The countries of the Global South are becoming increasingly important actors in the global financial economy. This column uses a comprehensive new bilateral dataset on cross-border bank loans and deposits, portfolio investment, foreign direct investment, and international reserves, covering the period from 2001 to 2018, to show that investments involving the South, and especially those […]
Shares in Deutsche Bank climbed to their highest in more than six years on Wednesday, outperforming a weaker banking sector following a Morgan Stanley upgrade to “overweight”. “Despite 10% outperformance vs the sector over the last 12 months, we think there is more room to go for DBK, as improving IB revenue momentum and better […]
Chinese e-commerce vendors that want to sell products on TikTok Shop in the U.S. as an alternative to Amazon are upset by moves they say the short video app has made to tighten enforcement of its rules for overseas sellers opening shops on the platform. Chinese-owned TikTok, which faces the threat of having to divest its U.S. […]
Claims from macroprudential authorities about house price overvaluation, for example for Sweden, based on the house price-to-income ratio are often exaggerated. This column argues that the sustainable level of interest rates needs to be part of any calculation of house price fundamentals, but no single metric of over- or undervaluation is satisfactory. This includes the […]
Electronic payment technologies have long been hailed as a way to formalise transactions, increase tax compliance, and strengthen state capacity. This column examines the effect of financial incentives on the take-up of such technologies among firms and consumers in Uruguay, and on the tax compliance of firms. In response to a VAT rebate for paying […]
Analysis of business dynamism outside the US has been limited by the availability of comparable cross-country data. This column presents new insights on the trends and drivers of business dynamism using a novel dataset for 19 European countries. Across all 19 countries, the authors document structural declines in job reallocation rates and employment shares in […]
Supply chain disruptions cause large macroeconomic adjustments and challenge the effectiveness of stabilisation policies. This column provides a new index of global supply chain disruption, presents a new model to identify the causal effect of global supply chain shocks on aggregate variables, and analyses the implications for the effectiveness of monetary policy. The authors document […]
Uncertainty can affect firm decisions because it leads to more cautious behaviour and is associated with learning about viability of the business. Based on a novel survey of German firms, this column finds that uncertainty reflects change. Firms’ planning incorporates higher subjective uncertainty about their future sales growth when they have just experienced unusual – […]
In early-13th century China, the Mongols introduced the silver standard, the first paper money in history to be backed by a precious metal. This column studies the rise and fall of paper money in 13-14th century China over three stages: full silver convertibility, nominal silver convertibility, and fiat standard. Military pressure in particular led to […]
Though school-based interventions have shown significant success in improving life outcomes for children, interventions targeting adolescents tend to fail when they do not align with adolescents’ desire to feel respected and be granted social status. This column reports on a programme targeting ‘challenging’ students at disadvantaged middle schools in Turkey, in which senior students were […]
