Best Matt Williams And Alan Clark Podcasts (2025)

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The Wolf-Krugman Exchange: how the old economic order fell out of favour 46:34

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3d ago46:34

46:34

In the second of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss the way economic trends have fractured societies on both sides of the Atlantic and the jeopardy that poses to liberal democracies in Europe and America. Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda: …

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The Wolf-Krugman Exchange: the crisis of trust 43:42

8d ago43:42

43:42

In part one of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss how trust in the postwar world economic system is being lost and weigh the costs and consequences of that. Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda: Quarterflash, ”Harden My Heart”- https://www.you…

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Coming soon: The Wolf-Krugman Exchange 2:08

9d ago2:08

2:08

In a special six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss the economic events reshaping the world in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s election. Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts …

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How economics wins wars, with Duncan Weldon 25:38

12d ago25:38

25:38

Churchill never said “we will fight them in the spreadsheets…”. But maybe he should have done. The second world war, like every other war in human history, was decided by how each side allocated its resources. In this episode, Duncan Weldon, author of the new book ‘Blood and Treasure, The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to Ukraine’, explains…

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What does China want from the US? With Jay Shambaugh 30:28

19d ago30:28

30:28

The tit-for-tat tariff escalations between the US and China are on pause, at least temporarily. But if the world’s two biggest economies don’t make progress by July, they could return with a vengeance. How can the two parties make progress? And what does China actually want from the US? Soumaya Keynes speaks to Jay Shambaugh to find out. Shambaugh …

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How should central banks respond to US tariffs? 26:58

25d ago26:58

26:58

US tariffs have sent financial markets into a frenzy in recent weeks, but how much should central bankers be taking trade into account when setting monetary policy? To find out, Soumaya Keynes sits down with Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Swati Dhingra – one of the committee’s more dovish members. They discuss why the UK’s open ec…

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Bonus: Globalisation can be slowed, but not stopped 31:57

30d ago31:57

31:57

Donald Trump’s trade policies have put global markets through the mill in recent weeks. But his policies didn’t come from nowhere. Aspects of US protectionism preceded Trump’s second term – and countries across the world have been pushing for greater self-sufficiency for some time. Is this drive for greater self-sufficiency misguided? Is true self-…

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Bill Gates: how international development can survive the Trump presidency 27:42

1M ago27:42

27:42

Over the past 25 years, the Gates foundation has given away more than $100bn. Much of that money has gone to healthcare and education projects outside the US – and the organisation plans to give $200bn more to various programmes in the next twenty years. But as Elon Musk and Doge feed USAID, a key partner of the foundation, “into the wood chipper,”…

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Martin Wolf talks to Kenneth Rogoff: Trump is accelerating the dollar’s decline 30:18

1M ago30:18

30:18

The US dollar has been in slow decline for around a decade – so says Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard professor, and former chief economist of the IMF. Donald Trump’s trade policies have raised a lot of questions about the future of the dollar – and how its decline could affect the rest of the world’s currencies. Rogoff joins Martin Wolf to discuss how the …

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Should we be optimistic about the US economy? With Michael Strain 31:02

2M ago31:02

31:02

Almost a month since ‘liberation day’, the potential impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariff regime are starting to sink in. US hard data isn’t yet showing much negative impact from changes to US trade policy – but economists are gloomy on US growth prospects. The IMF last week warned of an increased risk of US recession, and lopped nearly a ful…

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Martin Wolf talks to David Autor: could AI be a bigger threat to US jobs than China? 31:37

2M ago31:37

31:37

When China joined the World Trade Organization at the start of this century, its surging exports rattled US manufacturing. Prices fell, jobs became less lucrative, and communities that relied on these jobs were hit hard. President Donald Trump seems determined to bring those jobs back to the US. Is that realistic or even desirable? The FT’s chief e…

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Martin Wolf talks to Mervyn King: why central banks got inflation wrong 30:35

2M ago30:35

30:35

Former Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King has never shied away from expressing his opinion. Here, he sits down with his friend Martin Wolf — the FT’s chief economics commentator — to discuss some of the thorniest problems central banks now face: Will rate-setters manage to stay independent in the era of Trump 2.0? What should they do about cr…

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Are US tariffs just the beginning? With Abraham Newman 31:33

2M ago31:33

31:33

As Donald Trump declares a trade war on the rest of the world, it’s time to learn about a field of economic research known as “weaponised interdependence”. The bad news is that the US president’s weapon of choice – imposing tariffs on goods imports – is a fairly outdated tool of economic warfare. Globalisation and advances in financial and communic…

