U.S.-based utility Duke Energy said on Friday it had filed a plan with the Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) to recover about $1.1 billion in direct costs associated with the company’s emergency activation and response to hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton. Severe storms this year forced major U.S. utilities to shut down or slow power plant operations. Duke, […]
OpenAI on Friday outlined plans to revamp its structure, saying it would create a public benefit corporation to make it easier to “raise more capital than we’d imagined,” and remove the restrictions imposed on the startup by its current nonprofit parent. The acknowledgement and detailed rationale behind its high-profile restructuring confirmed a Reuters report in September, which […]
Trade wars, industrial policy, and myriad other supply chain disruptions have fast become the ‘new normal’. Yet, given the highly opaque and complex nature of production processes, knowing how to navigate this rise of deglobalisation is a daunting task. This column introduces a tool that harnesses the power of frontier AI tools to recover input–output […]
Financial crises usually inflict the most damage when banks suddenly shift from pursuing profits to survival. This column argues that such drastic behavioural changes render statistical analyses based on normal times ineffective. That is why we cannot predict the likelihood of crises, or what banks will do during those crises. Since this behaviour arises from […]
The transition to a greener economy will entail reallocating workers from high-polluting to ‘green’ jobs. To minimise the costs of this transition to individuals and communities, policies will need to support re-employment of dismissed workers while managing the scarring effects of job losses in polluting industries. This column investigates the role of structural and policy […]
The ‘doom loop’, or ‘sovereign–bank nexus’, has been identified as a key driver of the European debt crisis. It has been back in the spotlight recently, as the response to the public health crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have caused sovereign debt levels to balloon. This column explores the impact of default risk […]
Frequent and intense heat episodes can strain workers’ cognitive and physical abilities, drive up absenteeism, and disrupt vital infrastructure. Drawing on data from over 2.7 million firms across 23 advanced economies, this column explores the impact of heatwaves on firm labour productivity. More frequent high-temperature days and heatwaves substantially reduce labour productivity. The impact is […]
Over the past few decades, economics has undergone a ‘credibility revolution’, emphasising techniques to establish causal relationships. This column analyses over 44,000 working papers over 1980-2023 to assess the evolution of these methods. Papers with a higher proportion of causal claims and those introducing novel causal relationships have a higher likelihood of a top-tier publication. […]
The US stands unrivalled as both a military and financial superpower. This column uses a game-theoretic model to show how the global dominance of the US dollar – what economists call the ‘exorbitant privilege’ – is inextricably linked to America’s unmatched military strength. This dual hegemony allows the US to finance its defence spending at […]
The social cost of carbon is the estimated present discounted value of economic damages from emitting one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today. This column proposes a straightforward way to calculate the cost which takes into account the damages to aggregate production, the risk of recurring climate disasters, and the risk of a […]
