EU leniency on Germany’s fiscal plan highlights rule rigidity and the need for reform to support investment. Germany’s July 2025 medium-term fiscal-structural plan exposes the tension between raising public investment in a low-risk country and the requirement in European Union fiscal rules for member state debt to comply with the 60 percent of GDP public […]
Can entire markets strategically confuse consumers to raise prices? This column tracks the prices of nearly all mobile phone tariffs and handsets in the UK from 2010 to 2012, and finds that quality-adjusted prices rise in the early part of the sample period and decline later. Obfuscation strategies by firms appear to be the primary […]
In many Germanic languages, the word for ‘debt’ also means ‘guilt’. This column explores whether the linguistic overlap leads to greater debt aversion in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. Using a guilt-laden term reduces willingness to borrow, lowers approval for government debt, and influences firms’ financing plans and politicians’ framing of fiscal policy. While […]
Classifying loans as fixed-rate or floating-rate fails to fully capture their distinct sensitivity to changes in ECB policy rates. This column analyses the maturity of the relevant risk-free rates used to price new loans to see if it affects their short-term interest rate sensitivity. In countries where new loans were priced using shorter-term risk-free rates, […]
Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Joel Mokyr ‘for having explained innovation-driven economic growth’. Aghion and Howitt were cited by the Nobel committee ‘for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction’. As this column explains, their work transformed creative destruction from an evocative […]
Fintech has improved efficiency and inclusion in banking, especially lending, but has also raised concerns about financial stability, privacy, discrimination, and overall wellbeing. This column introduces a framework that outlines the differences between fintech firms and traditional banks and how fintech affects frictions in lending. New technologies influence the differentiation between banks and fintechs and […]
101 wells will be drilled in 2026. Egypt is planning to drill 480 new oil and gas exploration wells over the next five years, with total investments exceeding $5.7 billion, the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said during his keynote speech at the World Energies Summit in London. In 2026 alone, Karim Badawi said […]
They aim to tackle supply gap. Saudi Arabia has completed a study about the optimal options to address the supply shortage in the domestic steel market, the Kingdom’s Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar Alkhorayef has said. Options involve manufacturing 7 steel and iron products, potentially opening up investment opportunities worth 60 billion Saudi […]
Shareholders approve capital reduction to offset accumulated losses and cancel treasury shares. The Islamic Arab Insurance Company (Salama), listed on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), is undergoing a capital restructuring that will see the Takaful provider raise up to 175 million UAE dirhams ($48 million) through a Mandatory Convertible Sukuk issuance following a capital reduction. […]
The achievement underscores Etihad’s strong operational performance, network expansion, and sustained passenger demand. Etihad Airways has reached a major milestone, now operating 300 scheduled passenger flights daily, reflecting over 20 percent year-on-year growth and cementing its position among the world’s fastest-growing full-service carriers. The achievement underscores Etihad’s strong operational performance, network expansion, and sustained passenger […]
