Jeffrey Frankel

PROFESSOR OF CAPITAL FORMATION AND GROWTH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

US President Donald Trump during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina on Oct 22, 2024.

Are Maga voters rational?

Voter behaviour is often driven by culture and ideology, to the extent of choosing candidates who will not be good for them...

By enabling the resurgence of diseases that have been brought under control, and hampering progress in tackling others, Trump is indirectly jeopardising Americans’ health.

Make America sick again

The Maga movement’s apparent commitment to reversing progress in public health is astounding

American President Donald Trump (left) has no doubt that he understands monetary policy better than Fed policymakers – “certainly much better” than chair Jerome Powell.

Are Trump’s criticisms of Fed policy based on economic conditions?

Uncovering the ‘logic’ behind the US president’s complaints of the central bank’s monetary stance

For some 80 years, the United States spent more on humanitarian assistance, economic development programmes, and other types of foreign aid than any other government.
PERSPECTIVE

Foreign aid looks good now that it’s gone

The assistance programmes that the Trump administration has frantically slashed and defunded since January were often life-saving, high-return projects

With Trump's trade tariffs clouding economic forecasts, indicators both leading and lagging are lacking in their ability to help us navigate the dense fog.

How to forecast a recession

Imagine you are sailing a ship through dense fog, looking out for land. Your lookout spots species of birds typically found offshore....

U.S. dollar banknotes are seen in this illustration taken March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Is Trump engineering the decline and fall of the US dollar?

There are fundamental flaws in the US administration’s vision for weakening the greenback

US President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 3, 2025. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP)

Trump’s imaginary victories

To call the US president a ‘transactional’ leader is to ignore his utter lack of strategic thinking

PALM BEACH, FLORIDA - DECEMBER 16: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on December 16, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. In a news conference that went over an hour, Trump announced that SoftBank will invest over $100 billion in projects in the United States including 100,000 artificial intelligence related jobs and then took questions on Syria, Israel, Ukraine, the economy, cabinet picks, and many other topics.   Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/AFP (Photo by Andrew Harnik / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

Can Trump’s tariff threats save US dollar hegemony?

The US president-elect’s reckless rhetoric could undermine his stated objectives

Elon Musk speaks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as they watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024. Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS
PERSPECTIVE

Elon Musk’s US$2 trillion fiscal fantasy

Between Trump’s planned tax cuts and Musk’s absurd estimate of how much federal spending can be reduced, the smart money says they...

The 2024 Nobel Prize in economic sciences was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A Robinson, Oct 14, 2024, for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.
PERSPECTIVE

What causes prosperity?

How this year’s Nobel Prize-winning economists tackled a once-insoluble problem