Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
  • “A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

AI Summary. Global fertility has fallen below replacement level, meaning population will peak at roughly 9 billion around 2056 and then decline, driven by large existing generations masking the underlying shortfall in births.

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Patrick Norrick University of Pennsylvania
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The UN appears to systematically overestimate births; e.g. 33 of 37 countries with high-quality statistics registered fewer births in 2024 than the UN had forecast. Fernández-Villaverde and Norrick infer humanity is below replacement fertility in 2026.

Will declining birth rates eventually shrink the global economy?

Core argument: Global fertility has fallen below replacement level as of 2026, ending humanity’s ability to sustain long-run population stability without a reversal in trends.

In Table A1 we compare the World Population Prospects (WPP) estimates of births in 2022-2023 with the official numbers reported by several countries. [A2 shows the full sample with the deviations.] As of 2026, humanity is likely to be below the replacement fertility level: we are having fewer births than we need to keep population constant in the long run. This astonishing fact does not mean that population has stopped growing. Because of momentum effects (the large cohorts of women born two or three decades ago are having their children now, and their own parents have not died yet), world population will keep growing for another 30 years or so. But unless trends change, it will peak at roughly 9 billion around 2056 and then start falling, first slowly, then fast.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Global fertility has fallen below replacement level as of 2026, ending humanity’s ability to sustain long-run population stability without a reversal in trends.
  2. Population momentum—driven by large cohorts of women now in peak childbearing years—will sustain growth for roughly 30 more years before world population peaks at approximately 9 billion around 2056 and begins declining.

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AI Summary. US greenhouse gas emissions are projected to fall 27–41% below 2005 levels by 2040, with the range driven by whether clean energy cost competitiveness accelerates decarbonization or policy rollbacks reverse two decades of emissions progress.

Hannah Kolus, Ben King, Parker Case, Michael Gaffney, et al. Rhodium Group
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Rhodium projects that under current policy, US GHG emissions will be 26–29% under the 2005 level in four years, driven by an influx of natural gas and renewable production. Their forecast for 2040 is 27-41% below the 2005 level.

Will clean energy cost cuts or policy reversals determine America's emissions path?

The US is on track to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 27-41% below 2005 levels in 2040, considering all relevant federal and state policies on the books as of June 2026. These emissions outcomes represent divergent futures after the late 2020s. In the high-emissions scenario, the emissions reductions that have characterized the last 20 years slow through the early 2030s before reversing direction altogether, with growing emissions through most of that decade. In the low-emissions case, the economic competitiveness of clean technologies relative to fossil incumbents, alongside an imperative for “speed-to-power” for large loads, continues—and accelerates—GHG emission declines through 2040.

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AI Summary. Population forecasts are dominated by model choice, not parameter uncertainty, with model selection accounting for up to 98% of output variance across projections. Different modeling approaches produce wildly divergent outcomes—from under 4bn to over 15bn people by 2075—making demographic projections tools for exploring possibilities rather than reliable predictions.

Samuele Lo Piano, Marta Kuc-Czarnecka, Roger Pielke, and Andrea Saltelli Social Science Research Network
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Simulation of the decision chain yielding projections of world population in 2050 that range from 6 to 14B suggests most of the variance in demographic forecasts arises not from parameter uncertainty or data randomness but from model choice.

How much do demographic models actually predict versus explore?

Core argument: Model choice accounts for 98% of output variance in 2050 global population projections, driving divergent forecasts ranging from 4–25 billion.

We explore demographic predictions by propagating all plausible choices that can be made during the analysis through the modelling process. This approach involves navigating the so-called ’garden of forking paths’—mimicking in silico what would happen if multiple investigators were to examine the same problem. For this, we now abandon [the Chinese government mathematician] Song Jian’s ‘historic’ model and turn to models currently in use: the Cohort-Component and UN WPP models, the Lee-Carter model and the Lotka-Volterra model. Note that in standard use, these tools are used in isolation, see e.g. the FAO’s How to Feed the World in 2050, resting on a single UN WPP population trajectory shielding the reader from the compounding effect of their uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, the exercise capturing the modelling of the modelling process for global population projections to 2050 and 2075 reveals distinct characteristics regarding the sensitivity and projection outcomes of the different models. Once abandoned the straitjacket of Song’s approach, uncertainty is free to manifest itself. The overall uncertainty distributions of the projected populations show a wide range of possible outcomes, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in demographic projections.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Model choice accounts for 98% of output variance in 2050 global population projections, driving divergent forecasts ranging from 4–25 billion.
  2. Song Jian’s optimization model converges to 700 million people by 2080 across all parameter variations (670–700 million range), demonstrating structural.
  3. Global fertility declined from 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.1 currently, with no rebound in countries where rates.

Related Articles:

  • The Demographic Future of Humanity: Facts and Consequences — The world’s 2024 total fertility rate (TFR) was likely ~2.17, below the replacement rate of 2.21, notes Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, intensifying…
  • World Depopulation: Prospects and Implications — Nicholas Eberstadt @AEIecon argues that given its relatively high fertility rate relative to both East Asia and Europe, the US is primed to be the…
  • Take the Under — .@RogerPielkeJr argues that more realistic projections of global population and GDP growth suggest that “even partial future policy successes could more easily…

AI Summary. Record-warm sea temperatures accelerate global air temperature rise and intensify extreme weather events including fires, floods, and droughts.

