Since 2013, synthetic opioid overdoses have surged in the US, claiming over 70,000 lives each year. This crisis has had international spillovers, reigniting drug-related violence in Mexico, where a new wave of cartel warfare erupted after 2013. This column shows that the geography of this second wave is closely tied to fentanyl trafficking routes. Exploiting […]
Global export competitiveness is rapidly evolving. This column presents a novel granular decomposition of export market share changes into demand and supply effects. Applied to Germany, it reveals steep supply‑side losses in medium-/high‑tech and energy‑intensive goods driving recent market share declines. Meanwhile, China continues to gain competitiveness in medium-/high‑tech exports, even as adverse demand pulls […]
It is well established that exporters tend to be some of the most productive firms. But in today’s world, exporters typically rely strongly on other firms in their supply network. This columns uses data on the domestic supply chains of Dutch exporters to investigate whether domestic suppliers to exporting firms are more productive than firms […]
Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine has devastated Ukraine’s scientific productivity. This column examines the war’s impact on Ukrainian research output, drawing on a dataset of over half a million journal articles by researchers affiliated with over 15,000 Ukrainian institutions. Military conflict significantly reduced research activity, particularly in natural sciences, engineering, and the social sciences, with […]
Recent evolutions in US attitudes and policies have raised questions about the future of the dollar’s role in the global economy. This column explores a hypothetical scenario in which the world is deprived of the dollar as its global safe asset. In such a world, interest rates would be higher and more volatile. Liquidity would […]
Strong coordination of wage setting has been maintained in Nordic countries through pattern bargaining. The tradables sector sets the first agreement, which then serves as the nationwide norm for subsequent wage increases. This column outlines that a key motivation for this model is to maintain international competitiveness and keep the wage share constant over time. […]
Rising trade tensions and the pandemic have forced importers to reconfigure their supply chains – a complex and costly process. This column highlights the underappreciated role of financial intermediaries in supporting supply chain resilience during global disruptions. Commercial banks – especially those specialising in Asian trade finance – played a crucial role in helping firms […]
The Institute of International Finance (IIF) said China, France, and Germany were the largest contributors to the global debt increase, while debt levels declined in Canada, the UAE, and Turkey Global debt rose by around $7.5 trillion in the first three months of the year to hit a record high of over $324 trillion, data […]
President Trump’s Chief Economic Adviser, Stephen Miran, has claimed that the international monetary system in which the US provides the rest of the world with a safe, liquid asset is “unfair” as it supposedly prevents the US from eliminating its current account deficit. His proposed solution is to lower the value of the dollar through […]
Cognitive skills are commonly assumed to begin deteriorating from the age of 30, which could pose a significant challenge for rapidly ageing populations. But this assumption relies largely on cross-sectional data that cannot distinguish between ageing patterns and cohort differences. Using German longitudinal data, this column finds that skills, on average, increase markedly into one’s […]
