A centrally planned economy is one where the government—not markets—sets production

The Bretton Woods economic order was built on Keynesian principles

Keynesian economics suggests that governments should actively manage economies to prevent downturns, promote employment, and regulate markets. The Bretton Woods institutions were created based on this belief that coordinated public intervention could prevent the economic crises of the 1930s.

Understanding the differences between capitalism and socialism

The two economic systems are rarely found in their pure form. Capitalism emphasizes private property, capital accumulation, and limited government regulation, while socialism favors government control of production to meet the needs of everyone rather than to generate profit. Most economies are a mix of both.

An overview of monopolies, when one company controls an entire market

In the business world, a monopoly exists when one company controls the entire market. Regulators take issue with monopolies because they have been found to limit consumer choices, raise prices, and hurt competition.

John Maynard Keynes was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century

Keynes influenced economic thought by arguing that governments should spend to stabilize economies during downturns. His ideas shaped the postwar international order and remain central to modern economic policy debates.

British economist John Maynard Keynes originally proposed a global currency called the bancor.

What something costs is reflective of a balance in the market determined by the amount of demand relative to the supply of goods and services

Because economies are complex systems, a wide variety of issues influence this balance—including some things generally considered to be positive, like rising wages.

Watch Ray Dalio explain how the economy works

Dalio describes the economy as a machine that runs on three main cycles: productivity growth, the short-term debt cycle, and the long-term debt cycle. Dalio says layering these three cycles on top of each other essentially creates a template for understanding changes in the economy.

OPEC can roll out production cuts among its members to control oil’s global supply and price

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created to coordinate and unify petroleum policies to secure fair and stable prices. During the pandemic, for instance, the organization pushed through production cuts in an attempt to stabilize prices.

Governments have historically used counterfeiting for economic warfare

Inserting fake currency into an economy can help destabilize it. During the American Revolution, for instance, the British distributed counterfeit “Continental Dollars” in an effort to devalue the currency being used in the US at the time with the goal of undermining America’s growing financial credibility. The Nazis also ran an extensive counterfeiting scheme during WWII.

A 'bilateral monopoly' occurs when there's one supplier and one buyer in a market

Bilateral monopolies are often used to conceptualize labor markets in small towns. Using this concept, large employers have a monopoly over the labor market, while workers have a monopsony as the only available laborers.

Recessions are considered to be inevitable by modern economic standards

Recessions are caused by imbalances in the market and are guaranteed to happen in capitalist systems, but predicting them is a complex task.

A gold standard is a system in which a country’s currency is pegged to, and can be converted into, a fixed amount of gold

In principle, this provides price stability as the amount of gold (and therefore the value of the currency) is limited, but also restricts the ability to modulate the money supply during economic downturns.

A list of the world's top 25 economies by GDP

Gross domestic product estimates the value of goods and services produced in a country, typically through the expenditure method, which adds up spending by consumers, investors and governments with the value of exports. The top five economies are the US, China, Germany, Japan and India.

OPEC often intervenes to influence the price of oil

This guide explains how investing in oil works with in-depth explanations of each of the forces that control oil’s price. Oil is unique as a commodity in part because of OPEC’s role in regulating its price.

Modern Monetary Theory 101

Modern Monetary Theory is a macroeconomic theory that says government spending should not be restrained by fears of rising debt. Here's a breakdown of how the theory works.

Utility companies are often considered 'natural' monopolies, which occur in industries where the upfront costs of entering the market are high, making competition unrealistic.

In a 'K-shaped' economy, higher earners' spending rises while lower earners' spending stagnates or decreases.

In the wake of the Great Depression, a Russian-American economist named Simon Kuznets popularized the formula for gross domestic product to summarize the health of the economy and provide the American government with a metric to track growth.

Soviet control spread across Eastern Europe after WWII

In the late 1940s, the USSR solidified control over Eastern Europe by installing pro-communist regimes in countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania—often through rigged elections and political repression.

The global economy runs on US dollars, with nearly 90% of international trade in 2019 being processed in US dollars.

Raising interest rates can help control inflation

While controlling a complex and dynamic economy is difficult, interest rates—more specifically, the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight—are a powerful tool. Generally, raising the rate makes purchases more expensive and cools an overheated economy.

Learn how governments around the world restrict internet access for their citizens

Various countries around the world, including China, Russia, and Iran, control their local DNS infrastructure, allowing them to block access to online content by preventing the internet "phone book" from finding the IP addresses for specific URLs. Government-controlled internet service providers can also cut off access entirely or throttle specific traffic.

US inflation can generally be split into to two periods—before and after the Federal Reserve

A central bank itself does not mean significant inflation will occur, but economists generally point to factors like two world wars and the printing of money to finance the US federal deficit as primary drivers of price increases.

How chaos helps explain why small market corrections can produce major economic instability

Oxford University complex systems professor Doyne Farmer discusses how predictions from many economic models are overly weighted toward simple relationships, such as supply and demand, and external shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, real-world macroeconomic systems involve public and private actors interacting, producing feedback loops and cascading effects that resemble the oscillatory behavior seen in chaotic systems.

Watch how American monopolies used vertical and horizontal integration strategies to command markets

Vertical integration occurs when a company controls the entire manufacturing or development process, whereas horizontal integration involves expanding a company's market share. Both strategies have been used by US monopolies to establish dominance in markets.

