Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang on Monday kicked off his company’s annual developer conference with a slew of announcements designed to keep the chip maker in a dominant position in the artificial-intelligence industry. On a hockey arena stage in the heart of Silicon Valley, Huang introduced Nvidia’s latest chip, which is 30 times speedier at some […]
Bitcoin fell by as much as 5.7% on Tuesday in its largest one-day drop in two weeks, as a wave of selling hit cryptocurrencies and other risk assets, such as stocks. The price was last down 5.25% at $63,806, having hit a two-week low of $63,555, while ether dropped 5.1% to $3,326. Bitcoin is still […]
Harry Markowitz, co-recipient with Merton Miller and William Sharpe of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences ‘for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics’, passed away in June 2023. As this column explains, his monumental contributions to modern finance have deeply influenced both academia and practice. His analysis of portfolio selection and […]
There has been little economics research on the population that identifies as gender diverse, but these individuals face considerable economic challenges. This column explores gaps in confidence and self-evaluations of ability among US students and adults. Despite performing similarly on a maths test, gender diverse individuals expressed lower confidence in their performance and abilities than […]
Mental ill-health is on the rise in the US and elsewhere, particularly among those under the age of 25 and especially young women. This column reports on survey data for the US which reveal a marked rise in screen time among high school students aged 14-18 which is strongly associated with rising mental ill-being, as […]
The threats of geoeconomic fragmentation have accelerated in recent years. This column introduces a novel firm-level revenue-weighted geopolitical risk index by integrating corporate revenue distribution with geopolitical risk across countries. The analysis reveals a significant real-financial feedback loop: firms with greater exposure to geopolitical risk experience increased probability of default, reduced market valuations, and higher […]
Artificial intelligence will both be of considerable help to the financial authorities and bring new challenges. This column argues the authorities risk irrelevance if they are reluctant and slow in engaging with AI, and discusses how the authorities might want to approach AI, where it can help, and what to watch out for. Artificial intelligence […]
Developing countries are facing mounting pressures to incorporate environmental concerns into their policy reform agendas, leading to concerns that traditional development assistance may be crowded out. This column argues that under weak institutions, which can allow a relatively large share of tax receipts to leak out of the economy, common policy actions like levying taxes […]
Evidence-based policymaking involves making policy decisions grounded on, or influenced by, the best available objective evidence. This column takes stock of recent developments in this field in the US and the UK, and discusses the tension between evidence-based policymaking and democracy. In the US, evidence-based policymaking has been emphasised by the Biden administration, in part […]
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 […]