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Can Germany escape its economic doldrums? With Ulrike Malmendier 32:15

3M ago32:15

32:15

For the past few years, Germany has begun to look like the ‘sick man of Europe’ again. Its economy has barely grown since 2019, while its famous manufacturing sector has shrivelled. But earlier this month, financial markets were buoyed by a vote in the German parliament to relax the constitutional limit on government borrowing, the so-called debt b…

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How big a fiscal hole is the British government in? With Paul Johnson 31:02

3M ago31:02

31:02

The UK’s Labour government had already inherited a tricky fiscal situation when it came to power last July. But since then, growth has stagnated, borrowing costs have risen, and now the government has committed to a big increase in defence spending. Where will the money come from? The FT’s Sam Fleming interviews Paul Johnson, the long-time director…

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Why do companies make terrible decisions? With Dan Davies 32:29

3M ago32:29

32:29

Modern industrial economies were made possible by automation and mass production, but also by something similar going on inside the world of management. Where once all the decisions were made by an identifiable boss, now they are farmed out to rule books, bureaucracies and computer algorithms — and nobody is individually accountable for them. The F…

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Martin Wolf talks to Keyu Jin: Has China’s economy run out of gas? 30:55

3M ago30:55

30:55

After decades of double-digit growth, China's economy has been expanding at less than half that since the pandemic. A property market crash, youth unemployment and now a trade war with the US are all adding to the country’s woes. So has the Chinese juggernaut finally run out of gas? Martin Wolf speaks to Keyu Jin, a Chinese economist who has lived …

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Martin Wolf talks to Adair Turner: Can the world decarbonise fast enough? 31:25

3M ago31:25

31:25

The world economy is emitting carbon dioxide faster than ever before, meaning our planet is heating up faster than ever before. Martin Wolf speaks to someone who has spent much of the past two decades at the forefront of the climate debate. Lord Adair Turner chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank focused on climate mitigation, and w…

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What future for aid and development? With Minouche Shafik 32:31

4M ago32:31

32:31

US President Donald Trump has frozen all foreign aid payments, while Elon Musk is putting America’s biggest development agency, USAID, “through the woodchipper”. Meanwhile, the UK government has just announced it will slash its aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP. So are the days of generous programmes to promote health and education in the poorest…

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Martin Wolf talks to Richard Baldwin: What’s the future of global trade? 36:19

4M ago36:19

36:19

Donald Trump’s tariffs are a twentieth century tool that simply won’t work in the 21st century global trading system. That’s the view of today’s guest, Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. Speaking to the FT’s Martin Wolf, Baldwin explains how the shift towards global manufacturi…

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Why are birth rates falling? With Alice Evans 34:22

4M ago34:22

34:22

Birth rates are falling fast and not just in highly developed countries. And as populations age, it’s becoming harder to fund pensions or raise labour productivity. But falling fertility could also be harming social cohesion and impeding the innovation needed to solve problems such as climate change. Today on the show, John Burn-Murdoch talks to Al…

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The real Russian economy. With Sergei Guriev 42:16

4M ago42:16

42:16

The war in Ukraine is a humanitarian crisis. It is also an economic problem. Sanctions from the US and Europe are meant to make war too expensive for Russia to continue. President Vladimir Putin claims those sanctions have failed and his economy is strong. But what is propaganda and what is reality? Today on the show, host Martin Sandbu poses these…

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Is innovation slowing down? With Matt Clancy 34:54

4M ago34:54

34:54

Productivity growth in the developed world has been on a downward trend since the 1960s. Meanwhile, gains in life expectancy have also slowed. And yet the number of dollars and researchers dedicated to R&D grows every year. In today’s episode, the FT’s Chief Data Reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, asks whether western culture has lost its previous focus …

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Making sense of Trump's tariffs. With Dani Rodrik 36:17

4M ago36:17

36:17

Tariffs have historically been an important tool of industrial policy. They were used in the last century by east Asian nations to promote infant industries, and are being used today by the EU to help spur the energy transition. But do Donald Trump’s threats to impose a 25% across-the-board tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, or his actual 10…

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Can the WTO stay relevant? With Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala 30:34

4M ago30:34

30:34

In an interview recorded before President Trump hit China, Mexico and Canada with steep tariffs that disrupt the global trading system, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation, speaks to the FT’s Senior Trade Writer, Alan Beattie, and defends her record and the WTO’s achievements. She outlines how she hopes to enga…

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Martin Wolf talks to Arvind Subramanian: India, the next economic superpower? 30:40

