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Economy Banking Featured Finance

Incomplete contracts and renegotiation in public procurement

Public procurement contracts worldwide often face high risks of cost overruns and project delays, raising questions about the scope for contract modifications. This column examines the impact of eased renegotiation rules on procurement outcomes in the Czech Republic between 2015 and 2020. Easing renegotiation rules did not substantially change procurement outcomes but led to a […]

Development Energy Environment Featured

Winners and losers from the energy crisis: Policy lessons from the Iberian electricity market

Europe’s recent energy crisis generated large windfall rents for electricity producers. Yet, most EU governments responded with costly downstream measures that left wholesale prices – and producer profits – largely untouched. This column shows that Spain and Portugal charted a different course by intervening directly in the wholesale market, decoupling electricity prices from gas. This […]

Energy Climate Environment Featured World

No green growth without innovation

The ‘green growth’ debate is taking place in an oversimplified setting, largely disregarding the innovation factor. Technologies to mitigate climate change are being treated as given, or as emerging spontaneously, ignoring the fact that the portfolio of technologies available tomorrow depends on what is done today. This can easily lead to misguided preferences, either for […]

Healthcare Economy Featured News World

Fentanyl: The transnational vector of violence

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 […]

Education Employment Featured World

Revisiting the consequences of job displacement

Decades of research have confirmed that job displacement causes significant and persistent earnings losses. This column presents new evidence from workers displaced during firm closures in West Germany between 2000 and 2005 which suggests that these losses are in fact much more heterogeneous than previously documented, and that the large average losses documented in previous […]

Business Banking Featured Finance

Dollar rises versus euro and yen before US economic data

It also sees the European Central Bank as having concluded its easing cycle. The dollar edged up against the euro and the yen, but remained within striking distance of Friday’s lows, after weak U.S. jobs data boosted bets on Federal Reserve rate cuts and triggered a sharp selloff in the greenback. Investors are awaiting services […]

Economy Featured News World

Gender-neutral economics can no longer be the default

Economic research often treats tools such as tariffs, subsides, interest rates, monetary policy, and austerity measures as gender neutral. This column argues that when sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis are missing from models and policy decisions, the result is incomplete economic analysis and inequitable outcomes. What’s missing from economics isn’t just women’s voices, but women’s […]

Banking Featured Finance News World

Under pressure? Central bank independence meets blockchain prediction markets

The independence of monetary authorities from political interference is a foundational principle of modern central banking, and understanding whether threats to this independence affect expectations and beliefs is important. This column uses data from the Polymarket platform, where users trade on Federal Reserve interest rate decisions and possible replacement of Chair Powell, to examine how […]

World Economy Lifestyle News Social Security

Bias in, bias out: How to strengthen evidence aggregation

In a world saturated with research and policy recommendations, it’s more important than ever to synthesize evidence well.  A single study in a single setting may not yield estimates of impact that can be generalized to other contexts; we may worry about spurious effects. Aggregating results across multiple studies can give us more confidence in […]

tax Banking Featured Finance

The importance of information for tax design: Evidence from the French wealth tax

Many countries are considering introducing or reforming their wealth tax policies. This column studies the effects of a French wealth tax reform, which reduced reporting requirements, on taxpayer behaviour. The scaling back of reporting requirements had large negative effects on tax compliance, with 35% of wealth taxpayers missing in affected brackets and evading 10% of […]