Economics | Penn Today

Concerned person standing by a window looking at a sheet of paper.

How bankruptcy bias contributes to the racial wealth gap

The wealth gap between Black people and white people is widening, and a new study from Wharton shows how racism plays a key role in keeping minorities from reaching financial equality.

A timeline of the Federal Reserve's trading scandal

Peter Conti-Brown of the Wharton School said reports of senior officials at the Federal Reserve profiting on trades are a “calamity and a scandal” and that he’d support a ban on Fed officials holding individual stocks. “I think central bankers should never be under a cloud of suspicion that they’re advocating for policies that will enrich them,” Conti-Brown said.

Professor who called Dow 20,000 says he’s nervous about trends in inflation that could spark a stock-market correction

Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School said the recent surge in inflation could compel the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more quickly than anticipated.

Q&A

What’s behind the rise in prices?

Wharton finance professor, Itay Goldstein, talks to Penn Today on inflation report, and supply and demand.

vehicles in traffic on a highway in daylight, one older car has exhaust coming out of its tailpipe.

Arthur van Benthem on new cars, old cars, and air pollution today

The associate professor of business economics and public policy at Wharton discusses key findings from his research on vehicle air pollution and emissions standards.

Biden’s new vaccine push is a fight for the U.S. economy

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the pandemic’s effects on the U.S. economy and, more importantly, the populace’s well-being. “I always tell undergraduates, when they take economics with me, that economics is not about optimizing output,” he said. “It’s about optimizing welfare.”

Fed officials’ trading draws outcry and fuels calls for accountability

Peter Conti-Brown of the Wharton School spoke about the Federal Reserve’s decades-old ethics standards. “What we have now is an ethics system built on a very narrow conception of what a central bank is and should be,” he said.

An electric vehicle plugged into a recharge station.

What will give electric cars a boost in the U.S.?

Wharton’s John Paul MacDuffie discusses President Biden’s executive order to dramatically increase electric car sales by 2030.

Sign in grocery store windows indicating that SNAP is welcomed there.

In-person requirements decreased WIC participation during the pandemic

Prior to the pandemic, only about half of all eligible families received WIC benefits. In a recent study in JAMA, Penn Medicine researchers examined one way in which these burdens may have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here's how Democrats could pay for their big reconciliation bill

John Ricco of the Penn Wharton Budget Model spoke about a new analysis that identified revenue sources that would cover the Biden administration’s budget under three different scenarios.

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