Karl Muth

Karl Muth is a commentator, economist, and legal academic.

His academic interests include the economics of governance, the portability of risk attitudes across domains, risk measurement and mitigation, and other topics. His thoughts on these issues have appeared in a wide range of publications, from The Journal of Private Equity to the Oprah Winfrey Show to the second edition of the academic text Controversies in Globalization.

Karl studied law in the Netherlands and in the United States and holds J.D. and M.B.A. degrees, the latter with a concentration in Economics from The University of Chicago. He earned his M.Phil./Ph.D. from the London School of Economics; his dissertation was entitled “Three Frameworks for Commodity-Producer Decision-Making Under Uncertainty.” Prior to his doctoral work, Karl was an Executive-in-Residence at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and he is currently a Lecturer in Economics, Law, Organizational Behavior, Public Policy, and Statistics at Northwestern University. He divides his time between the United States and Europe.

Post Archive

23 May 2013
This past weekend, I was in Connecticut for my dear friend Michelle’s wedding. Having arrived a day early, we elected to see Clybourne Park (now playing at the lovely and…
09 May 2013
I have often been asked why Africa, after finding a few good leaders in the mid Twentieth Century, has been subjected to a list of terrible leaders. Africa is accused of being the…
17 April 2013
As a believer in the academy as one of the few refuges of meritocracy in Western Civilization, the existence of athletic scholarships has always troubled me. As a matter of policy…
04 April 2013
There are conflicting explanations for why DFID exists. Whether you believe the agency is a financial apology for mismanaged colonialism, a foreign policy tool to exert control…
20 March 2013
The concept of city corporation insolvency (known is municipal bankruptcy in America) is not a new one; it traces its roots back to the financial failure of Roman periphery towns…
27 February 2013
Sixty years ago this month, the first version of Donald Ray Cressey’s landmark treatise on embezzlement was published in Illinois, a state with a colourful history of theft,…
12 February 2013
Karl Muth argues that the Arab Springs hold lessons for the debates over gun ownership that have recently animated American politics. As a consistent advocate and supporter of…
18 January 2013
I argue that there is a movement toward using social, scientific, military, and other public and private resources to advocate in favour of sameness. This is different from…
20 December 2012
The Forbes 400 is a powerful thing.  It is an annual list of the wealthiest Americans by net worth and carries in American culture far more weight than the Sunday Times…
12 December 2012
The military activities of the last forty years, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, have been disastrous for America and the United Kingdom. Most of all, they’ve been a testament…
22 November 2012
On the left side of the Atlantic there is plenty of chatter about so-called STEM jobs. Employers searching for candidates for these Science, Technology, Engineering, and…
10 October 2012
The economic system, globally, is outwardly and structurally liberal. Trade is the norm, isolationism is rare, and prices are generally the product of competition between…
28 August 2012
Like nearly all people interested in development economics, I’m always fascinated by new ideas about why foreign development aid has been, in general, such a miserable…
18 July 2012
A thinly-traded currency on the horn of Africa has been getting some attention in the past 100 days. The historically-weak Somali shilling has been fluctuating violently against…
30 April 2012
This week, the Department of Justice formalized its interest in Google from an antitrust perspective. This is a prosecution that, if it moves forward, could have global…