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Finance Banking Business Featured

What Germany’s medium-term fiscal plan means for Europe

EU leniency on Germany’s fiscal plan highlights rule rigidity and the need for reform to support investment. Germany’s July 2025 medium-term fiscal-structural plan exposes the tension between raising public investment in a low-risk country and the requirement in European Union fiscal rules for member state debt to comply with the 60 percent of GDP public […]

Productivity Featured Global Innovation

Sustained growth through creative destruction: Nobel laureates Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Joel Mokyr ‘for having explained innovation-driven economic growth’. Aghion and Howitt were cited by the Nobel committee ‘for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction’. As this column explains, their work transformed creative destruction from an evocative […]

Finance Banking Featured News World

The impact of fintech on lending

Fintech has improved efficiency and inclusion in banking, especially lending, but has also raised concerns about financial stability, privacy, discrimination, and overall wellbeing. This column introduces a framework that outlines the differences between fintech firms and traditional banks and how fintech affects frictions in lending. New technologies influence the differentiation between banks and fintechs and […]

Finance Banking Featured World

Communicating monetary policy by a committee: Echoes that move markets

Central banks rarely speak with one voice. At the Federal Reserve, for instance, each official brings a distinct perspective, and markets parse every speech for hints of where policy is headed. Different views may help make better decisions, but do they also help when explaining those decisions to the public? And what happens when voices […]

Agriculture Environment Featured World

Addressing food insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa: innovations in data monitoring

Food insecurity remains a critical issue affecting millions of people across the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (MENAAP). The region faces a wide range of food security challenges—from acute conflict-related humanitarian crises in some areas to affordability concerns in others, and from high levels of economic prosperity to accompanying nutritional deficits. The food […]

trade Featured Innovation News Productivity World

Europe’s trade surplus, international relative prices, and the productivity growth gap

The euro area faces persistently weak productivity growth alongside a sustained trade surplus and a trendless real exchange rate. This column shows that persistent productivity growth differentials relative to the rest of the world are a key driver of Europe’s external surplus. Structural trade shifts, such as declining home bias and falling import prices, have […]

Finance Banking Economy Featured Politics

The financial sector and global dollar system

The current US administration’s approach to financial markets and institutions mixes familiar deregulatory policies with a range of other policies that are largely without precedent. This column, taken from a CEPR book on the economic consequences of the second Trump administration, catalogues the relevant policy shifts that are likely to affect the financial sector and […]

Finance Banking Economy Featured World

The new currency war: The US-China digital rivalry as a test of monetary discipline

Digital currencies pegged to fiat money face a built-in tension between credibility and competition, creating a ‘stablecoin paradox’. This column analyses the competing frameworks of the US and China to address the paradox. The US (under the GENIUS Act) combines strict reserve rules for privately issued, fully backed dollar stablecoins with market incentives that encourage […]

Finance Banking Featured News World

Crypto, tokenisation, and the future of payments

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 – […]