Nick Bunker is a Policy Analyst with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He is the lead contributor to Value Added, Equitable Growth’s daily column on economics research and the economic news of the day. His writing has been cited by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and other publications. Prior to joining Equitable Growth, he was a Research Assistant with the economic policy team at the Center for American Progress. Nick graduated from Georgetown University in 2010 with a degree in International Economics.
One of the leading criticisms of economics is the field’s reliance on perfectly rational agents in many of its models. Read the assumptions behind a macroeconomic model and the rules unde...
Why do Americans who’ve been out of work for a long time have such a hard time finding jobs? The answer is very important because long-term unemployment (longer than 26 weeks) as a share ...
The intersection of income inequality and education is one of the more troubling features of the U.S. economy. Research by Stanford University economist Sean Reardon shows a rising educat...
Late last week the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest data from the Employment Cost Index, providing policymakers with new insight into shifts in the U.S. labor market si...
I asked before, “If someone handed you $10 right now, what would you do with it? Would you decide to spend it right away? Or would you stash it away? Or some combination of the two?” How ...
In macroeconomics, there’s a tendency for economists to separate the short-term and the long term. For instance, recessions don’t (or rather, shouldn’t) affect the long-term growth rate o...
Jason Furman, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers gave a speech last week on the “opportunities and challenges” presented by artificial intelligence. The potential ch...
The U.S. economy could use more innovation these days. Despite the proliferation of apps and concerns about a robot takeover of the labor market, U.S. productivity growth just isn’t very ...
One of the most discussed problems in the U.S. labor market in recent years is the decline in the labor force participation rate, or the share of the population that’s employed or activel...
In a recent poll of prominent economists, the IGM Forum at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business asked about the effects of unconventional U.S. monetary policy on the level o...
Knut Wicksell is not a name you’d expect to pop up in a Wall Street Journal article, even if it’s about a Federal Reserve meeting. But the name of the late 19th and early 20thcentury Swed...
One of the more disconcerting trends in the U.S. jobs market since the end of the Great Recession is the divergence between the rate of hiring and the rate at which employers are offering...
The United States is a less economically dynamic place than it was decades ago. That may seem like an outrageous statement to make in the era of unicorn startups, increasing revitalizatio...
