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The New York Times · August 21, 2025 · with Josh Barro, N. Gregory Mankiw
3 Experts on What Trump Is Doing to the Economy
A New York Times guest essay roundtable with Josh Barro and Greg Mankiw on the economic consequences of the Trump administration's tariff, immigration, and fiscal policy decisions.
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The New York Times · October 23, 2024 · with Justin Wolfers, Jay Clayton, Gary Cohn
What Washing Machines Can Tell Us About America's Economic Future
A four-way Times Opinion debate — Stevenson and Wolfers on the center-left, Clayton and Cohn on the center-right — on tariffs, housing, taxes, and debt.
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Bloomberg Opinion · September 1, 2024
A Lot of 'Unskilled' Workers Actually Aren't
The term 'unskilled' is demeaning and misleading. People labeled unskilled often have valuable skills that are abundant relative to demand, or mismatched to local markets — and as automation rises, soft skills will matter more.
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Bloomberg Opinion · August 19, 2024
Populist Economics Is the Antidote to Corporate Avarice
Companies increasingly rely on wearing down consumers — junk fees, opaque pricing, dark patterns — as a path to profitability, eroding trust. Populist economic policies can rein in these exploitative practices.
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Bloomberg Opinion · August 15, 2024
Trump and Harris Should Focus on the Minimum Wage, Not Tips
Tax-free tips would push low-paid workers further into income uncertainty and miss the 37% of tipped workers who already pay no federal income tax. Raise the federal minimum wage and abolish the tipped subminimum.
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Bloomberg Opinion · July 8, 2024
Banning Airbnb Won't Solve the Housing Crisis
Short-term rental bans (e.g., New York) haven't delivered affordable housing. They've pushed up hotel prices and diverted tourist spending instead.
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Bloomberg Opinion · June 11, 2024
Watch What Consumers Do, Not How They Feel
Even as consumers complain about high prices, their spending has driven growth. Sentiment surveys lag behavior — with pandemic savings gone and labor markets cooling, watch spending rather than vibes.
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Bloomberg Opinion · April 24, 2024
FTC Ban on Noncompetes Is a Victory for the US Economy
Noncompetes bind many workers who have no trade secrets to protect. The FTC ban shifts bargaining power from employers back to workers — exactly as intended.
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Bloomberg Opinion · March 11, 2024
What 'Barbie' Can Teach Working-Class Men
Ken's purposelessness mirrors that of working-class men who've lost footing as the economy shifted toward services. The path forward: a new masculinity built around humanity and relationships rather than a vanished industrial role.
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Bloomberg Opinion · February 17, 2024
Australia's Deadliest Animals Are No Match for America's Guns
Australia's snakes, sharks, and spiders kill far fewer people each year than American guns do — a pointed comparison drawn from her experience living in both countries.
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Bloomberg Opinion · January 3, 2024
2024's Economy Will Be Just as Unpredictable as 2023's
No one will get the 2024 forecast right for the right reasons. Despite uncertainty, Americans have real reasons to celebrate — jobs, wages, and household wealth are all strong entering the year.
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Bloomberg Opinion · December 29, 2023
An Economist's Guide to Making New Year's Resolutions
Apply basic cost-benefit thinking to resolutions: do things only when benefits exceed costs, and build systematic follow-through so you actually stick with them.
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Bloomberg Opinion · December 12, 2023
Inflation Is Not on Anyone's Holiday Gift List
Focusing on individual sticker prices fuels misleading arguments about the economy — not every price change is inflation, and the aggregate picture is much better than the anecdotal one.
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Bloomberg Opinion · December 7, 2023
Rules Don't Impede Capitalism, They Make It Work
Self-interest only benefits the economy when backed by strong laws and social norms. Regulation is a complement to markets, not an obstacle.
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Bloomberg Opinion · November 17, 2023
Eliminating the Women's Bureau Won't Balance the Budget
Defunding the Women's Bureau saves $23M against a $1.7T deficit — a rounding error that would destroy irreplaceable data on occupational segregation and gender wage gaps.
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Bloomberg Opinion · November 13, 2023
Anger Is What's Driving the US Economy
The 2023 story isn't recession but the gap between what consumers say (gloomy) and what they do (spend). Anger and distrust are coloring how Americans read a basically healthy economy.
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Bloomberg Opinion · October 31, 2023
A Strong Safety Net Helps the Whole US Economy
Typical Americans are richer than before the pandemic partly because 2020–21 relief worked. A robust safety net supports families and stabilizes the broader economy.
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Bloomberg Opinion · October 13, 2023
Congress Is Even More Dysfunctional Than It Looks
The speaker fight distracts from a deeper failure: the House still can't pass a budget. Stopgap funding by default is its own kind of crisis.
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Bloomberg Opinion · October 10, 2023
Goldin Took Women's Careers from Economic Sideshow to Mainstream
A personal tribute to her dissertation adviser, newly minted Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin — and to the generations of economists Goldin trained to take women's work seriously.
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Bloomberg Opinion · October 1, 2023
AI Will Change Your Job. Can You Change Along With It?
