Author: MJE

Written by Jinwook Lee As the 2022 Winter Olympics kicked off in Beijing on February 4th, a mere 6 months after the end of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, thousands of athletes from all over the globe anxiously awaited their chance to prove their prowess to the world. However, Covid-19 looms over the prospects…

Written by Manasvi Parikh The economic sector hit the hardest by the COVID pandemic has been the tourism industry (UNWTO). In 2019, tourism, along with being “the third-largest export category (after fuels and chemicals)… accounted for 7% of global trade” (UNWTO). Ten percent of jobs around the world rely on tourism and within a year,…

Written by Virginia Baumgarten Every year, over 10 million international travelers, typically from North America and Europe, travel abroad to volunteer in impoverished communities (The Guardian, 2021). Students, youth groups, and other well-intended participants construct buildings, assist at orphanages, and pursue other short-term development projects in an effort to give back. Yet, to what extent…

Written by Oscar Soberg The Economics of Supertall Buildings Since the first skyscraper was erected in Chicago in 1884, it seems buildings have only gotten taller and more complex. These modern feats of engineering and design appear to defy nature as they soar up into the sky, and well beyond the clouds. Professionally named “supertall…

Source: Unsplash Written by Holly Teeters The recent COP26 in Glasgow has turned international attention towards climate change mitigation and the promise of cooperation. While many were hopeful that Glasgow would enforce stricter policies to have a fighting chance at remaining under 1.5 degrees celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, various political interests have once again…

(An aerial view of an apartment cluster in Songpa District, Seoul, taken by Yonhap News)  Written by Austin Moon Many Koreans remember a time when they would laugh at comedians joking about soul-crushing housing prices, poking fun at the South Korean government’s inability to deter its seemingly unstoppable upward trend. After five years, more than…

Photo Source: Politico Written by Hadin Sayed When Kabul fell to the Taliban, the international media relentlessly covered the implications of the Talibanization of Afghanistan. However, an overlooked aspect of the Taliban Resurgence is the effect on Afghanistan’s opium market, the largest in the world. Immediately after taking control of Afghanistan, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid proclaimed,…

Written by William Fitzpatrick Across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, a peculiar trend is emerging in recent architectural projects: they are made almost entirely out of wood. But they’re not just any wooden buildings, they’re skyscrapers. In the past, most architectural advancements have been focused on design, but with the climate crisis looming closer by the…

Written by Manasvi Parikh The United Nations climate conference, COP26, took place in Glasgow, Scotland from October 31 to November 12, 2021, and many global leaders were in attendance, including the U.S. President, Joe Biden, and India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Some global leaders are absent from the conference, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and…

Written by Elizabeth Davis Most people, when asked about the root causes of economic disasters, would answer in terms of market crashes, inflation, or rapid output growth; not often would they suggest the falsification of economic reports. Yet errors that occur in the reporting of data, a seemingly trivial aspect of economics, have the potential…