Privacy Policy

Effective October 16, 2026

This policy covers this website (the “site”), run by Evan J. Conkling and Oliver F. Kopcik, doing business as Conkling & Kopcik Economics (“CK Economics”, “we”, “us”), based in California.

What we collect

• Visit statistics. We use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits. For each page view it records the page address (without anything after a “?”, such as search terms), the page that sent you here, your browser, operating system and device type, and your country, worked out from your IP address. It sets no cookies. Vercel states that it does not store IP addresses for this and that the identifier it uses to tell visits apart is discarded within 24 hours. We see only totals, not individual visitors.
• Server logs. Our hosting providers, Vercel (website) and Supabase (database and file storage), receive your IP address and browser details with every request, as any web server does, and keep logs for security and troubleshooting under their own retention policies.
• Your settings. If you pause the site’s animation, your browser remembers that choice in its local storage on your device. It is never sent to us, and you can clear it in your browser settings.
• Email updates. If you sign up, we receive your email address and which updates you chose (the CK Global Economic Brief, Research & reports, or Data & tools updates). Nothing is saved until you click the link in the confirmation email we send you. Our email provider records whether each email was delivered or bounced. We don’t track whether you open our emails or click their links.
• Accounts. If you create a free account, our database provider stores your email address, your password (scrambled so that no one, including us, can read it), when you signed up and last signed in, and the charts, comparisons and scenarios you save. While you’re signed in, your browser keeps sign-in cookies on this site; they do nothing else and are deleted when you sign out.
• Pricing waitlist and the contact form. If you join the waitlist, we receive your email address, the plans you picked, whether you’re happy to be interviewed, and anything you add about your work. If you send a message through the contact form (or the enterprise form on the pricing page), we receive its topic, your name, email address, organisation if you give one, and message; ticking its boxes also adds you to the waitlist.
• What you send us. If you email or call us, we receive your name, email address or phone number, and whatever you choose to tell us.

We do not collect information about you from other sources. The public forms on the site are the email-updates sign-up, account sign-up and sign-in, the pricing waitlist and the contact form; there are no comment forms.

How we use it

To run and secure the site, to understand which research and data people read so we can improve it, to send the email updates you asked for, to keep your account and what you save in it, to contact waitlist members about plans and the interviews they offered, and to reply when you contact us. We do not use it for advertising and we do not build profiles of visitors.

Who receives it

• Service providers that run the site and our communications for us: Vercel Inc. (hosting and analytics), Supabase Inc. (database and file storage), Cloudflare, Inc. (the security check on the sign-in, sign-up and contact forms), Resend, Inc. (sends our email updates and keeps the list of subscribers and their choices), and our email and telephone providers, which handle messages you send us.
• Video sites, only if you press play. Some articles include YouTube or Vimeo videos. Nothing is loaded from those sites until you click “Play video”. Once you do, the video site receives your IP address and browser details directly from your browser and may set cookies or similar identifiers, and use the information for its own purposes, under its own privacy policy (Google/YouTube, Vimeo). We use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode and ask Vimeo not to track viewers.
• Other media hosts. Some images, video files, or caption files in articles may load directly from the website that hosts them, which then receives your IP address and browser details as part of serving the file.
• Other sites, only if you click through. Share buttons and links to our LinkedIn, X, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram pages take you to those services, whose own policies then apply.
• Legal reasons. If the law requires it, or to protect our rights or the safety of others.

We do not sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. When you choose to play an embedded video, YouTube or Vimeo collects information directly from your browser under its own policy, as described above. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes (California Civil Code § 1798.83).

Tracking across other sites, Do Not Track, and Global Privacy Control

We do not track you across other websites. The only third party that can is a video site whose video you choose to play (see above). If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of any sale or sharing of your information, and we remind you before a video loads. We do not respond to Do Not Track signals differently, because the site does no cross-site tracking of its own.

How long we keep it

Vercel keeps analytics data under its own retention policy; on our current plan we can view about the last month. Server logs are kept by our providers under their own policies. Emails are kept as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and for our ordinary business records. Your account and what you save in it are kept until you delete the account, which you can do at any time from the account page; it is removed straight away. Waitlist entries and contact-form messages are kept until the plans launch or the message is dealt with, and deleted sooner if you ask. Your email-updates address and choices are kept while you are subscribed. If you unsubscribe from everything, we keep the address only so we don’t email you again by mistake, and delete it if you ask.

Your choices and rights

You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing econkling@ckeconomics.com. We aim to answer within 45 days. You can block or clear cookies and local storage in your browser at any time; the site works without them. Every email update has a link to change which updates you get or to unsubscribe from all of them, and so does your account page.

Children

The site is meant for a professional audience and is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Security

The site is served only over encrypted connections, and access to our publishing tools is restricted to our staff. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect the little information we hold.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle information, we will update this page and the date at the top. For significant changes, such as adding a newsletter, we will also note the change on our home page before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy: Evan J. Conkling, econkling@ckeconomics.com, 562-200-8876. See also our Terms of Use.