economics + business

I started covering business and economics at Reuters as a graduate trainee, rotating on a number of desks before settling in as a shipping and energy reporter. After writing “Fast Forward,” on the growing role of women in the global economy, I worked at The Wall Street Journal as an economics reporter, covering the national economy with a focus on the labor market.

For The New Yorker:

– A new breed of entrepreneurs, backed by a flood of venture capital and private equity funds, is transforming the fertility industry, marking a shift from treating infertility to “selling fertility” in the form of preemptive procedures such as egg and sperm freezing.

For The New York Times:

– New Zealand’s radical, subversive approach to closing the gender pay gap relies on the idea of “comparable worth,” which means asking — what is women’s work really worth? And how do we decide?
– The city of Boston wants to prove it can close the gender pay gap entirely with a multi-pronged approach. Here’s how it’s going about it.

For Reuters:

– The glut of domestic oil has turned around America’s quirky shipping market, leading to record prices for charters.
– I uncovered a discreet attempt by Morgan Stanley to launch a natural gas export plant in Texas.
– That’s despite the bank (and others) being under scrutiny by the Federal Reserve for its commodity activities.

For The Wall Street Journal:

– The hard data behind the much-hyped “gig economy” shows it is still a tiny part of the gigantic U.S. labor market.
– Tori Johnson had been temping on a Nissan assembly line for months, earning half as much as the full-time employees next to her. She’s an example of how growth of the so-called “gig economy” is mostly a function of outsourcing and subcontracting of formerly “good” jobs.
– Rising hurdles to economic mobility are emerging in the nursing profession, once a solid route to the middle class.
– As women become a growing share of organized labor, they could change what unions bargain for.

For The Progressive:

– New York City’s suspension schools, where high-school students can spend up to 90 days (half an academic year!) serving out disciplinary sentences, tends to put them behind in their studies and more likely to move through the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

For Artsy:

– It sure seems like only rich kids can afford to work in the art world.
– Urban theorist Richard Florida talked to me about why the most creative cities are the most unequal.
– I explain why old women – like Carmen Herrera, triple-digit old – have become the art world’s darlings in recent years.
– Here’s how legendary New York dealer Jeffrey Deitch seamlessly married the worlds of art and finance.