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Paul Solman

About Paul

Paul Solman has been a correspondent for the PBS News Hour since 1985, mainly covering business and economics.

While attending Brandeis University, Solman joined the Brandeis newspaper, The Justice, and eventually became its editor. He got his first journalism job in 1970 at the alternative weekly Boston After Dark.

Solman became founding editor of the rival alternative weekly The Real Paper in 1972 and went on to become a feature writer and investigative reporter.

Solman received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1978.

After a few years of local PBS reporting, he inaugurated the PBS business documentary series, ENTERPRISE with fellow Nieman Fellow Zvi Dor-Ner.

In the 1980s, Solman produced documentaries, returned to local reporting, and joined the Harvard Business School faculty, teaching media, finance and business history in the school's Advanced Management Program. He also co-authored “Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield” in 1983, which appeared in Japanese, German and Taiwanese editions. He joined the MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1985.

In the '90s, with sociologist Morrie Schwartz, a teacher of his at Brandeis, Solman helped create -- and wrote the introduction to the book "Morrie: In His Own Words," which preceded "Tuesdays with Morrie.” In 2015, Solman co-authored “Get What's Yours: the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.”

Solman has lectured on college campuses since the '80s and has written for numerous publications, including the Journal of Economic Education. As a one-time cab driver, kindergarten teacher, crafts store co-owner and management consultant, he was also the author and presenter of "Discovering Economics with Paul Solman," a series of videos to accompany introductory economics textbooks.

In 2007, he joined the faculty at Yale, where he contributed to the university's Grand Strategy course for a decade. In 2011, he was the Richman Distinguished Visiting Professor at his alma mater, Brandeis, where he taught a seminar, "Economic Grand Strategies: From Chimps to Champs? Or Chumps?" He has taught regularly at West Point, the Naval War College and was an adjunct faculty member at Gateway Community College in New Haven, CT, where he created the evening program, “Yale@Gateway.” In 2016, he was a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University.

Since 2019, Solman has chaired the board of the anti-polarization American Exchange Project, a nonpolitical nonprofit domestic "foreign exchange" program that introduces high school seniors from everywhere in America to each other, sends and embeds them, for free, in communities unlike their own.

Solman took up tennis at 50. His father was the American expressionist artist Joseph Solman. He is married with two children and seven grandchildren.

Full Bio

Paul’s Recent Stories

Economy Jan 07

How to Try to Stop Your Ex from Getting Spousal Benefits

Whether you are married or divorced, you can potentially collect spousal benefits. Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images Larry Kotlikoff's Social Security original 34 "secrets", his additional secrets, his Social Security "mistakes" and his Social Security…

Economy Jan 04

Another Victory in the War on Our Children

Paul Solman: "Ask Larry" Kotlikoff is a hot commodity here on Making Sense, not only as our (and your) Social Security sherpa, but as a sometime commentator on economics, which is how he's known to the rest of the…

Economy Jan 04

December Unemployment Held Steady; U-7 Down Again

A job seeker looks over material during a HIREvent job fair in San Jose, Calif. Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Nothing dramatic on the jobs front this month. December's unemployment rate held steady at 7.8 percent. The…

Politics Jan 03

Barney Frank's Plans for the Future

// In an exit interview that aired Dec. 26, economic correspondent Paul Solman spoke with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who retired from Congress at the end of his term in January 2013. In the last of our series of…

Economy Jan 02

Life Insights from a 100-Year-Old Manufacturing Worker

// While reporting on needle and tubing manufacturing firm Vita Needle in Needham, Mass., the NewsHour team met Rosa Finnegan. The company is known for its elderly workforce with its average worker 74 years old. But at 100, Finnegan is…

Politics Jan 02

Barney Frank: How Smart Is Congress?

// In an exit interview that aired on PBS NewsHour Dec. 26, economic correspondent Paul Solman spoke with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who plans to retire from Congress at the end of his term in January 2013. Watch this…

Economy Dec 28

Mistakes: Paul Krugman's, Greg Mankiw's (And My Own)

Left, Paul Krugman (Photo by NewsHour). Right, Greg Mankiw (Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images). Paul Solman: Both Paul Krugman, of MIT, and Greg Mankiw, of Harvard, were teaching economics locally during my formative years as an economics correspondent. I…

Economy Dec 28

Yes to Profit-Sharing, No to Layoffs for 64 Years in a Row!

Worker pushing a table laden with copper coils at the Lincoln Electric Company. Photo by Bob Leavitt/Pix Inc./Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sen$e…

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