Most Read: This Month

Inspired by conspicuous historical parallels, some scholars and journalists have argued that GDP growth and productivity might boom in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. This column reviews the evidence for and against the ‘Roaring Twenties’ hypothesis, concluding that some countries might well experience a forceful economic expansion. But policymakers should avoid complacency and make the most of the Recovery and Resilience Facility funds, combining them with wide-reaching structural reforms to improve economic prospects for the decade to come.

With the pandemic continuing now for over a year, it has become clear that there is no trade-off between health and wealth. Successful pandemic management has relied on aiming for and protecting Covid-free green zones. This column argues that by choosing a swift elimination strategy, several countries around the world have gained control over the virus. They did this by minimising fatalities and uncertainty, and are now already rebuilding their economies. By contrast, most European countries have followed a stop-and-go logic that turned out to be more restrictive, more dangerous, and more damaging to the economy.

Human capital is a critical component of economic development. But the links between growth and human capital – when measured by years of schooling – are weak. This column introduces a better measurement, using a database that directly measures learning and represents 98% of the global population. The authors find that the link between economic development and human capital is strong when measured in this way. They also show that global progress in learning has been limited over the past two decades, even as enrolment in primary and secondary education has increased.

US banks currently hold almost $4 trillion in Fed deposits, as a result of the ongoing balance sheet expansion by the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, a year-long exclusion of Fed deposits and US Treasuries from bank capital rules is set to expire on 31 March. This column proposes a simple, feasible, and mandate-consistent strategy to replace $3 trillion in deposits with Treasury bills. These Treasuries could be held not only by banks, but also by mutual funds and non-residents, and this substitution could also save taxpayers money.

Inequality in the EU has traditionally been analysed either at the individual country level or in terms of the average of country trends, but attention is now shifting to the analysis of inequality between all citizens across individual member states. Using income survey data, this column shows that that inequality among EU citizens is significantly lower than among US citizens, but slightly higher than in countries with established welfare models such as Australia and Japan. This and other findings may be useful in identifying the most effective policy path to address inequality at the EU level.

Once moratoria and other Covid-19 support measures are unwound, European banks will likely be confronted by a wave of non-performing loans. This column provides empirical insights on the current levels of such loans in Europe and draws lessons from previous financial crises for their effective treatment. It highlights the importance of early and realistic assessment of loan losses to avoid adverse incentives for banks. Secondary loan markets would help in this process and further facilitate bank resolution as laid down in the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, which should be upheld even in extreme scenarios.

As a result of recent work on historical national accounting, it is now possible to establish more firmly the timing of the Great Divergence of living standards between Europe and Asia in the 18th century. This column shows that there was a European Little Divergence as Britain and the Netherlands overtook Italy and Spain, and an Asian Little Divergence as Japan overtook China and India. The Great Divergence occurred because Japan grew more slowly than Britain and the Netherlands starting from a lower level, and because of a strong negative growth trend in Qing dynasty China.

Growing wealth disparities can have corrosive effects on equality of opportunity when they crystallise over time and turn into persistent disparities across generations. This column uses newly assembled data from Italian inheritance tax records to show that the wealth share of the top 1% (half a million individuals) increased from 16% in 1995 to 22% in 2016, and the share accruing to the top 0.01% (the richest 5,000 adults) almost tripled from 1.8% to 5%.  In contrast, the poorest 50% saw an 80% drop in their average net wealth over the same period. The data also reveal the growing role of inheritance and gifts inter vivos as a share of national income, as well as their increasing concentration at the top.

COVID-19 has not only impacted inequality, it has also affected preferences for inequality. This column examines inequality aversion in Italy, Germany, and the UK. Surveys taken during the early stages of the pandemic higher aversion to income inequality than to health inequality in all three countries, consistent with the findings of other studies conducted before COVID-19. Focusing on the UK, it also finds that people have become more averse to inequality since the onset of the pandemic, especially when it comes to health. This effect is stronger among those not directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Why do workers remain in low-productivity areas when they could experience wage gains elsewhere? While the literature has proposed a few explanations, including the high cost and risky nature of migration, this column uses the case of China to examine instead the role that pollution plays. It finds that severe pollution can induce workers to relocate from productive to unproductive regions, suggesting that pollution control, coupled with policies facilitating migration, has the potential to bring about extra economic gains in developing countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that more people are working from home and women are disproportionately losing paid work. This column uses daily activity diaries from the American Time Use Survey to look back at the impact of the unemployment benefit extensions that were triggered by the Great Recession on hours worked from home. The overall picture is one of increased gender inequality in the labour market, with women but not men increasing work hours and effort in response to the Great Recession and the consequent changes in the duration of unemployment benefits. 