Attracta Mooney Financial Times
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April’s global ocean temperatures rose to their second-highest level on record, suggesting a brewing El Niño warming cycle. April temperatures were just shy of their level in 2024, which was also an El Niño year.

How Do Rising Sea Temperatures Impact Extreme Weather Events?

Core argument: Global non-polar ocean temperatures reached 21°C in April, nearly matching the 21.04°C record from April 2024, driving intensified El Niño.

Sea temperatures around the world were the second highest on record for the month of April, stoking concerns among scientists that an El Niño warming cycle is brewing that would intensify extreme weather. The naturally occurring El Niño weather phenomenon, where water temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become significantly warmer, temporarily accelerates the rise in global air temperature, resulting in the spread of fires, floods and droughts. The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported record sea-surface temperatures across much of the tropical Pacific in April, while the global average for non-polar oceans reached 21°C [69.8°F]— just shy of the 21.04°C [69.9°F] record set in April 2024 during the last El Niño event.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Global non-polar ocean temperatures reached 21°C in April, nearly matching the 21.04°C record from April 2024, driving intensified El Niño.
  2. Tropical Pacific sea-surface temperatures hit record levels in April per Copernicus data, signaling an emerging El Niño cycle that results.

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  • Fighting Words: The Energy Transition in 2026 — As measured by useful final energy consumption in 2024, nuclear provided 6% of America’s 44.5 exajoules, renewables 9%, and fossil fuels 85%. The corresponding…

Kevin Kuruc Aspen Economic Strategy Group
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Kuruc argues fertility changes reduce population far too slowly to affect near-term climate goals – particularly reducing carbon emissions. Further, smaller and older populations will mean greater fiscal constraints on environmental initiatives.

The reason that low fertility will not reduce long-run climate change is simple: timing. The timelines over which the world is aiming to substantially curtail emissions do not line up with the timelines over which fertility impacts the size of the population. It is too late for changes in fertility to make a large difference in population sizes this century, and by the end of this century, it will be too late for population changes to make a large difference to eventual warming. A large majority of the people who will be alive in 2050—a focal year in climate discussions—have already been born. Demographic projections expect that about 75% of the United States population in 2050 will be over the age of 24, and hence, born prior to 2026 (United Nations 2024). Even an immediate change in fertility can only affect the 25 percent of the population pyramid that has not yet been born, implying that, for example, a 10% decline in births would produce only a 2.5% decline in the size of the overall 2050 population. Moreover, these missing individuals would be mostly children—too young to have entered the workforce, when their income, consumption, and emissions peak. So, any realistic decline in near-term births would have a trivial impact on mid-century emissions.

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  • Three Tough Truths About Climate — Noting that over the past decade global CO2 emissions projected by the IEA have fallen by more than 40%, Bill Gates argues innovation will likely “give us the…
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Eva Xiao and Lee Harris Financial Times
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$100B of the $127B total global insured losses due to natural disasters in 2025 were in the US, according to an Aon report, ~$58B of which were caused by the Los Angeles fires. Overall global economic losses from disasters in 2025 totaled $260B.

Global insured losses of more than $127bn from natural disasters were dominated by more than $100bn occurring in the US in 2025 after the Los Angeles fires, according to a new industry report on climate and other extreme events. Overall global economic losses stemming from disasters, including thunderstorms and earthquakes, totalled about $260bn, according to the review by insurance broker Aon. But more than half of those losses remain not covered by insurance, highlighting the persistence of inadequate coverage in emerging markets, it said. “Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and unpredictable, affecting new geographies and sectors, and challenging long-held assumptions about resilience,” wrote Greg Case, Aon chief executive. “Weather exposures are rising,” he noted. Insured losses from climate disasters were 27% higher than the long-term average since 2000.

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Tom Fairless and Max Colchester Wall Street Journal
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High energy costs due to carbon reduction goals are driving deindustrialization in Europe. The mean electrical price for heavy industries in the EU is ~2x that of the U.S. and ~1.5x that of China.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30% from 2005 levels, compared with a 17% drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent. Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

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Bill Gates GatesNotes
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Noting that over the past decade global CO2 emissions projected by the IEA have fallen by more than 40%, Bill Gates argues innovation will likely “give us the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions.”

Ten years ago, the International Energy Agency predicted that by 2040, the world would be emitting 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. Now, just a decade later, the IEA’s forecast has dropped to 30 billion, and it’s projecting that 2050 emissions will be even lower. Even if the world takes only moderate action to curb climate change, the current consensus is that by 2100 the Earth’s average temperature will probably be between 2°C and 3°C higher than it was in 1850. That’s well above the 1.5°C goal that countries committed to at the Paris COP in 2015. In fact, between now and 2040, we are going to fall far short of the world’s climate goals. One reason is that the world’s demand for energy is going up—more than doubling by 2050. Although wind and solar have gotten cheaper and better, we don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions. But we will have the tools we need if we focus on innovation. With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale. Add in the impact of the tools we already have, and by the middle of this century emissions will be lower and the gap between poor countries and rich countries will be greatly reduced.

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