Overweight and obesity have risen dramatically in recent decades in both developed and developing countries. Numerous policies have been developed to help curb this increase. The success of many of these policies depends heavily on correctly identifying the factors that hinder a healthy diet. This column documents an intervention that nudged customers of a supermarket […]
One-fifth of all cyberattacks target the financial sector, a share that is widely expected to rise. As cyberattacks become more frequent, the quantification and measurement of cyber risk and uncertainty will become pressing issues for policymakers. This column discusses the benefits of ‘bug bounty’ programmes, in which external agents are invited to search for a […]
The Covid-19 lockdowns and other anti-pandemic measures triggered a surge in layoffs and discharges. This column investigates the impact of these layoffs on the post-pandemic surge in inflation. Workers unemployed due to a layoff are more likely to retire than employed workers. Pandemic-induced layoffs led to early retirements, which decreased labour supply, increased labour market […]
Episodes of high financial stress have occurred both globally and in specific countries over the past six decades. This column introduces a new quarterly financial stress index for 110 countries, constructed using country reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit. This index has wider coverage than existing measures and can also capture the severity of financial […]
Central banks engaged in large-scale asset purchase programmes during and after the global financial crisis as well as during the COVID-18 pandemic, significantly increasing the size of their balance sheets. This column develops a framework for understanding the medium- and long-run implications of the losses arising from these large-scale asset purchases, and argues that they […]
In the wake of recent political shifts, democratic institutions are being eroded, giving way to a consolidation of governmental power through autocratic means. This column highlights the effects of the up-and-down transformations in the liberal characteristics of a regime on foreign direct investors, comparing the experiences of Poland and Israel. Liberalisation significantly enhanced both countries’ […]
Philippe Martin, who passed away in December 2023, was an outstanding economist who will be sorely missed, not only by the profession itself – in France, Europe and internationally – but also, personally, by the many colleagues whom he inspired and supported. This column, written by two of his friends and co-authors, outlines his research […]
Union membership across the developed world has been falling for decades. This column uses data on wages and hours worked in the US over the last 50 years to examine whether this has led to a fall in the ‘union wage premium’. The authors find that while the hourly wage premium for union members has […]
In their fight against inflation, central banks have raised interest rates dramatically by raising the rates of remuneration of bank reserves. When central banks pay interest on these reserves, they create money which they transfer to banks, at the expense of the Treasury. Proponents of this system argue that reducing the interest payments to banks […]
The US fiscal system is far from inflation neutral. Many provisions, such as the taxation of nominal asset incomes and Social Security benefits, are simply not indexed for inflation. Others are indexed with substantial lags. This column shows that after neutralising fixed non-fiscal effects, a permanent rise in inflation from 0% to 10% reduces median […]
