The Opioid Epidemic and US Political Realignment | Steven Davis, Carolina Arteaga, Victoria Barone | Hoover Institution

Steven Davis speaks with Carolina Arteaga and Victoria Barone, two Econ professors, about the US opioid epidemic. They discuss Purdue Pharma’s marketing strategy, its influence on physicians, and policy factors as drivers of the epidemic. Next, they consider economic consequences, the odd character of how the media covered the epidemic, the (slow) response of most politicians to a mounting tragedy, and how – over time – the opioid epidemic and its fallout drove a major political realignment in the United States.  RELATED SOURCES The Great Trade Hack: How Trump’s Trade War Fails and the World Moves On by Richard Baldwin, 2025 The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work by Richard Baldwin, 2019 “Destructive Trade Policy” by Steven Davis, April 2025 Trends in the Distribution of Household Income from 1979 to 2021, U.S. Congressional Budget Office, September 2024 "Dollar Dominance: A Conversation with Ken Rogoff", Economics Applied podcast, 11 June 2025  VoxEU columns At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House by H.R. McMaster, 2024 ABOUT ECONOMICS, APPLIED Economics, Applied brings together top leaders and researchers to break down key economic developments, offering evidence-based insights and practical lessons for navigating today’s economy. Economic change is constant. Subscribe to keep up: hoover.org/podcasts/economics-applied.