), then top colleges in men’s basketball and football would pay most athletes substantial sums beyond full scholarships.
This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:
A: Advancing automation has not historically reduced employment in the United States.
B: Information technology and automation are a central reason why median wages have been stagnant in the US over the past decade, despite rising productivity.
Future innovations worldwide will not be transformational enough to promote sustained per-capita economic growth rates in the U.S. and western Europe over the next century as high as those over the past 150 years.
Informed postmortems of Ben Bernanke’s Fed chairmanship will judge favorably the Fed's creative and aggressive policy initiatives from autumn 2008 through early 2009.
