The U.S. economy is still dealing with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said during a meeting with community and business leaders in York, Pennsylvania. “We are still coming through the other side of the pandemic,” Powell said, noting labor shortages in healthcare, ongoing difficulties with access to child care, […]
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella dismissed as “bogus” an argument by rival Google that it is easy to change defaults on computers and smartphones, as he testified in a landmark antitrust trial against its parent Alphabet. At the trial – the first major antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 1998 – Nadella […]
Inflation surged around the world in 2022 and became a major policy problem. This column examines what caused the rise in inflation in the euro area and the US and how effective energy price measures in Europe were in helping to smooth it. The initial rise in inflation on both sides of the Atlantic in […]
– Market intelligence platform AlphaSense has raised $150 million in a fresh round of funding that boosted its valuation to $2.5 billion, underscoring strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) startups. The series E financing round was led by technology investment firm BOND and joined by existing investors including Alphabet’s CapitalG, Viking Global Investors, and Goldman Sachs, […]
The U.S. economy maintained a fairly solid pace of growth in the second quarter and activity appears to have gathered speed this quarter, but a looming government shutdown and an ongoing strike by auto workers are dimming the outlook for the rest of 2023. Tight labor market conditions continue to prevail, with the number of […]
ChatGPT users will now be able to surf the web, Microsoft-backed OpenAI said on Wednesday, expanding the data the viral chatbot can access beyond its earlier September 2021 cutoff. The artificial intelligence startup said its latest browsing feature would allow websites to control how ChatGPT can interact with them. “Browsing is available to Plus and Enterprise […]
Previous optimism that cross-border supply chains would improve efficiency for firms and open up growth opportunities for countries has been tempered by concerns that global value chains now expose firms and countries to the risk of disruptions. This column analyses the evolution of global supply chain patterns centred around the US over the last four […]
Our understanding of the relationship between intellectual property protection, R&D investment, and innovation outcomes at the firm level has long been hampered by measurement problems and a lack of data. This column uses US Census data from 2008 to 2015 to examine how firms appropriate the benefits of innovation. The findings suggest that many previously […]
Integration in global value chains has been high on the policy agenda since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. But indicators of trade in value added are often published with a long delay, limiting their relevance for policymaking. This column seeks to nowcast those indicators for 41 economies and 24 sectors for 2021 and 2022, […]
Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday rolled out new AI products for consumers, including bots that create photo-realistic images and smart glasses that answer questions, as well as an updated virtual-reality headset. Zuckerberg described the products as bringing together virtual and real worlds, and underscored that part of what Meta offered was low cost […]
