Financial markets are volatile, and research attributes this to highly variable and often irrational investor beliefs. This column uses a large-scale survey of Chinese retail investors to study the role of investor memory in financial decision-making. Combining free recall of market episodes and probed recall of personal returns, it finds that sharp crashes and dramatic […]
Rising interest rates expose the interaction between hidden losses on long-duration assets and flighty uninsured deposits. This column uses confidential data for 139 euro area banks to analyse this mechanism. It estimates that unrealised losses on loans and bonds held at amortised cost averaged about 30% by September 2023, and were largest for smaller retail […]
Industrial policy is increasingly implemented worldwide, with many policymakers and researchers highlighting its benefits. However, the cost of industrial policy remains less understood. Using Chinese firm-level data, this column shows that higher industrial subsidies raise the likelihood and severity of foreign anti-dumping and countervailing duties at each investigation stage. These retaliatory tariffs wipe out roughly […]
The introduction of crypto technology and tokenisation is spurring changes in the financial system. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is taking steps to integrate crypto into traditional finance, most notably the GENIUS Act’s establishment of a regulatory regime for payment stablecoins. This column explores the US’ policy goals concerning digital assets and argues that tokenisation – […]
As large language models gain traction, it is important to ensure that decisions delegated to them comply with ethical and legal principles. This column reports on an experiment in which state-of-the-art large language models were prompted to impersonate the CEO of a fictitious financial firm needing to repay corporate debt urgently with no funds available […]
Commodity price spikes at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine contributed significantly to global inflation in 2022-23, which caught many policymakers off guard in both its intensity and persistence. This column uses a nonstationary competitive storage model to demonstrate that, beyond the temporary surge, the war-induced reduction in Ukraine’s acreage caused an upward […]
The new US administration has made the Federal Reserve’s monetary policymaking more complicated both because of the elevated uncertainty regarding administration policies and because of the extraordinary political pressure put on the central bank. This column describes how, thus far, the Fed has followed a cautious path for policy, waiting for more information on policy […]
Effectively suspended since the onset of the Covid pandemic, the EU fiscal rules were set to make a comeback in 2024. At the same time, the EU was pushing for a major and swift overhaul of its fiscal framework. This column describes how, caught between freedom and responsibility of the transition phase, countries with a […]
Climate-related risks are increasingly recognised as an important threat to long-term fiscal sustainability. This column studies the extent to which credit rating agencies integrate these risks into their sovereign rating assessments. It finds that measures of physical risk lead to lower credit ratings, but the impacts are small in magnitude. Ambitious CO2 reduction targets and […]
Dollar on course to end week flat against EUR; lower against JPY, GBP. The dollar was largely steady against the euro and British pound on Friday as traders trimmed wagers on monetary policy easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve following hotter-than-expected wholesale inflation data. The Japanese yen, meanwhile, firmed broadly following surprising strong economic growth […]
