RESEARCH & THOUGHT PIECES FROM OUR TEAM

A surge in hiring by American small businesses complicates the Federal Reserve’s effort to cool inflation. Small companies have been responsible for all of the net job growth in the U.S. since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and account for almost four out of five available job openings,...

Prices of services are rising quickly. Prices of goods are falling. Energy is all over the map. Policy makers and market watchers already strip out volatile components of price indexes to understand what is known as core inflation. These days, many are on the hunt for an even narrower measure: a...

Economist Campbell Harvey has had a winning track record since he showed in his dissertation at the University of Chicago decades ago that the shape of the bond yield curve was linked to the path of US economic activity.

U.S. recessions have been preceded by an inverted yield curve — when...

In energy and commodities, there’s stuff that’s always at least 10 years away. Fusion energy is one; asteroid mining is another. And so is peak oil demand. The problem is that a decade goes by, the prediction doesn’t come true, the goalposts are moved further out, and everyone...

In October, the U.S. national debt reached $31 trillion, and the government is projected to wade another trillion dollars into the red in the 2023 fiscal year. The longer-term picture is even gloomier, with the deficit expected to double to $2 trillion by 2030.

• Stark Realities: "America's...

The average American household is spending $433 more a month to buy the same goods and services it did a year ago, according to a Moody’s Analytics analysis of October inflation data. While down slightly from than the $445 monthly figure in September, stubbornly high inflation is stretching...

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, according to the sports cliché. But now, just beating expectations seems to be enough to declare victory.

• Market Watch: "Inflation Isn’t Going Anywhere. History Says It Could Take A Decade To Get Back To Normal"
• CNBC: ...

In the most densely populated corner of the US, temperatures are about to drop after a stretch of unusually warm weather. And the signs of a winter crisis are already multiplying.

Heating oil delivered to New York is the priciest ever. Retailers in Connecticut are rationing it to prevent panic...

How low can the market go?

That’s a question that has been pushed to the sidelines in recent days as stocks bounced from their latest bear-market low on hopes that the Federal Reserve might yet “pivot” to smaller interest rate increases, despite the central bank’s...

Global economic activity is experiencing a broad-based and sharper-than-expected slowdown, with inflation higher than seen in several decades. The cost-of-living crisis, tightening financial conditions in most regions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic all...

All of our lifestyles are about to change in a major way, but the vast majority of the population still does not understand what is coming. Throughout our entire lives, we have always been able to depend on a couple of things. There would always be cheap gasoline to fuel our vehicles and there...

 The Mississippi River is flowing at its lowest level in at least a decade, and until rain relieves a worsening drought in the region, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain water levels high enough to carry critical exports from the nation’s bread basket.

The...