AI will eliminate millions of jobs and create new ones we can't yet imagine. The Writers Guild model — bargain for AI guardrails now — is a template for workers in other industries.
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Bloomberg Opinion · September 21, 2023
More Labor Strife Is Coming to the US Economy
Strike activity surged in 2022 and climbed again in 2023 because uncertainty about worker bargaining power makes both sides unwilling to concede early.
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The New York Times · June 5, 2023
Guess How Much This Debt Ceiling Nonsense Is Costing Us
The 2011 debt-ceiling standoff cost the government roughly $1.3B directly and ~$20B in higher debt servicing. Every crisis teaches Congress that brinkmanship pays.
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Peter G. Peterson Foundation · February 1, 2023
Rebuilding Trust Is Key for Policymakers to Rise Above Partisan Differences
Trust and disagreement can coexist. Reversing declining trust in Congress means members demonstrating concrete, cross-aisle action on the problems Americans actually face.
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The Hill · March 16, 2022
Best Way to Tackle Inflation: Confirm Biden's Fed Nominations
The Fed faces the hardest policy problem in decades. Leaving seats empty during an inflation fight is negligent; confirming Biden's nominees is the cheapest inflation-fighting tool available.
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The New York Times · December 8, 2021 · with Justin Wolfers
The Big Question: Is the World of Work Forever Changed?
COVID rewrote the social contract around where, when, and how we work — some shifts (remote, flexibility) will stick, others will unwind. A meditation on what's durable vs. transient.
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Foreign Policy · July 9, 2021
Fuzzynomics and 12 Other Names for Our Strange New Post-Pandemic Era
An essay for Foreign Policy on what to call the strange post-pandemic economic moment — a roundup of 13 candidate labels from prominent economists for an era of historic fiscal stimulus, supply shocks, and labor-market dislocation.
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The Washington Post · June 24, 2021
The Great Reallocation of American Talent
May 2021's modest headline hides a massive 'Great Reallocation': workers are switching industries, occupations, and life plans, and that takes time to show up as headline job growth.
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The New York Times · June 4, 2021
The Jobs Report Takeaway: A Huge Reallocation of People and Work Is Underway
May 2021's 559,000 jobs fell short of a V-shaped recovery, but neither unemployment benefits nor lingering virus fear is the main story. Old jobs are gone, and the unemployed are searching for new ones — a painful matching process that takes time.
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The Hill · September 17, 2020 · with Alex Brill
A Deal for Coronavirus Fiscal Relief
A left–right proposal (Stevenson with AEI's Brill) for a bipartisan COVID relief package focused on sustaining household income and state and local budgets while the recovery is fragile.
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The Washington Post · May 9, 2020
The Job Numbers Are Horrible. But There's More to This Story
April 2020's historic job losses were mostly classified as temporary. That leaves room for cautious optimism — if policy moves fast enough to keep temporary separations from hardening into permanent ones.
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The New York Times · March 18, 2020 · with Justin Wolfers
A Payroll Tax Cut Won't Work. Send Big Checks Now.
A payroll tax cut delivers the biggest breaks to the highest earners and nothing to those who've lost paychecks. Direct cash payments would get money out the door fast and to those who need it most.
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The Washington Post · August 2, 2019
Five Myths About the Federal Reserve
Debunks five persistent misconceptions about the Fed — including that the White House can't influence it and that inflation has become unrelated to unemployment.
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Bloomberg Opinion · December 7, 2016
Manly Men Need to Do More Girly Jobs
Employment is shifting from manufacturing to services — and more men should move into service-sector jobs traditionally dominated by women. That's where the growth is.
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Bloomberg Opinion · December 10, 2015
How Congress Can Stop Procrastinating
On the annual ritual of last-minute 'tax extenders' — corporate giveaways that arrive a year too late. Process reform could fix it and even save money.
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The White House (CEA blog) · August 27, 2014
94 Years Later, Here's Where We Are
Women's Equality Day piece from Stevenson as a CEA member — tallies the progress women have made since gaining the right to vote 94 years earlier, and the gaps that remain in pay and labor force participation.
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The White House (CEA blog) · August 26, 2014
Follow Along: White House Economist Takes Over the 'I Love Charts' Tumblr
Stevenson's kickoff post for her Women's Equality Day takeover of the 'I Love Charts' Tumblr — data visualization as a tool for telling the story of women's rising economic contribution.
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Bloomberg Opinion · October 14, 2013
Can the 'Yellen Effect' Attract Young Women to Economics?
On Janet Yellen's nomination to chair the Fed — and whether her career could draw more women into economics, a question for which history counsels patience.
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Bloomberg Opinion · April 28, 2013 · with Justin Wolfers
Refereeing the Reinhart-Rogoff Debate
Walks readers through the famous spreadsheet error in Reinhart and Rogoff's debt-growth paper — adjudicating what the corrected numbers actually show.
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The Washington Post · April 5, 2013
Five Myths About the Minimum Wage
Takes on five standard claims about the minimum wage — that it covers everyone, is stable without Congressional action, raises unemployment, is partisan, and wouldn't help the poor.
