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Global Business and Finance Magazine > Blog
Development Economy Featured

Mission completed: Empowering local communities to shape their own destinies

Despite the billions of dollars spent on development assistance annually, disagreements persist about the impact of foreign aid on developing countries. This column explores a historic episode in Korea, when missionaries from two Protestant denominations fared quite differently. Presbyterian missionaries empowered local Korean churches to aim for self-governance, while Methodists employed a hierarchical structure with […]

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Climate Environment Featured

Carbon price uncertainty

In an attempt to encourage firms to decarbonise their activities, many countries have started to impose a price on carbon emissions. However, carbon price uncertainty is likely discouraging investment in decarbonisation. This column presents a market-based, high-frequency measure of carbon price uncertainty in the EU Emissions Trading System to help quantify this effect. The authors […]

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Economy Business Featured

Behind the scenes of survey disagreement: Interpreting experts’ judgement

Consensus survey forecasts by professionals, often reported in media outlets, hide heterogeneous responses. This may be because respondents use different models to make forecasts, or they disagree on which shocks have or will hit the economy. This column describes a way to reverse-engineer the expected structural shocks from the path of individual responses in the […]

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trade Featured Finance World

The impact of de-risking by correspondent banks on international trade

The sharp decline in correspondent banking over the past decade has raised concerns that the associated disruptions in cross-border payments could hamper international trade and economic growth. This column combines data on terminated correspondent bank relationships with firm-level data from emerging Europe to show that when local respondent banks lose access to correspondent services, their […]

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Banking Featured Finance

Post-pandemic US inflation: A tale of fiscal and monetary policy

During the recent monetary policy tightening cycle, US inflation has proven persistent, with discussions emerging about the effectiveness of monetary policy with respect to previous cycles. This column shows that when looking at a measure of core inflation that is ‘super sensitive’ to monetary policy, the Fed’s interest rate hikes had and still have a […]

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Featured Business Finance

Investing in defence as a European public good

The mounting geopolitical threats make the EU governments’ holding on to national defence policies increasingly outdated. Defence fulfils the standard properties of a public good, being non-excludable and non-rivalrous, and qualifies as a European public good given the increasing returns-to-scale and positive externalities. As such, a common defence can be classified along two dimensions: delivery […]

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Finance Banking Featured

Central bank independence: Views from history and machine learning

Economists overwhelmingly support the idea of an independent central bank. This column introduces a new data set on central bank independence since 1800. It documents the trend toward increased independence post 1980, but also earlier, more limited movement in the direction of enhanced independence in the 1920s. Using natural language processing on current statutes, it […]

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Finance Business Economy

Draghi is right on many issues, but he is wrong on telecoms

The recently published Draghi report on European competitiveness offers radical proposals to reverse Europe’s competitive decline compared to China and the US. This column argues while the report rightly recognises that the availability, affordability, and quality of telecoms services are a key driver of European competitiveness, its recommendations on telecoms are misguided and dangerous. On […]

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Development Economy Featured

From shadows to sunrise: How to overcome the middle-income trap

Poland has emerged as a standout performer among Eastern European economies. But the country’s journey from lower-middle-income to high-income status remains an exception. This column studies more than 100 countries stuck in various forms of the middle-income trap due to rising debt, ageing populations, and growing protectionism. In order for the six billion people now […]

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