Cities are warming faster than their rural surroundings. But the ecosystem support provided by urban forestry is often omitted from climate policies due to the difficulty in assigning to it a credible monetary sum. This column estimates the value of urban trees. By exploiting an ecological catastrophe – an infestation of exotic beetles in the […]
Japan produces and exports a sophisticated basket of machinery and capital goods. Following the global crisis, it offshored manufacturing of parts and components to Asian countries. This column studies the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on Japanese exports since 1990. It finds a strong effect between 1990 and 2010, when an appreciation of the yen […]
Climate change is a spatial phenomenon. While it will be very costly at equatorial latitudes, where it is already very hot, it will have more benign effects at northern latitudes, where temperatures today are too cold to foster large concentrations of people and economic activity. This column discusses recent advances in the development of spatial […]
Teaching practices that respond to the specific needs of students and leverage their love of learning are likely to be effective, but most traditional teaching practices compel students to be passive listeners. This column explores the effectiveness of a pedagogical programme in Türkiye that nurtured children’s natural curiosity, and finds that the programme increased science […]
Price setting has become more flexible following a string of large adverse shocks. This column argues that a shift to a high-uncertainty regime incentivises firms to invest in their ability to adjust prices. Faced with higher productivity uncertainty, firms set prices more flexibly, and this gives rise to comparatively large price hikes when adverse supply […]
The natural rate of interest is key to understanding where interest rates may be heading in the medium run. This column reviews the evidence regarding natural rate dynamics after the COVID-19 pandemic. In both advanced and emerging market economies, estimates of the natural rate have edged up. This increase could be attributed to changes in […]
Divestment of polluting companies has gained traction as way for investors to incentivise the transition to a low-carbon economy. This column examines the tilting of equity portfolios to green versus brown firms internationally, and finds that investors in richer countries tend to hold relatively greener portfolios compared to investors in poorer countries. By acting as […]
Europe lags behind in innovation. This column describes how its industry seems stuck in a middle-technology trap in which it does not pay to leave the beaten path. The authors argue that EU innovation policy should support disruptive innovation to break this path dependency, but this needs profound reforms, both in terms of its structure […]
Amid a global surge in populism, political pressures on central banks to lower interest rates have escalated, driven by populist politicians’ preferences for low rates to fuel short-term, growth-oriented policies. This column explores the impact of this heightened political pressure on financial market and central bank behaviour. It finds that political pressure for low interest […]
Amid recent global shocks and increasing geopolitical tensions, the debate surrounding the future of global value chains and economic integration has intensified. This column introduces a new open-access dataset of ready-to-use positioning indicators, calculated for a wide array of countries, including most developing nations, and sectors, covering an extensive period. These indicators are derived from […]