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Bloomberg Opinion · March 12, 2013 · with Justin Wolfers
Is Paul Ryan an Inflation Nutter?
Reviews inflation forecasts showing that Paul Ryan's fears of 'debasement of the currency' sit at the extreme end of professional opinion.
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Bloomberg Opinion · February 14, 2013 · with Justin Wolfers
Where Do You Stand in the Global Love Ranking?
Gallup data on the reported incidence of love around the world — how it varies with age, income, and economic development.
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Bloomberg Opinion · February 13, 2013 · with Justin Wolfers
Valentine's Day and the Economics of Love
The role of love in economic life — not just the icing on the cake, but a core factor in decisions about marriage, work, and household investment.
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Bloomberg Opinion · July 23, 2012 · with Justin Wolfers
The U.S. Economic Policy Debate Is a Sham
Polls of leading economists show strong consensus on many issues where the political debate pretends there is none — the 'debate' is mostly theater.
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Bloomberg Opinion · July 9, 2012 · with Justin Wolfers
Fed Harms Itself by Missing Goals
Persistent undershooting of the Fed's 2 percent inflation target has undermined its credibility as a symmetric inflation targeter.
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Bloomberg Opinion · April 2, 2012 · with Justin Wolfers
U.S. Economy Needs Stimulus, Not Soothsayers
Fiscal policy should be set with an eye to the range of likely forecast errors, not a single point prediction — caution favors more stimulus, not less.
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Bloomberg Opinion · March 5, 2012 · with Justin Wolfers
Bernanke Needs Some Bounce in His Tail
Argues that the Fed's forward guidance has been too Eeyore-like. A more upbeat commitment to fight unemployment would itself ease financial conditions.
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Cato Unbound · May 10, 2011
Parents Are Unhappy. But Why? And Should We Care?
Lead essay for Cato Unbound's May 2011 symposium on the politics of family size. Pushes back on the idea that parents are unhappy because they pressure themselves to be perfect; the deeper question is what happiness data can and cannot tell us about the costs and rewards of raising children.
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The New York Times — Room for Debate · June 15, 2010
Divorce and Domestic Violence
Contribution to a 2010 NYT Room for Debate forum on no-fault divorce — surveying the evidence that unilateral divorce laws are associated with reductions in domestic violence and female suicide.
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The New York Times — Room for Debate · June 4, 2010
Divorce in the Golden Years
Contribution to a 2010 NYT Room for Debate forum prompted by the Al and Tipper Gore separation — on late-life divorce, how common it is, and the economics of splitting up with fewer remaining years to enjoy the payoff.
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NPR Marketplace · May 6, 2010
Having Kids Makes You Unhappy, Right?
An audio op-ed pushing back on the conventional wisdom that parenthood reduces happiness — the data are messier and more optimistic than the headlines.
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The New York Times — Room for Debate · February 21, 2010
Different Incentives to Marry
Contribution to a 2010 NYT Room for Debate forum on how women's rising education and earnings are reshaping the economics of who marries whom.
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NPR Marketplace · December 24, 2009
Divorced Couples Aren't the Half of It
An audio op-ed debunking the 'half of all marriages end in divorce' factoid — the true number is much lower and has been falling for decades.
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NPR Marketplace · August 27, 2009
Economists Don't Believe in Soulmates
An audio op-ed offering an economic perspective on marriage — partnership as an equilibrium where each person stops searching because the alternatives aren't good enough.
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NPR Marketplace · July 17, 2009
Inherent Bias Must Be Acknowledged
An audio op-ed on Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation — arguing that acknowledging implicit bias is a precondition for sound judgment, not a disqualifier for it.
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The New York Times — Room for Debate · July 5, 2009
Separate Spheres vs. Shared Lives
Contribution to a 2009 NYT Room for Debate forum — how modern marriages have shifted from a "separate spheres" division of labor toward shared lives built around hedonic complementarities.
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The New York Times — Room for Debate · April 8, 2009
Unlucky in Labor, Unlucky in Love
Contribution to a 2009 NYT Room for Debate forum on how the recession reshaped marriages — linking labor-market shocks to divorce risk.
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Cato Unbound · January 30, 2008 · with Justin Wolfers
(De-)Regulating the Family
Part of the 'Can Marriage Survive?' symposium — argues for loosening rather than tightening the legal regulation of marriage and divorce, letting families self-organize.
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Cato Unbound · January 27, 2008 · with Justin Wolfers
Divorce and Children: What Do We Know?
Reviews the empirical evidence on how divorce affects children — separating selection from causation — and argues that the average causal effects are smaller than the public debate assumes.
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Cato Unbound · January 18, 2008 · with Justin Wolfers
Marriage and the Market
Reframes the history of the family in economic language — modern marriage has shifted from shared production to shared consumption, with love and companionship at the core of 'hedonic marriage.'
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The Wall Street Journal · November 6, 1997 · with Robert J. Barro
Do You Want That in Paper or Metal?
An early op-ed on the design of currency — paper versus metal — published in The Wall Street Journal while Stevenson was a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
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