Measuring what matters for business: The new B-READY data in the World Development Indicators

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

Bigger, better funded and focused on public goods: how to revamp the European Union budget

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?

Inflation targeting: Its current state and key challenges

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

Services trade and environmental sustainability

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

Climate change, firms, and aggregate productivity

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

Households’ subjective expectations: Disagreement, common drivers, and reaction to aggregate shocks

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

Liquidity crisis support made in Switzerland and the too-big-to-fail subsidy

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

Pricing risks in bull and bear markets

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

When supply shocks to essential inputs spur innovation: Lessons from the global rare earths disruption

Trade and industrial policies designed to support domestic industries can unintentionally kindle technological progress abroad. This column examines the case of rare earth elements –

From banks to nonbanks: Macroprudential and monetary policy effects on corporate lending

The growing footprint of nonbank financial institutions in corporate credit markets raises important – but often overlooked – questions about how monetary and macroprudential policies