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 Dec 07

Two Retirement Planning Tool$ to Use NOW

Retirement tools. The questions they ask you to fill in seem designed to scare your pants off: How much do you expect to earn on your assets? When are you planning to retire? When are you going to die?…

Economy Dec 03

Unemployment Figures: Worse Than They Appear

The verdict on today's unemployment numbers is unequivocal. Conservative economist Peter Morici writes: "Terrible! Only 39,000 new jobs created is awful. After we back out health care and social services, which are largely government funded, the…

Arts Dec 02

Tips for Help With Your Home Loan Modification

Paul Solman answers questions from NewsHour viewers and web users on business and economic news most days on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Thursday's query: Name: Ben Roman Question: I am having a problem with trying to…

Arts Nov 30

Tool$ Tuesday | The Bush Tax Cuts

Today's Tool$ Tuesday is another look at how the tax cuts might be implemented. This Bush Tax Cut tool comes by way of the Tax Policy Center, a much-appreciated think tank in today's hyper-polarized environment.

Arts Nov 24

What Does Justice in the Foreclosure Crisis Look Like?

Paul Solman answers questions from NewsHour viewers and web users on business and economic news most days on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Wednesday's query: An amended answer today to a question answered imperfectly (or worse) last month.

Economy Nov 23

Introducing Tool$ Tuesday: A New Feature

Today we present Tool$ Tuesday- the first in a series of online calculators and tools that I or others on the Making Sen$e team have actually used. The primary purpose is to present tools that we have found helpful in…

Economy Nov 19

Joe Nocera’s Economic ‘Hall of Shame’

"We titled the book 'All the Devils are Here'," said Joe Nocera's co-author, Bethany McLean, "because in the wake of the crisis there has been this search for a simplistic answer. Ah! Fannie and Freddie, they must be the…

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