https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. We may already live in the post-truth world, but are we about to enter the era of post-truth statistics? https://phys.org/news/2025-08-truth-world-economic-anymore.html Economics & Business Wed, 27 Aug 2025 09:37:05 EDT news675506222 As prices rose across the globe following the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, many expected the usual pattern, i.e., low-income households bearing the brunt of inflation. But in South Korea, they observed something exactly opposite to the usual scenario. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-reveals-middle-class-families-hardest.html Social Sciences Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:51:04 EDT news671212261 The back-and-forth shift in climate policy between the Biden and Trump administrations has created uncertainty about future directions related to addressing climate change. A new study in International Studies of Economics has examined the impact of climate policy uncertainty on world energy stock returns. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-climate-policy-uncertainty-affect-energy.html Economics & Business Wed, 23 Apr 2025 03:10:01 EDT news664465382 When the wholesale prices of essential goods like food or oil suddenly rise, it can cause deep shifts in the economy that upend trade balances and hike inflation rates. This is known as a commodity price boom. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-windfalls-commodity-price-booms-exporters.html Economics & Business Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:19:03 EDT news663434341 Food fraud occurs when products that do not meet consumer expectations reach the market and, in extreme cases, this can lead to health problems. To combat this misleading and critical practice in the food sector, a team from the University of Barcelona has published new studies presenting technologies to verify the geographical origin of two food products: virgin olive oil—emblematic of the Mediterranean diet—and pine nuts, the most expensive nuts on the market. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-advances-food-fraud-consumption-virgin.html Biochemistry Mon, 24 Mar 2025 16:32:18 EDT news662052735 There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-inflation-recession-years-nz.html Economics & Business Fri, 26 Apr 2024 08:52:03 EDT news633340321 As a successful harvesting season yielding several hundred tons of lavender oil wraps up in Bulgaria—the world's top producer—the industry's future looks more gray than purple. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-bulgaria-lavender-oil-makers-eu.html Agriculture Sun, 27 Aug 2023 02:20:01 EDT news612320759 For more than six decades, Alaska's North Slope has been a focus of intense controversy over oil development and wilderness protection, with no end in sight. Willow field, a 600-million-barrel, US$8 billion oil project recently approved by the Biden administration—to the outrage of environmental and climate activists—is the latest chapter in that long saga. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-willow-arctic-oil-drilling-projectthe.html Environment Fri, 17 Mar 2023 12:50:04 EDT news598275066 Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year caused oil and gas prices to surge, triggering a cost of living crisis in many countries, including the UK. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-energy-companies-profit-uk-windfall.html Economics & Business Thu, 09 Feb 2023 09:46:04 EST news595158361 The European Union has just approved new sanctions against Russia, including a price cap on oil sales, following the United States' Sept. 30 announcement of new economic sanctions. Both announcements are in response to Russia's annexation of four regions of Ukraine. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-sanctions-russia-decreasing-revenue.html Economics & Business Wed, 19 Oct 2022 16:42:03 EDT news585416521 In the midst of today's cost of living crisis, many people who are critical of the idea of economic growth see an opportunity. In their recent book The Future is Degrowth, for example, prominent advocates Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan and Andrea Vetter argue that the post-COVID inflation has predominantly been caused by the inherent instability in the capitalist system. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-anti-environmental-favor-economic-growth.html Economics & Business Thu, 15 Sep 2022 11:20:39 EDT news582459636 In the U.K., it now costs more than £100 to fill up a typical family car with petrol, and oil prices could rise even further. But are such high prices for fossil fuels a bad thing? While attention is focused on measures to tackle the global cost of living crisis, there has been much less focus on a very uncomfortable truth—that solving the climate crisis requires fossil fuel prices for consumers to stay high forever. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-high-fossil-fuel-prices-good.html Economics & Business Thu, 16 Jun 2022 09:20:01 EDT news574589632 Were you a teenager in the 1970s when gasoline got costlier and later found yourself driving less? If yes, you may be part of a generation whose "later-life travel behavior" was shaped by gas price shocks in its formative years, according to a research paper titled "Formative Experiences and the Price of Gasoline" by Christopher Severen, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Arthur van Benthem, Wharton professor of business economics and public policy. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-price-years-scar-consumption-life.html Social Sciences Tue, 24 May 2022 11:42:03 EDT news572611321 Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden ordered the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the country's petroleum stockpile for the next six months. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-nation-petroleum-reserve.html Economics & Business Mon, 18 Apr 2022 10:20:01 EDT news569495632 Inflation continued to soar in February, with a key measure hitting a 40-year high, according to federal data released Thursday. Driven by higher energy costs, gasoline in particular, the Consumer Price Index rose 7.9 percent, compared to a year ago. In recent months Americans had already seen prices for food, fuel, rent, cars, and other goods surge due in part to pandemic labor shortages and supply-chain bottlenecks, and analysts now are warning that Russia's invasion of Ukraine will likely drive energy and other costs even higher. (The February report doesn't yet reflect fallout from the attack, which was launched near the end of the month.) The Gazette spoke with Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy Jason Furman about the state of the economy and what consumers can expect in the coming weeks. