S9 Ep57: Merit, masters and China's imperial exam
For more than 1,300 years, China chose its top officials by written exam. Its top officials were chosen meritocratic ally -- or were they? W...
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VoxTalks
Learn about groundbreaking new research, commentary and policy ideas from the world's leading economists. Presented by Tim Phillips.
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20 of 484 episodes
S9 Ep56: Decoupling from China after Trump's Trade Wars
In March 2025, Apple chartered cargo flights to deliver 600 tonnes of iPhones from India to the United States. A year earlier, four in five...
S9 Ep55: Loosening inheritance law
In most of the world you do not get to choose who inherits your money. Across continental Europe, Latin America, and countries governed by I...
S9 Ep54: Does sacking the manager work?
Your football team keeps losing. The season is slipping away. One thing can be changed by Friday, and the crowd is already singing about it:...
S9 Ep53: Lessons from Populism in Latin America
The new episode of VoxTalks Economics traces the effects of South Americans populism, left and right. Alejandro Werner (Georgetown Americas...
S9 Ep52: The Dollar Anchor Is Slipping
April 2025: Liberation Day. President Trump announces sweeping new tariffs. And then, the dollar did something a safe haven currency is not...
S9 Ep51: Fiscal Populism and Monetary Policy
There is a saying in Spanish: get burned by hot milk, and the sight of a cow makes you cry. New research implies that, decades after a popul...
S9 Ep50: Tariffs, Uncertainty, and the Exchange Rate
Textbook economics says a tariff should strengthen a country's currency. Since the start of 2025, as US tariffs rose ... and the dollar fell...
S9 Ep49: Combatting sexual harassment in the military
Norwegian conscripts arrive at boot camp straight out of school. They are assigned at random to a shared room and they live in it for the ne...
S9 Ep48: What price to save Japan's ghost towns?
In the oldest Japanese municipalities, close to half the residents are already over 65. As young people move to cities, the retailers close,...
S9 Ep47: The Next Generation: PSE 2026
Travel broadens the mind. So the Voxtalks visits a conference, we find the most interesting research from economists just starting out, and...
S9 Ep46: Absorbing shocks since 1891
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2026. A country wants a stable exchange rate, it wants money to move freely across its borders, and it...
S9 Ep45: Tariff Confusion
If you run a business that exports to the United States, how big is the tariff you have to pay? In 2025 that question was hard to answer. Be...
S9 Ep44: How superpowers shape trade
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics. Tariffs move trade around, but so does economic power. When one economy do...
S9 Ep43: Navigating industrial policy
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris. In 2019 the IMF called the increasing adoption of industrial policy: "The return of the policy...
S9 Ep42: The Safety Paradox
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics, June 2026. In 1941 the United States banned oil exports to Japan, to punis...
S9 Ep41: Making teenagers read newspapers
French teenagers carry a smartphone with access to almost anything, but few of them have been using it to read the news. Julia Cagé (Science...
S9 Ep40: Are net zero commitments greenwash?
Sixty-three percent of large companies worldwide had made a net zero commitment by 2023, up from close to none in 2018. But if the target da...
S9 Ep39: Europe in 2050
Recorded at the Paris School of Economics-CEPR Policy Forum 2026. Europe is under attack from the US, and under a different kind of attack f...
S9 Ep38: Europe in the Middle
China cannot sell as much as it used to in the United States. That trade has to go somewhere, and somewhere might be Europe. In this week's...