AI is transforming digital services, and mobile apps, which routinely reach users far beyond their home markets, show just how global that transformation has become. This column shows that AI makes th...

Nonbank financial institutions are often seen as procyclical lenders, cutting credit more sharply than banks during stress, while bond markets can substitute for bank lending when credit supply contra...

Existing views on what venture capital finances and how its markets are structured are primarily shaped by the experience of the US and a few other high-income economies. This column presents evidence...

Rising income inequality in Western high-income countries threatens democratic governance and social cohesion, and AI risks making it worse. Drawing on a forthcoming book, this column argues for worke...

Interest in the role of cultural norms, institutions, and development has resurfaced in recent years especially post the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics. This column revisits Bhutan, which has pursued ‘...

Policymakers are asking whether generative AI is reshaping labour demand, and the literature has found mixed results so far. This column links Denmark’s official IT-use survey to monthly employer–empl...

Across food, tourism, cosmetics, and luxury goods, indigenous language and heritage increasingly anchor premium market positions, but when it comes to trademarks, few jurisdictions have developed nati...

Europe's shrinking workforce is weighing on its productivity and welfare systems. Meanwhile, its southern Mediterranean neighbours currently produce growing numbers of graduates whom domestic labour m...

Persistent deviations from the covered interest parity no-arbitrage condition are viewed as evidence of the new and central role of balance sheet constraints and financial market frictions since the G...

Reaching net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050, as prescribed by the Paris Agreement, is hard to imagine without a carbon tax. This column estimates that reaching the goal by carbon taxation will require a t...

Emerging market economies that are expected to perform well may attract more foreign capital, making it difficult to establish the causal effects of capital inflows on output. Using professional forec...

The cyber threat landscape changed dramatically in April 2026 with the emergence of frontier AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Access to these models was initially limited, and the US imposed a de ...

The EU’s far-reaching response to a series of major shocks has turned it into a major borrower on international financial markets. Debt issued by the EU on behalf of its member states now stands at cl...

Geopolitical tensions are increasingly reshaping the flow of trade, investment and capital flows. This column documents that the same process is also reshaping bank lending. Using confidential supervi...

Professional judgement comes from learning by doing, but AI has the potential to disrupt this learning process. This column explores how randomised access to an AI patent-writing product affects the p...

Debate over whether buoyant equity markets reflect durable economic gains or a widening gap between Wall Street and Main Street has intensified with the AI boom. This column argues that aggregate cons...

Europe’s output losses proved limited following the 2022 cutoff of Russian gas flows, yet inflation rose sharply. This column uses weather variation and gas-market events to distinguish gas-demand sho...

Whether teaching a cognitive skill remains valuable in this era of AI is a crucial question in education and for firms. This column reports on an experiment in which around 1,000 undergraduates in Ita...

Geoeconomic risk has become a first-order concern for investors. This column shows that domestic US stocks expose investors to substantial geoeconomic risk through firms’ global supply-chain relations...

Military intervention may be undertaken to weaken a hostile regime and strengthen the position of its opponents. This column argues that evidence from the 2026 US-Israeli strikes on Iran points to a d...

Estimates of AI's employment effect disagree in size and even in sign. This column argues the disagreement is built into the measurement: AI substitutes for humans on some tasks and complements humans...

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Experts responding to the CfM-NIESR survey expressed the strongest confidence in ONS consumer price statistics, with weakest confidence in labour market statistics.

Few features of modern work are as widely criticised as meetings. Using data from over 9,000 workers in Norway, this column examines how meetings are organised and their effects on firm outcomes. The ...

Trade wars do not simply redirect exports; they also reshape the costs of production, disrupt supplier-customer relationships, and trigger adjustments within multinational firms’ global affiliate netw...

The sharp rise in long-term interest rates since 2020 is difficult to explain from slow-moving fundamentals. This column shows that narrow windows around nonfarm payroll releases and speeches by promi...

Emerging markets are vulnerable to sudden shifts in investor sentiment, which can lead to pressure on exchange rates and financing conditions. Using panel evidence from 23 emerging markets, this colum...

When a job vacancy opens, the manager faces a choice: to hire from outside the organisation, or to fill the position with an existing employee through a promotion or horizontal move. This column uses ...

Solar and wind have become the cheapest sources of new electricity almost everywhere, yet Europe is now switching them off in record numbers. This column argues that the binding constraint on the ener...

Increases in US electricity prices since 2020 have coincided with a sharp rise in demand from data centres. This column analyses the impact of the surge in data centre growth since 2021 on electricity...

How far can minimum wages rise without damaging jobs and output? This column uses evidence from France to show that firms respond not only by employing fewer workers, but also by increasing training a...

With public debt at high peacetime levels, how advanced economies can reduce debt burdens is again at the centre of policy debate. This column examines the role of financial repression, perhaps the le...

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Modern manufacturing often requires firms to share confidential information with outside suppliers, some of whom also supply their competitors. Using more than 160,000 contracts from the global automo...

Estimates of the cost of Russia’s war on Ukraine are dominated by what the war destroys. This column measures a second cost: the labour and capital that survive but end up stuck in low-value uses. Fir...

The 2026 Iran war provides a natural experiment that allows model-free estimation of the price elasticity of US shale oil supply. This column argues that the monthly and quarterly elasticities are eff...

The Bank of England is approaching the 30th anniversary of operational independence and a wide-ranging review is likely. With growing political interest in the issue, this column suggests five measure...

Is declining news consumption among young people inevitable? This column reports on a large-scale randomised controlled trial in France to test whether free access to a major newspaper and teacher tra...

Numerous studies have analysed the effects of AI on productivity, growth and employment. Few of these focus on the factors that promote or hinder the uptake of AI. Drawing on the results of a European...

The 2026 Middle East conflict and the disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz generated the largest physical supply disruption in the history of global energy markets. This column examines ...

High-growth startups often lose money before they make it. This column examines whether differences in financing capacity are reflected in the cash flow and growth trajectories of startups in Sweden, ...

Global current account imbalances are widening again. This column argues that currency undervaluation, supported by reserve accumulation under capital controls, can permanently reshape industrial stru...

US federal government debt exceeded $40 trillion in August 2026, triggering concerns about fiscal credibility and sustainability. This column argues that fiscal sustainability should be assessed using...