No institution wields more power in US finance than the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US—but opinion polls indicate that most Americans don't know what it does.

US state economies compared to entire countries

This map compares US state economies by their gross domestic product to that of a similarly sized country. For instance, California has the largest state economy in the US, with a GDP nearly equal to that of India, the fifth-largest economy in the world. Click here to see how the rest of the states compare.

Harry Dexter White outmaneuvered Keynes to make the dollar the center of the new global monetary system

The chief US Treasury economist at the conference, White, advocated for a dollar-centered exchange rate system over Keynes' competing idea of a new global currency, shaping the postwar economic order for decades.

Ranking the world’s economies: 1980 vs. 2025

The US remains the world’s largest economy, having increased its annual gross domestic product from $2.9T in 1980 to $30.6T in 2025. In 1980, China ranked seventh globally with a GDP of $304B. In 2025, China ranked second with a GDP of $19.4T.

Visual Capitalist shows the top 50 countries by central bank reserves

As of 2024, China, Japan, and the United States held the top three spots in terms of the value of their respective central bank reserves.

Arguments for returning to a gold standard reappear from time to time

However, critics argue that globalization has made the gold standard impractical for modern economies, as it limits a nation’s ability to have a flexible monetary policy—hence, none of today's governments have a gold standard.

Learn more about the four main market structures

In modern economic theory, there are four main market structures. Under each market structure, firms (or businesses) have differing levels of competition and reach different levels of price efficiency based on the consumer's willingness to pay for a product or service.

Consumer spending accounts for 70% of America's gross domestic product.

Central bank independence is correlated with lower inflation on average

Executives may seek to influence the central bank to reduce interest rates for political points. Since its creation in the early 20th century, the US' Federal Reserve saw the most interactions from the president during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Adam Smith’s 'The Wealth of Nations' introduced concepts like division of labor, productivity, and free markets

Published in 1776, "The Wealth of Nations" is an influential economic work that laid the foundation for modern economic theory. Smith argued for limited government intervention and touted the benefits of self-regulating markets.

Feudal landholding organized medieval Europe’s economy without relying on slavery

From the 10th to 13th centuries, Europe’s agricultural system relied on localized hierarchies. Lords granted land to knights for defense, who in turn mainly oversaw free peasants paying rents in labor, goods, or money rather than living under slavery.

Political science professors say dystopias are defined by government coercion

Shauna Shames and Amy Atchison, two political science professors and the authors of "Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics,” argue that defining a real-world dystopia depends on whether a government is using coercion to protect its citizens or to control them. Shames and Atchison seek to provide a more nuanced understanding of the word “dystopia,” one they note they began hearing more and more as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed.

The Soviet Union explained

From 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union spanned one-sixth of Earth’s landmass and housed nearly 300 million people. As the most significant test of Marxist governance, it sat at the center of the century’s defining struggle between capitalism and communism.

All-you-can-eat buffets are a practical demonstration of economic ideas

Economists have noticed some restaurant goers prefer a flat pricing model despite it usually being more expensive than per-dish costs. The strategy behind endless servings includes concepts such as economy of scale, cross-subsidization, diminishing returns (of enjoyment of excess food), and more.

Modern monetary theory argues that governments can spend more without worrying about debt.

Early Americans hated the idea of a central bank

After a series of economic panics induced by a lack of reserve cash at regional banks, the architects of today’s Federal Reserve opted to emphasize the goal of the bank as a reserve at the federal level—thus creating the lasting name.

Embargoes and economic mismanagement have pushed Cuba into its worst crisis in decades

For more than 60 years, Cuba has been pressured by two forces—the US economic embargo and its own government's repression and mismanagement. NPR's Throughline podcast explains how both contributed to today's blackouts, food shortages, and mass exodus.

Lenin’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” meant power held by workers, not elites

Lenin argued that capitalism concentrated power in a small ruling class, and only transferring authority to industrial workers could eliminate exploitation and class hierarchy. This five-minute explainer outlines how he envisioned that revolutionary shift.

Interest rates have historically been an indicator of the US economy's overall health.

Visualize the global supply chain of medicine, which may begin with basic research in the US, but outsource intermediate steps.

COVID-19's shock to employment rates sparked some economists to fear deflation

COVID-19 simultaneously disrupted the supply chain and the labor market. Since the unemployment rate had hit record highs, some economists were worried that the supply chain would recover before the labor market. If that had happened, businesses would have been producing goods, but no one would have been able to buy them because they wouldn't have the disposable income to do so.

During COVID-19, the Fed made drastic moves in attempts to shore up the US economy called quantitative easing

The Fed took an aggressive approach to help the US economy during COVID-19 beyond standard monetary levers, including broad purchases of mortgage-backed securities, Treasury securities, and more.

The role stories play in mass economic trends like bitcoin, crashes

Economics is dominated by numbers, but stories play a huge role in the emotional shifts seen within macroeconomic trends. For example, bitcoin is not just a cost-benefit winner, but a compelling tale of decentralization and independence. This is a 20-minute summary of Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Shiller's "Narrative Economics."

Listen to a podcast episode that outlines 250 years of world trade history.

Learn about what causes economic bubbles, including how forces like cheap credit, soaring optimism, and feedback loops push asset prices far beyond fundamentals—until a single shock triggers panic, selling, and a rapid collapse.