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

18 December 2014
Karl T. Muth suggests Sony can fight back. I've advised companies in serious, bet-the-company situations. I suggest that Sony is in such a situation: its decisions this week and…
09 December 2014
Karl Muth explores how the form and manner of the UK’s integration with Europe is increasingly coming to define David Cameron’s career. In the wake of UKIP successes in the…
03 December 2014
Karl Muth suggests a way out of the polarised gridlock that has come to define Occidental liberal democracy. When I was a teenager – during the Blair government and the Clinton…
28 November 2014
Is minting a currency truly an early symptom of statehood or state-building? To ISIS, state-building means something different from its use in development circles. It means the…
24 November 2014
Karl Muth argues that the analysis of policy alignment – intranationally and internationally – can be examined using quantitative tools. The historical approach to…
14 November 2014
Karl Muth discusses the reputational, political and gender-related connotations of the use of ‘they’. The singular plural as “they” has always bothered me, sounding to me like…
06 November 2014
Karl Muth argues supporting the minimum wage was an easy - but wrong - decision in the US's mid-term elections. During the midterm American election on Tuesday, five out of…
04 November 2014
Karl Muth reports on the positive signals for policy surrounding electric cars. Much ink (tangible and digital) has been spilled on the issue of Hong Kong’s democracy.…
28 October 2014
Karl Muth argues that FATCA’s ‘presumption of suspiciousness’ is driving wealthy Americans to extraordinary lengths. In high-net-worth circles, the conversation…
27 October 2014
Karl Muth reveals how ISIS attempts to allude to a past it fails to understand. The final S in the abbreviation ISIS stands for Syria (al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-ʻIraq wa-al-…
20 October 2014
Karl T. Muth discusses how he decided on a TED Talk topic. In a Twitter “conversation” with Bill Easterly earlier this week, people replied to Easterly’s…
15 October 2014
Karl Muth explores why we must carefully attend to what we say to avoid controversial and costly distractions from the thrust of our messages. The question of what makes a…
13 October 2014
Karl Muth responds to a recent opinion piece on modern monopolies. Mr. Pizzigati, in his piece Taming Modern Monopolies, suggests that it is the growing (and, in my view, deserved…
06 October 2014
Karl Muth takes readers on a journey down memory lane to show how a particular Chevrolet become a symbol of minority empowerment. Anyone who has spent time with me knows I have an…
02 October 2014
Karl Muth on why Hong Kong is increasingly looking like America. I was recently engaged in a debate with a very bright friend who is now at Georgetown Law Centre in Washington, D…