The New Economist explains economics and policy from the evidence up, for readers who want to know what the research actually shows rather than what the argument requires.
Why this exists
Economic news tells you what happened. Academic research tells you why, and whether the explanation survives contact with the data. The first is fast but shallow; the second is rigorous but slow, jargon-heavy and usually behind a paywall.
This site sits in the gap. Every piece starts from a question a reasonable person might ask, answers it from the best available evidence, and says plainly where economists genuinely disagree.
What you will find here
- Explainers — how a mechanism actually works, written to stay accurate for years.
- The Evidence — reviews of what the research shows on a contested question, with an explicit confidence rating.
- Data — how to read the official statistics properly, and what the latest releases mean.
The confidence ratings
Evidence reviews carry a rating so you know how much weight the conclusion can bear: strong where findings replicate across designs and settings; moderate where the direction is clear but the magnitude is not; mixed where credible studies reach different conclusions; and contested where the evidence base is too thin or too disputed to support a confident answer.