Mikroökonomen a.k.a. Mikrooekonomen

Mikroökonomen is a German economics show for listeners who want the argument behind the news, not just the news item itself. It has the feel of informed people sorting through a problem in real time. The pacing is brisk. The path is often winding. A topic may begin with housekeeping, a listener question, or a refusal to chase another headline, then settle into a detailed account of incentives and consequences. Recent episodes show the range clearly. Donald Trump’s climate and trade politics are treated through tariffs, electric-car subsidies, battery sourcing, Tesla’s manufacturing position, and the stubborn political power of jobs in U.S. states. Big Tech’s hunger for electricity becomes a story about data-center clusters, grid bottlenecks, backup capacity, and how quickly digital infrastructure can start to resemble heavy industry. Climate change appears less as a slogan than as an insurance problem. The show talks through rising premiums, weak insurers, catastrophe bonds, regional exposure, and the political difficulty of admitting that some places may become too risky to inhabit. Economic policy gets the same treatment. In the conversation with Tom Krebs, the energy crisis is framed through real-wage losses, lost investment, policy misdiagnosis, and the lingering damage behind today’s economic malaise. The result is analytical without becoming bloodless. It can be dry, mildly exasperated, and occasionally ironic, but the interest stays on evidence, incentives, and institutional behavior. The show is especially strong when a narrow technical question opens onto a broader political economy problem. Chip sanctions, climate insurance, electric-car subsidies, and energy markets all become ways of asking who pays, who benefits, and which constraints politicians prefer not to name. It is demanding in the useful sense. Listeners need not agree with every conclusion, but they are expected to follow the chain of reasoning.