What We Have Been Up To...
We've been busy. Here's what we have been doing.
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We love writing Economic Forces, but this isn’t all that we do. Actually, this is really just a weird hobby on the side. We are often writing in other contexts, being interviewed, and promoting economics across as many outlets as possible. We’re also bad about mentioning those but think Economic Forces readers will be interested.
So here is a sampling of some things we’ve been doing over the past few months. Enjoy!
Brian
Interviews
I guess this counts as an interview (but not of me). In January, the world’s best policy research center, the International Center for Law & Economics, hosted a day-long event on the foundations of antitrust. I was lucky enough to interview Oliver Hart about his research and what it teaches us about antitrust. It was an absolute blast to talk to him, both on stage and off.
I was Macro Musings, talking about my research with Ryan Decker on business dynamism and market power, along with broader discussions of inflation, antitrust, and trade.
I was also on Cato Daily talking about the threats of tariffs, building off of my newsletter on how chaos kills coordination.
Op-eds
On Monday, I was had a piece at Barron’s (gift link) on how supply and demand can explain the movements of egg prices without needing to appeal to market manipulation.
I had a piece in City Journal on what DeepSeek means for competition (and competition policy in AI. It’s amazing to see how this market has evolved even in the short time since that piece came out.
I also had two pieces with Geoff Manne on the economics of the upcoming FTC vs. Amazon antitrust trial. The first is on market definition, and the second is on conduct. I was at the “Economics Day” and tweeted about it here.
Scholarly Work
Ryan Decker and I have a new working paper on business dynamism and market power. This builds on an earlier note that I wrote a newsletter on but expands our measures of dynamism and market power.
Rafael Guthmann and I have a new working paper that presents a formal model of Kirznerian entrepreneurship and shows how to think of it as a foundation for standard equilibrium models.
Josh
Interviews
Recently, I have been interviewed about two main topics: bitcoin and the international monetary system. These long-form interviews are below.
The Human Action Podcast: “Unpacking the Document that Spells Out Trump’s Tariff Strategy”
What Bitcoin Did: “Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution w/ Josh Hendrickson & William Luther”
Jack Roycroft-Sherry Podcast: “Bitcoin, Financial Crises, & The Future of Money”
Op-eds
Amidst the uncertainty about policy, one of my main goals has been to clearly articulate what policymakers are trying to do. In order to determine whether one should support a policy, it is first important to understand the objectives of the policy and whether the policy is likely to achieve those objectives. I have done my best to outline what I believe to be the objectives behind tariff policy and the proposed sovereign wealth fund.
“An American sovereign wealth fund is risky, but not crazy” (with Alex Salter)
Scholarly Work
Finally, I have recently published two papers that might be of interest to readers.
“Usury enforcement as an alternative to capital taxation in pre-modern states” (Public Choice) — In pre-modern states, rulers imposed usury restrictions in a consistent way. They would grant some group of lenders a monopoly on lending, but would then impose a maximum interest rate. In this paper, I explain that this particular arrangement is capable of replicating an optimal tax on capital to pay for war. I model rulers’ behavior to determine why they would choose these policies and why they would abandon them. I then examine some historical examples. There is consistent evidence that these arrangements were used to help finance warfare and defense. Furthermore, those who failed commit to these policies often found themselves without the necessary financial resources. (Working paper version)
“The case for nominal GDP level targeting” (Southern Economic Journal) — This paper was written for the SEJ symposium on the Federal Reserve’s framework review. Given that we have a central bank, what should the central bank do? In this paper, I expand on a lot of the arguments that fans of Economic Forces will be familiar with to argue that the Federal Reserve should adopt a nominal GDP level target. (Working paper version)