The Berkeley Economic Review

VINAY MARURI – APRIL 13TH 2018 In 2014, after a decade of high oil prices during which crude oil regularly traded above $100 per barrel, a strange thing happened. The price of oil fell 40% amid…

VATSAL BAJAJ – APRIL 11, 2018 John Maynard Keynes first coined the term “technological unemployment” in 1930 in his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.” He defined it as the “unemployment due to our discovery of…

VINAY MARURI – APRIL 9TH, 2018 By all metrics, America is booming: the nationwide unemployment rate is 4.1%, inflation is low, and wages are starting to rise on average for American workers. The Federal Reserve…

JACOB FAJNOR – March 23rd, 2018 For years, fiscal conservatives have looked to cut and privatize Social Security in the United States, arguing that taxing working Americans causes leakages in the economy, stunting economic growth and…

MATTHEW FORBES – MARCH 19TH, 2018 Economics is often thought of as a discipline of numbers. Quickly glance through any economics textbook and you will find scores of graphs and equations attempting to quantify everything…

ANASTASIA PYRINIS – MARCH 16TH, 2018 Bitcoin has been taking the world by storm. In December, the “open-source, peer-to-peer digital currency” hit an all-time high, reaching a value of $19,843 per coin, and the market worth…

ANASTASIA PYRINIS – MARCH 14TH, 2018 One of the greatest issues plaguing the United States is the wealth gap, which has been steadily increasing for the past several years. According to studies conducted by the Pew…

JACOB FAJNOR – MARCH 12TH, 2018 Is it possible that getting a great deal isn’t always great? Turns out that for an economist, the short answer is “yes.” Let’s set the scene: It’s time for…

SETH BERTOLUCCI – MARCH 9TH, 2018 When the economy suffers from a deficit in aggregate demand, you’ve got to juice it up. Spend. Spend a lot. That’s been the public policy trajectory since the end…