Economics

Starr Gilmartin, 63, lives with her husband in Trenton, Maine. She’s a social worker in this rural town of about 1,500 near Bar Harbor. Gilmartin uses telehealth technology to help psychiatrists evaluate their patients. At Northern Light Acadia Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Bangor about a 35-mile drive from Trenton, she connects by video conference to patients and psychiatrists sometimes based in other parts of the country.

As Americans begin to practice social distancing in response to the coronavirus pandemic — staying home, teleworking in some cases — small businesses are already starting to feel the pinch.

Across news outlets and social media, many stories this past week have focused on panic buying — and officials pleading with people not to panic buy. Customers have stocked up on essentials, particularly toilet paper and hand sanitizer, out of fear that the coronavirus pandemic will deplete supermarket supply chains.

As a novel coronavirus spreads in China and to other countries, research remains limited on the global economic consequences of the outbreak. Here’s what we know so far.

A novel coronavirus is affecting countries in every habitable continent, with recent shocks to oil prices only the latest wrinkle in the unfolding outbreak.

No matter the direction, up or down, when the Federal Reserve adjusts its headline interest rate, the global economy moves. Eight times a year, journalists, analysts and investors around the world carefully monitor the Fed’s arcane statements for hints of where the economy is heading.

What’s the Fed?

If you work for a boss who has all the emotional intelligence of a computer, consider that someday your boss might actually be a computer. That’s not a dystopic fantasy – for some workers, it’s reality.

New research in Science Advances breaks down the policy issues on which political conservatives and liberals think in zero-sum terms — a black-and-white view of the world where there are only winners and losers.