Concentration (the share of a market’s output produced by its largest firms) is a key proxy for measuring market competition. This column introduces a cross-country dataset to measure concentration at the industry level between 2000 and 2019. It captures both domestic production and international trade flows as well as business group linkages. It finds that […]
There has been a great deal of discussion about what recent moves in UK gilts mean for future spending and tax decisions. This column argues that it is difficult to find observable economic factors that explain why UK yields have broadly tracked US yields since the US election, and so contagion might account for a […]
Despite the sharp tightening of the Federal Reserve’s policy rate, the US economy has shown remarkable resilience, sparking a debate about whether monetary policy is as restrictive as conventional measures suggest. This column suggests that households and firms react to changes in financial conditions rather than the policy rate itself. Policy discussions should focus on […]
Despite the rise of sustainable investing, recent evidence shows that emerging markets receive a very small fraction of the capital allocated by investment funds to ‘green’ companies involved in carbon solutions. This column digs into the dynamics that inform investment allocation decisions by investment funds, exploring the motivations and constraints at both fund and country […]
Homeownership rates and housing wealth differ immensely across countries. Using a life-cycle model with housing wealth estimated on micro data from five large economies, this column provides a decomposition of the drivers of long-run, structural differences in housing wealth. It finds that expectations of house prices, the institutional setup of the housing market, and household […]
Public trust is a cornerstone of central banking. Shocks to trust depress economic activity and may cause inflation expectations to increase. This column introduces a new measure of public trust in the Federal Reserve derived from nearly 4 million tweets about the institution. Macro-financial factors affect trust, as does Fed communication. But scandals that bring […]
Public trust is a cornerstone of central banking. Shocks to trust depress economic activity and may cause inflation expectations to increase. This column introduces a new measure of public trust in the Federal Reserve derived from nearly 4 million tweets about the institution. Macro-financial factors affect trust, as does Fed communication. But scandals that bring […]
Debates among managers and organisations about when and how to implement remote work are ongoing. This column provides empirical evidence on rates of remote work – across industries, occupations, and geographies over time – as well as the relative importance of remote work to job satisfaction and employee turnover. The findings suggest that the freedom […]
The United States will leave the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises. Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S. that […]
The volume of global crude exports in 2024 declined 2%, the first fall since the COVID-19 pandemic, shipping data showed, due to weak demand growth and as refinery and pipeline changes reshuffled trade routes. Global crude flows have been roiled for a second year by war in Ukraine and the Middle East, with tanker shipments […]
