The European Commission’s case against Android has been hailed as a “milestone” in antitrust enforcement. This column, written by Google’s Chief Economist, argues that the case is more of a millstone than a milestone for not just Google, but the entire Android ecosystem of equipment manufacturers, carriers, app developers, and end users.
Quantitative easing has recently been shown to affect households differently depending on the composition of their income and wealth. Using euro area data, this column reviews the relevance of the direct and indirect effects of monetary policy on households’ incomes, which varies depending on employment status. The indirect income channel is found to be quantitatively more powerful, and especially beneficial for households holding few or no liquid assets. This implies that expansionary monetary policy in the euro area has led to a reduction in inequality.
In Japan, as in many other countries, manufacturers are testing automated driving technology, and policymakers are considering how to implement it. This column discusses the demand for the technology in Japan, using a survey of consumers. Almost half intended to purchase automated vehicles or driving systems, but willingness to pay was below the likely additional cost.
Survey estimates suggest that inequality in the Middle East is not particularly high despite considerable political conflict. This column uses new ‘distributional national accounts’ data to show that the Middle East is in fact the most unequal region in the world, with both enormous inequality between countries and large inequality within countries. The results emphasise the need to develop mechanisms of regional redistribution and to increase transparency on income and wealth data.
The share of the population employed in agriculture across the globe declined steeply over the second half of the 20thcentury. This coincided with an unprecedented increase in average years of schooling. This column explores whether these two trends are related. The results lend support to the idea that increased schooling led more workers to sort out of agricultural work. Whether reallocation out of agriculture has been beneficial for growth, however, remains to be seen.
Other Recent Columns:
- Impacts of changing the structure of minimum wages
- Protectionism and the business cycle
- Trends in mortality inequality in the US and France
- The economic costs of the US-China trade war
- Asset prices and wealth inequality
- Economic policy for artificial intelligence
- Selective attention to personal finances
- Advancing the evaluation of tax reforms: A new IMF database
- The ethnic segregation of immigrants in the US from 1850 to 1940
- On the prosperity of countries
- The impact of waiting time targets in emergency departments
- Inequality and ordinary living standards in rich countries
- Revisiting the cost of non-Europe
- Bank resolution and the structure of global banks
- Whither a fiscal capacity in EMU
- Misperceptions about immigration and support for redistribution
- Making carbon pricing work for citizens
- How EU banks modelled their stress away in the 2016 stress tests
- The decline of northern England, 1780–2018
- The effects of computerising VAT on Chinese manufacturing firms
Most Read
Vox eBooks
Casey, Crane, Gensler, Johnson, Narula, 15 July 2018
Vox Talks
Events
-
14 August - 1 September 2018 / / World Trade Organization
-
20 - 21 August 2018 / Goethe University Frankfurt / Central Bank Research Association (CEBRA) and the Research Center SAFE (Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe) at Goethe University Frankfurt
-
27 - 28 August 2018 / Sala del Sindaco, Palazzo Orsini, Galatina (Lecce) / Banque de France and Paris School of Economics
-
2 - 5 September 2018 / Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg / Verein fuer Socialpolitik
-
10 - 11 September 2018 / Leipzig University / Leipzig University, European Association of Young Economists
