Central banks have increasingly engaged with climate-related topics in their public communication, but little is known about the drivers and effects of this shift. This column presents a comprehensive analysis of climate-related central bank communication using a novel dataset of over 35,000 speeches from 131 central banks spanning 1986-2023. The authors find that climate communication […]
The tariff framework will apply broadly to EU exports, except for steel and aluminium, the official said. The 15% rate will also apply to cars and car parts, with no quotas or limits. The 15% tariff that European Union goods face when entering the United States is all-inclusive, unlike the deals some other countries have […]
What makes a country a great place to start and grow a business? Among low-income economies across the world, only 29% have a single centralized website dedicated to providing regulatory information pertaining to international trade. In high-income economies, the same number stands at 67% . The World Bank’s new Business Ready (B-READY) project shines a light on this […]
How should the European Union budget be revamped to meet the pressing collective challenges of climate change, competitiveness, defence, enlargement and response to unforeseen shocks? This Blueprint evaluates the extent to which current spending goes to European public goods and identifies significant misalignments between budget allocations and areas in which EU-level provision offers the greatest […]
Inflation targeting has emerged as the dominant monetary policy framework in advanced and emerging market economies. This column discusses three main challenges faced by inflation-targeting central banks: the recent high-inflation episode and increasingly frequent supply-side disruptions; expanding central bank balance sheets since the Global Crisis; and risks to central bank independence. The authors argue that […]
There is growing recognition that the specific characteristics of services sectors and services trade have important environmental implications. For example, services trade can foster technological advancements and solutions that reduce the environmental footprint of economic activities. This column presents empirical evidence that reducing policy restrictions on imported services inputs lowers the emissions intensity of downstream […]
Policy debates around climate change frequently focus on the trade-off between the near-term costs of reducing carbon emissions and the long-term benefits of mitigating climate change. William Nordhaus highlighted the importance of aggregate productivity losses from climate change in shaping this intertemporal trade-off, but estimating these losses is challenging. This column examines both the direct […]
Understanding how households interpret macroeconomic policy is vital to the effectiveness of central banks. This column demonstrates that the reactions of individual households frequently contradict standard theoretical playbooks. Using euro area survey data, the authors find that households interpret policy through a lens shaped by recent crises – such as the energy shock following Russia’s […]
Banking crises have repeatedly inflicted serious damage on the real economy. This column discusses a new proposal for a public liquidity backstop in Switzerland to support the orderly resolution of systemically important banks in times of crisis. While such a backstop can deliver substantial ex-post benefits, it could also encourage excessive leverage and risk ex-ante […]
Standard models of asset pricing assume that risky (safe) financial assets have higher returns because they have higher (lower) exposures to systematic risk factors. They also typically assume that these exposures to risk and the degree of co-movement across assets are the same in good times and bad times. Yet, there is ample evidence that […]
