Economists are not known for their literary imaginations. Flip through any economics textbook and you’ll find a barrage of terms like the ‘Philips curve’ and the ‘Fisher effect’. The jargon is simple enough — empirical relations are usually named after the person who discovered them....

Think of this question as a sword — a sharp piece of steel that cuts through bullshit. In this post, we’ll use it to slice through business-press bullshit about the stock market. You know the stuff — the ubiquitous puff pieces that gush about rising stock prices, as though they benefit...

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a billionaire? Do you need rare genius? Exceptional acumen? Miraculous foresight? An uncompromising work ethic? On all four counts, the answer is no. It turns out that to become a billionaire, what you really need is the right social setting. You...

The rich get richer. It’s a phrase that packs a lot of punch. It’s potent rhetoric, yet surprisingly accurate at describing how rising inequality plays out. Of course, there’s nothing inevitable about the rich getting richer. We just happen to live in an age of growing corporate despotism....

It turns out that like the rest of us, billionaires experience wealth inequality. (Individuals who top the Forbes billionaire list are far richer than those at the bottom of the list.) Interestingly, this billionaire wealth concentration fluctuates over time … in tight correlation with the...