5M ago30:40

30:40

India is the world’s most populous nation, and since the 1990s it has maintained almost Chinese levels of rapid economic growth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to make India a high income country and, by implication, an economic superpower by 2047. But is that achievable? This week’s guest, Arvind Subramanian, is a former chief economic adviser …

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Update from Davos: Can industrial policy really work? With Beata Javorcik 30:26

5M ago30:26

30:26

Sam Fleming is the FT’s Economics Editor, and this week he is reporting from the World Economic Forum at Davos, where much of the talk is about protectionism and industrial policy. Today on the show, Sam speaks to Beata Javorcik, the chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. They discuss the history of industrial poli…

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Trump and the history of tariffs. With Doug Irwin 43:18

5M ago43:18

43:18

Doug Irwin is a professor at Dartmouth College and the author of several books on trade. Today on The Economics Show, he joins the FT’s Senior Trade Writer Alan Beattie to discuss the history of tariffs in the US, and what that history might tell us about the next round of tariffs. Alan writes the Trade Secrets newsletter. You can sign up here. He …

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Martin Wolf speaks to Andrew J Scott: Can societies age gracefully? 32:31

5M ago32:31

32:31

Increasingly elderly populations seen in countries such as Japan and Italy are set to become the norm everywhere in the coming decades. But will a more senior demographic make the cost of state pensions and healthcare unaffordable? And will it kill economic growth? Not necessarily so, according to today’s guest, Andrew J Scott, director of economic…

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Martin Wolf interviews Mariana Mazzucato: Can the state innovate? 31:19

6M ago31:19

31:19

In 1962, then US president John F Kennedy committed his nation to reaching the Moon before the decade was up. It was a huge undertaking, but one that ultimately succeeded, and also produced technologies such as camera phones and baby formula along the way. But have governments today lost the confidence and knowhow needed to undertake such ambitious…

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Martin Wolf interviews Christine Lagarde: Whither Europe? 40:06

6M ago40:06

40:06

The Eurozone’s economic recovery from Covid-19 has been anaemic compared with America’s, despite achieving a soft landing from double-digit inflation. Indeed, Europe’s relative underperformance stretches back even longer, perhaps 30 years, in terms of productivity and GDP growth. Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, gives her …

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Martin Wolf interviews Lant Pritchett: Is mass immigration inevitable? 30:03

6M ago30:03

30:03

Mass immigration is demographically essential but politically impossible – so argues Lant Pritchett, development economist and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. As populations age in the rich developed countries, immigrant workers will be needed to help with the burden of providing for the elderly. Removing the barriers might al…

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Martin Wolf interviews Larry Summers: Is Trump a threat to the US economy? 31:42

6M ago31:42

31:42

The US has just overcome one abrupt spike in inflation, which may have cost Kamala Harris her bid for the presidency. But now President-elect Donald Trump’s policy agenda threatens to cause another one. That’s according to Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary and President Emeritus of Harvard University. He speaks to the FT’s Martin Wolf…

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Is the Eurozone in trouble? With Philip Lane 27:24

6M ago27:24

27:24

It’s a treacherous time for the Eurozone. Inflation is falling, yes, but at the same time signs of real economic weakness are growing. And there are risks on the horizon, from rising debt to trade wars to real wars. It’s a perfect time to speak to our guest Philip Lane, chief economist of the ECB and a member of its executive board. And this week w…

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What’s wrong with Britain’s economy? With Sam Bowman 37:04

7M ago37:04

37:04

The UK is lagging behind its peers in the Eurozone. Its per capita GDP trails that of France and Germany, and yet its housing and energy is scarcer and more expensive. A recent essay by Sam Bowman, co-authored with Ben Southwood and Samuel Hughes, argues that Britain has struggled over the past 15 years because it has “banned the investment in hous…

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Why is Britain’s government so inefficient? With Jeremy Hunt 34:45

7M ago34:45

34:45

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are having heated conversations about whether or not governments can be made more efficient. The results include two new agencies, Elon Musk’s ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency, and Labour’s Office for Value for Money. But when it comes to improving public services, the challenges are neither new, …

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Would Trump’s tariffs really be that bad? With Kimberly Clausing 33:12

7M ago33:12

33:12

Trump is returning to office with many of the same policies that characterised his last term. And for economists, none looms larger than the prospect of significant new tariffs. But are tariffs really as destructive as feared? After all, the Biden administration maintained most of them and the economy has remained strong. Today on the show, we put …

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What does a second Trump presidency mean for immigration? With Michael Clemens 30:49

