Essays & News

  Prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi have evolved rapidly and transformed from niche entertainment tools to major platforms that aggregate expectations on global events. With trading volumes reaching tens of billions of dollars monthly in 2026, these markets now function as real-time indicators for politics, economics and armed conflict. As polarized narratives and […]

  A few weeks ago, the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding, but there was little reason to expect it would produce a lasting solution. The agreement satisfied neither side. As noted three weeks ago, launching Operation Epic Fury was the right decision, but ending it prematurely could prove a fatal blunder. […]

Working Paper Series. Written by David Howden. Canonical Austrian business cycle theory holds that a lower rate of interest lengthens the structure of production. Fillieule (2007) derives the opposite conclusion: the average period of production rises with the rate of interest. I argue in this article that the apparent conflict dissolves once two distinct meanings of lengthening […]

  The debate over Universal Basic Income (UBI), a policy in which the state provides a regular, unconditional sum of money to all citizens, is far from new. It periodically returns to the limelight every few years, discussed vigorously for a few months before slipping back into irrelevance after the idea is dismantled as unworkable, […]

  Global debt reached alarming new heights in 2025. Worldwide debt – public, corporate and household – increased by nearly $29 trillion to approximately $350 trillion, bringing the global debt-to-GDP ratio above 300 percent. Nearly two-thirds of that increase came from advanced economies, driven primarily by government deficit spending. The trend has worsened in 2026. At the […]