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-harvard-economist-inflation.html Economics & Business Fri, 11 Mar 2022 09:30:00 EST news566213396 Fracking, or the extraction of oil and gas from shale rock formations, is suddenly more attractive with the surge in oil prices fueled by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The conflict threatens disruption of natural gas flows from Ukraine to Europe, while oil companies with interests in Russia could be caught in the crossfire of sanctions by the U.S. and European countries. A recent research paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere titled "A World Equilibrium Model of the Oil Market" makes the business case for fracking as a viable mitigating factor to soften the impact of oil and gas price shocks. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-fracking-cushion-oil-price.html Economics & Business Fri, 04 Mar 2022 07:29:07 EST news565601344 Far from emerging from the COVID shock awash with fuel, as might be expected after an economic slowdown, the world is entering a new energy crisis the like of which hasn't been seen since the 1970s. https://phys.org/news/2021-10-suddenly-middle-global-energy-crisis.html Economics & Business Tue, 12 Oct 2021 08:24:54 EDT news553245891 Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute (Somerville and Seattle, U.S.) and Earth Track, Inc. (Cambridge, MA, U.S.) examined 16 subsidies and environmental regulatory exemptions, providing one of the first estimates of how government subsidies will affect investment decisions for new gas fields in the coming decade. Their results are published on 29 July 2021 in the IOP Publishing journal, Environmental Research Letters. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-subsidies-boost-profits-oil-gas.html Environment Thu, 29 Jul 2021 05:39:30 EDT news546755965 As Covid-19 spread around the world, stock markets in individual countries took a major hit—yet stock markets in China where the disease first struck avoided significant falls—researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software found. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-covid-stock-country.html Economics & Business Mon, 17 May 2021 15:06:15 EDT news540482767 The US Department of the Interior approved oil and gas drilling on Monday in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). https://phys.org/news/2020-08-interior-dept-oil-drilling-arctic.html Environment Mon, 17 Aug 2020 14:11:57 EDT news516892313 As we begin to engage with the climate emergency and the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, calls have grown to stop investing in companies engaged in fossil fuel production—a practice known as divestment. https://phys.org/news/2020-06-combating-climate-changewhy-investors-fossil.html Environment Mon, 29 Jun 2020 10:30:01 EDT news512644766 In the past few weeks, oil prices have fallen to record lows. This development was not predicted by the Hotelling rule, an equation proposed in 1931 that remains central to the economics of natural resources today. In an article published on 7 May 2020 in the Canadian Journal of Economics, economists Roberto Ferreira da Cunha, of the Berkeley Research Group, and Antoine Missemer, of the CNRS, present the results of a groundbreaking historical survey of documents from Harold Hotelling's archives. They show that in fact this 'rule' was not designed to investigate energy markets. More generally, their study questions the theoretical instruments used to address energy and environmental issues. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-century-key-tool-economics-natural.html Economics & Business Mon, 11 May 2020 09:52:32 EDT news508409551 U.S. oil prices plummeted below zero at the close of market Monday, a historic first for the commodity. As dwindling demand caused by COVID-19 shutdowns pushed storage facilities to their brink, the price per a barrel dropped to negative $37.63 for May's future contracts. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-oil-price-plummets.html Economics & Business Wed, 22 Apr 2020 10:40:02 EDT news506769344 Measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus have reduced the demand for fuel and slashed oil prices. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the chief long-term cause of climate warming, have slid perhaps by one-fifth and pollution is down, but can we expect COVID-19 to create lasting change in reversing global warming? https://phys.org/news/2020-04-economic-impact-covid-climate-harder.html Economics & Business Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:20:02 EDT news506246035 While the coronavirus consumes our attention, a small revolution is underway in energy policy: Texas officials are discussing whether to join hands with OPEC. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-potential-texas-opec-alliance-oil-production.html Economics & Business Fri, 03 Apr 2020 10:17:21 EDT news505127837 Demand for oil has collapsed due to the coronavirus pandemic just as supply is about to strengthen because of a dispute between Russia and Saudi Arabia. As a result, oil prices have sunk to levels not seen since 2002. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-satellites-global-oil.html Earth Sciences Fri, 03 Apr 2020 07:39:38 EDT news505118374 The rampant spread of the coronavirus has turned busy streets worldwide into quiet, abandoned thoroughfares. Few cars and trucks on the road means drastically less fuel is needed as millions of people stay at home. https://phys.org/news/2020-03-expert-coronavirus-economy-shale-knees.html Economics & Business Tue, 31 Mar 2020 07:52:17 EDT news504859936 Today, the Covid-19 pandemic is all anyone can talk about. Societies around the world are coming to a standstill, and concern for most matters other than the coronavirus have been pushed aside. But as we confront the current crisis, can we learn anything that could help us as a country deal with another crisis that is slowly but inexorably coming down the pike—climate change? https://phys.org/news/2020-03-covid-climate.html Environment Fri, 27 Mar 2020 10:00:55 EDT news504522040 Over 12 days at the start of October 2019 eight people were killed, more than 1,300 injured and nearly 1,200 arrested after demonstrations became violent in Ecuador. The demonstrations focused on reversing the ending of fuel subsidies, which had been brought in as part of austerity measures backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The protests only ended when president Lenín Moreno agreed to restore the subsidies. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-environmental-stress-death-chaos.html Environment Thu, 24 Oct 2019 09:40:01 EDT news491126740 The drone strike on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure has highlighted the fragile and interconnected relationship between crude oil supply and the global economy, with new research bringing these economic ties into greater focus. https://phys.org/news/2019-09-oil-futures-volatility-economy.html Economics & Business Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:13:29 EDT news488193201