7M ago30:49

30:49

Michael Clemens of George Mason University is an expert on the economics of migration, and a scholar of its history. With the newly elected President Trump promising to deport millions of immigrants, we thought it was the perfect time to talk about what illegal immigrants mean to the present economy and, more pressingly, what an economy without the…

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How to tax the top 1% with Natasha Sarin 29:16

7M ago29:16

29:16

In 2025, some major provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are going to expire. Meanwhile, spending is likely to rise. That means there is going to be a conversation about tax policy. Natasha Sarin was a counselor to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen at the US Treasury, and is now a professor at Yale and president of the Budget Lab, a research centr…

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The economics of research and development. With Heidi Williams 23:41

8M ago23:41

23:41

Intuitively, research and development is a building block of a productive future. But exactly how important is it, and can we put a number on it? Heidi Williams is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, and an expert on innovation policy. She is also a visiting fellow at the Congressional Budget Office. Today on the show, she joins Soumaya …

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What is Kamalanomics? With James Politi 31:11

8M ago31:11

31:11

With the US election in a matter of weeks, today Soumaya Keynes is joined by the FT’s Washington bureau chief, James Politi. They discuss the Kamala Harris platform – from industrial policy to tax reform to housing – and what it might all cost. They also talk about how Kamala Harris might differ from Joe Biden, and which staff members might stay an…

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What’s wrong with effective altruism? With Martin Sandbu 30:58

8M ago30:58

30:58

The effective altruism movement has been on a wild ride over the past decade. EA started – in the popular consciousness, at least – as a forum for mindful questions about where best to put charitable dollars. Think bed nets and de-worming pills. But, since then, EA seems to have devolved into rationalisations for making tons of money, freak-outs ab…

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Why even a PhD isn’t enough to erase the effects of class, with Anna Stansbury 33:03

8M ago33:03

33:03

Race and gender have dominated headlines about economic outcomes in the past decades, but class … not so much. Class is often invisible, hard to describe and awkward to talk about. Anna Stansbury, an assistant professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, sought to shed light on class in the US in a recent paper, co-written with Kyra Rodriguez. Th…

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How to cut government debt, with Robin Wigglesworth 28:24

9M ago28:24

28:24

Jamaica’s economy struggled for decades, and at one point it had amassed debts worth more than 140 per cent of GDP. Even the IMF wouldn’t return its calls. But somehow, in the 2010s, it managed to halve its government debt – over just seven years. Today on the show, we ask how they did it, and what lessons Jamaica can teach much larger economies. S…

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What would Trump do on trade? With Alan Beattie 30:53

9M ago30:53

30:53

This campaign, candidate Donald Trump is promising even more extreme versions of the policies that marked his first term. But what would higher, and more widespread, tariffs actually look like? And in what form would any retaliation come? Today on the show, Soumaya and the FT’s senior trade writer Alan Beattie discuss the candidate’s campaign promi…

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Is this a winning US economy for the Democrats? With Jared Bernstein 26:38

9M ago26:38

26:38

Jared Bernstein is the chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. Today on the show, Soumaya gets to put him in the hot seat. She grills him about everything from price caps to inflation to the recent jobs numbers. They even get into the mysterious problem of the vibes. Soumaya Keynes writes a column each week for the Financial Times.…

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Do price controls really help with inflation? With Isabella Weber 33:29

9M ago33:29

33:29

When presidential candidate Kamala Harris proposed legislation to ban price gouging, we naturally thought to interview Isabella Weber, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Weber’s paper on the subject lit up economic discussion in the wake of gas and food market disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We…

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Rethinking the AI boom, with Daron Acemoğlu 30:42

10M ago30:42

30:42

Daron Acemoğlu is an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. Today on the show, he and Soumaya discuss artificial intelligence and productivity growth, querying how and why AI will change the trajectory of the world economy, and…

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Who is winning the chip wars? With Chris Miller 33:35

10M ago33:35

33:35

Computer chips power toys and control nuclear reactors. They are in phones, cars and planes, getting us to work and keeping us safe. And they are at the centre of a growing tech war between the US and China, with many other players. Governments around the world are throwing money at industry and erecting barriers to trade, trying desperately to ons…

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How much cash would it take to quit your job? With Pilita Clark and Mouhcine Guettabi 32:07

10M ago32:07

32:07

How much would it take for you to retire? The question is fun to think about, but also central to a serious conversation happening in economics about the cost and wisdom of a universal basic income. Today on the show, Soumaya is joined by FT editor and columnist Pilita Clark to discuss basic income, and an interview Soumaya did with Mouhcine Guetta…