Richard Easterlin, who passed away in December 2024, was a visionary economist whose pioneering research transformed how we think about economic growth, happiness and human wellbeing. This column, written by a friend and colleague, outlines some of the key contributions and impact of a long professional life mostly spent examining data on, and discussing the […]
Saudi Arabia’s crude oil supply to China is set to decline in February from the month before, trade sources said on Thursday, after the kingdom hiked its prices and as OPEC+ extended production cuts in the first quarter. State oil firm Saudi Aramco will ship about 43.5 million barrels to China in February, a tally of […]
Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley promoted 173 of its employees to managing director roles this year, marking a 12% increase from 2024, a source close to the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. Bank of America also promoted more employees to managing director roles in December, as dealmakers at the biggest U.S. banks prepare for a resurgence in mergers and […]
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday that social media company Meta’sS decision to scrap its fact-checking program in the U.S. was “extremely serious,” and that he would discuss the matter in a meeting with government officials. “I’m going to have a meeting today to discuss the Meta issue,” the leftist leader told […]
U.S. private forecaster AccuWeather said on Wednesday that estimated damage and economic loss from the California wildfire, already one of the worst in history, is over $50 billion at a preliminary level. Raging wildfires in Los Angeles killed at least two people, destroyed hundreds of buildings and stretched firefighting resources and water supplies since they began […]
Elon Musk, who U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to oversee a government cost-cutting effort, acknowledged that his declared goal of cutting $2 trillion in spending from the $6.8 trillion federal budget would be a long shot. “I think if we try for 2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting 1,” Musk, the world’s richest […]
The Bernanke Review was triggered by the Bank of England mis-forecasting UK inflation as it rose rapidly from 2021, peaking at 11% in 2022. Unpredictable shocks partly explain the failures, but slow reactions also mattered. This column argues that monitoring forecasts in real time would have revealed large same-sign one-step-ahead errors, signalling a shift. Rapidly […]
Postwar US labour market data reveal a significant secular decline in the employment and wage gaps between men and women. This column quantifies the implications of this shift for the US macroeconomy. Using a time series model that maps empirical trends in data onto underlying structural forces, the authors find that gender-specific labour market trends […]
The Life in Transition Survey collects data on household income, employment, education, attitudes, beliefs, and personal experiences across 37 economies in emerging Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and North Africa. This column introduces the 4th wave of the survey, which reveals declining intergenerational mobility in post-socialist economies, growing inequality of opportunity, and trade-offs between wages […]
During recessions, spending on non-essentials contracts significantly more than spending on essentials, driven by affluent households. This has a particularly large effect on low-income/hand-to-mouth workers, who are more likely to be employed in non-essential industries and therefore see their labour demand contract more. This column develops a model which shows that the interaction between cyclical […]
