Governments around the world provide fiscal incentives to firms to adopt profit-sharing arrangements between firms and workers. This column discusses lessons that can be drawn from the French experience of implementing mandatory profit-sharing rules. The authors find that mandatory profit-sharing does not increase firm productivity; while it represents a significant tax for shareholders, it does […]
Women continue to be underrepresented in STEM-related fields, making their university degree selection process highly relevant to discussions of gender inequality. This column uses data on students in Italy to show that proximity of a university to a prospective student’s home matters, particularly for women choosing between a STEM education and not attending university. Policies […]
Oil prices rose about 3% to a four-month high on Wednesday on a surprise withdrawal in U.S. crude inventories, a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. gasoline stocks and potential supply disruptions after Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. Brent futures rose $2.11, or 2.6%, to settle at $84.03 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude […]
Samsung Electronics plans to use a chip making technology championed by rival SK Hynix, five people said, as the world’s top memory chipmaker seeks to catch up in the race to produce high-end chips used to power artificial intelligence. The demand for high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has boomed with the growing popularity of generative AI. […]
Shares of Arm Holdings , the British chip designer backed by Softbank Group gained 2.1% to $129.50 on Tuesday as markets braced for increased trading activity following the expiration of the lockup period tied to its blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). Most market debuts include a lockup period of up to six months in which company insiders and […]
Global sales of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) rose at a tepid rate of 3% in February versus the same period last year mainly due to the impact of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations, market research firm Rho Motion said on Wednesday. The company said global sales hit 800,000 units. Sales in […]
Intel has survived an effort to halt hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of chip sales to Huawei, two people familiar with the matter said, giving one of the world’s largest chipmakers more time to sell to the heavily sanctioned Chinese telecoms company. U.S. President Joe Biden has long been under pressure to revoke a […]
The forcible removal of populations has both immediate and long-run consequences for the affected populations. The economics literature has tended to focus on the labour market or political consequences. This column instead examines the health effects of the forced displacement of Japanese Americans during WWII. Japanese American women who were incarcerated during their childhood and/or […]
How reactive are house prices to monetary policy shocks? Does their reaction depend on cyclical conditions? And what do historical patterns suggest would be a plausible house price reaction to the latest monetary tightening cycle? This column tries to answer these questions by relying on the experience of 29 OECD countries over the last four […]
The EU Emissions Trading System incentivises firm-level innovation away from carbon-intensive technologies through price signalling. This column examines the interplay of such market-based incentives with national structural characteristics to affect firms’ emissions. The presence of skilled labour, competent managers, and technological infrastructure all positively shape emissions reduction, as do increased public-private partnerships. Sound institutions at […]
