Experts
Daniel Altman
Chief Economist, Big Think
Recent Activity
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Are the financial markets rational? It's a tough claim to make as share prices and bond yields zoom up and down during a single day, hour, or even second, sometimes without any obvious reasons. Yet for the first time in human history, the markets may be approaching the ideal of rationality that ... Read More
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What's the big deal about J.P. Morgan's $2 billion trading loss? Austan Goolsbee, an economic advisor to President Obama, said the American public should be concerned because, in his words, it owned a life insurance policy on a guy who just got into a motorcycle accident without a helmet. But I ... Read More
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What will the world look like without a single superpower setting the rules? That's the question that Ian Bremmer, the political risk expert, tries to answer in his new book, "Every Nation for Itself". Bremmer's focus is as much on politics as economics, but I think he has some useful insights ... Read More
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Last week Nick Bunkley wrote an article for The New York Times called "Payoff for Efficient Cars Takes Years". His main contention was that "the added cost of the fuel-efficient technologies is so high that it would take the average driver many years — in some cases more than a decade — to save ... Read More
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Can economic relationships affect a dictator? Seven years ago, I wrote an article from Damascus about how the European Union was trying to cultivate economic ties with Syria, a country that the United States had labeled a state sponsor of terrorism. Today, those efforts seem to have been futile ... Read More
About Daniel Altman
Daniel Altman is an economist and writer. Born in Connecticut, he studied economics at Harvard long enough to receive a doctorate. Rather than stay in the ivory tower, he became the London-based economics correspondent of The Economist. He next joined The New York Times as one of the youngest-ever members of its editorial board and later wrote economic commentary for the business section. He soon returned to London to become an economic advisor in the British government, dealing with crime, immigration, and illicit drugs. His next position was as the global economics columnist of the International Herald Tribune, with stints in Buenos Aires, Damascus, and Hong Kong.
In 2008, he left journalism to write "Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy" and become a practitioner in the field of international development. With four friends from graduate school, he founded North Yard Economics, a not-for-profit consulting firm serving governments and non-governmental organizations in developing countries. Upon his return to New York, he began teaching economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and became director of thought leadership at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a strategic consulting firm exclusively focused on raising living standards in developing countries and addressing global challenges. He lives in New York City.
Altman is a Big Think Delphi Fellow.