Social media has been labelled a ‘liberation technology’ that empowers ordinary citizens, makes politicians more accountable, and leads to faster democratisation in authoritarian countries. This column estimates the causal effect of social media on politics in a non-democratic environment, using the case of Russia during 2011–2012, a period with the largest wave of anti-government protests since the fall of the Soviet Union. It exploits quasi-random variation in the spread of VKontakte, the most popular social network in Russia, across cities and finds that VKontakte penetration affected both the incidence and the size of the demonstrations by reducing the costs of collective action.
In recent years, several central banks have steered policy rates into negative territory for the first time in their history. The novel nature of negative rates raises several questions about how monetary policy operates in such non-standard territory. This column summarises recent research that focuses on the impact of negative policy rates on bank credit supply and bank risk-taking in the euro area. The findings point to a crucial role for bank deposits in the transmission mechanism of negative rates.
Successfully predicting which startups will thrive has long bedevilled economists. Using data from procurement auctions in Norway, this column finds that temporary demand shocks have long-term effects: startups that win a procurement auction are 20% larger than the runner-up, even years after the contract work has ended. In terms of job creation and sales growth, winning a procurement auction seems to have much larger effects for startups than for mature firms, which suggests the potential value in public policies that promote startups’ participation in government procurement auctions.
The decision whether to take up paid work alongside academic study is a difficult trade-off that students all over the world face. The benefits of additional income and work experience must be weighed up against the loss of hours devoted to formal study. This column exploits data from a work-study programme in Uruguay to explore the impacts of part-time employment on academic attainment and future professional success. Such programmes can represent valuable human capital investments, but their details are crucial to ensuring long-run positive impacts for young people.
Why did the Lydians decide, in the 7th century B.C., to coin electrum? On the face of it, this alloy of gold and silver would seem a particularly poor choice for coinage since its natural gold content varies and is hard to gauge with precision. This column suggests that it is the very uncertainty of the value of electrum, and the close control that the Lydians had over its gold content in coin form, that were the keys to the benefit of its coinage. It also suggests that the subsequent decision by the Greeks to coin silver was driven by the government's plan to subsidise the lower denomination coins, perhaps in order to economise its own transaction costs in its budgetary affairs.
Other Recent Columns:
- The effects of working while in school
- Reasons for the Lydian electrum coins and the succeeding Greek silver coins in antiquity
- AI regulation and firm behaviour
- Banks do not create money out of thin air
- Public support for the euro and trust in the ECB
- Needed: Benchmarks for net international investment positions
- Time zones and the knowledge–distance trade-off
- Promoting competition in platform ecosystems
- Populism: Why in rich countries and in good times
- Online music videos and recorded music sales
- Fiscal stabilisation in monetary unions
- Idiosyncratic risks and the volatility of trade
- The effects of export credit guarantees on firm performance
- Climate migration frightens... climate poverty is frightening!
- What a European ‘carbon border tax’ might look like
- Heterogeneous drivers of heterogeneous populism
- Comparative European institutions and the ‘Little Divergence’, 1385–1800
- The art of assessing public debt sustainability
- Financial integration and external adjustment
- Using history to understand hidden wealth in the UK
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