The demographics of criminality are changing, with the share of crimes committed by older adults rising in developed countries. This column uses administrative data from Denmark to better understand late-in-life determinants of crime – specifically, severe health shocks. It finds that a cancer diagnosis can incite criminal activity, and argues that social support should be made widely available to vulnerable segments of the population in the wake of the Covid health crisis, when even people with previously clean records could find themselves drawn into illegal behaviour.

Companies often engage in activities of corporate social responsibility such as donating a share of profits to charity. Previous research suggests these initiatives can help attract and motivate workers, even at the cost of giving up part of their compensation. This column presents experimental evidence that shows, however, that when workers can choose who they want to work for, they prefer firms that offer a higher wage, and are attracted by a firm’s corporate social responsibility only when they consider their wage offer as ‘fair’. Further, if companies compensate donations to charity by reducing workers’ wages, this could ultimately harm workers’ wellbeing, depending on the worker’s views on the donations. 

Emerging markets will be shaped by the US and Chinese policy stances in 2021. This column considers how the latest US fiscal package will interact with China’s policy normalisation and concludes that while President Biden’s American Rescue Plan should dominate a less expansionary stance in China, the boost to the global economy will be much more modest than one would typically expect. Specifically, the normalisation of goods consumption in developed markets and less import-intensive Chinese growth will curtail global goods trade, a key determinant of emerging market growth.

Firms often argue that disclosure and reporting regulations such as the EU Accounting Directive require them to reveal proprietary information, which discourages innovation. This column explores the effects of disclosure requirements on corporate innovation in the EU, and finds that forcing firms to publicly disclose their financial statements does indeed discourage innovative activities. At the industry level, positive information spillovers to competitors, suppliers, and customers appear insufficient to compensate for the negative direct effect on innovation. Indeed, the spillovers seem to concentrate innovation within a few large firms in a given industry.

The economic and social consequences of investments in transport infrastructure generate heated academic and policy debates because they typically involve costly investments that are supposed to yield high payoffs. Particularly telling examples of large transport infrastructure investments are investments in high-speed rail. This column shows that the Shinkansen has had a substantial effect on Japan’s spatial distribution of employment. The relative position of municipalities within the network and their underlying location fundamentals are essential in understanding why the effects of an extensive infrastructure are positive or negative at the local level.  

In the aftermath of World War II, the 1950 Italian land reform expropriated wealthy landowners and redistributed their land among rural workers, with substantial and long-lasting electoral rewards for the initiating Christian Democratic Party. The electoral effects of the reform were visible even 40 years later, arguably because the reform strengthened local Christian Democratic grassroots organisations and because Christian Democratic governments continued to invest in reform towns. The episode offers insights into the persistence of the electoral benefits of redistribution.

Any global temperature target must be translated into an intertemporal carbon budget and an associated cost-efficient carbon price schedule. This column uses an intertemporal asset-pricing approach to examine the impact of uncertainties surrounding economic growth and abatement technologies on the dynamics of efficient carbon prices. It finds evidence of a positive carbon risk premium and suggests an efficient growth rate of expected carbon prices of around 4% plus inflation. This is lower than the growth rates found in many public reports and integrated assessment models, and justifies a higher carbon price today in order to satisfy the carbon budget.

The rise of alternative work arrangements – from temporary and part-time work to self-employment and online gig-economy jobs – has increased the take-up of part-time unemployment benefits in several countries. This column presents the results of a large experiment among recipients of unemployment-benefits insurance in France. It shows that increasing part-time unemployment benefits raises the propensity to work in non-regular jobs, but also extends the duration of compensated unemployment and unemployment insurance expenditure, suggesting that the lock-in effects of compensated unemployment associated with part-time benefits require precise evaluation.

Around the globe, countries are experiencing a surge in the size and proportion of older individuals in their populations, leading to a ‘greying’ of the workforce. These older workers often encounter discrimination in the workplace. This column uses two unique data sources and two novel statistical approaches to show that economic downturns increase the incidence of illegal age discrimination. Whatever power disparities exist between workers and employers appear to grow during recessions, allowing employers to engage in higher levels of discrimination.

When discussing the socioeconomic effects of climate change, little attention has been given to the role of the ocean. This column presents new evidence of the effect of ocean acidification on early-childhood mortality in low- and middle-income countries. Small increases in exposure to water acidity while in utero have significant effects on neonatal mortality. A closer look at possible mechanisms highlight the role of the ocean for nutrition and how overfishing represents an additional threat.

Concerns associated with the Covid-19 pandemic have led to new rationales of protectionism, with renewed emphasis on domestic production and sourcing. This column compares the current economic crisis brought on by the pandemic to previous major economic crises and examines what this could mean for the future of various aspects of globalisation.

At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, scholars around the world estimated the potential of working from home, given its efficacy as a measure to mitigate the spread of the contagion while allowing productive activities to continue. This column uses household survey data for 31 countries to update previous estimates of working from home during the pandemic. The new data suggest that that during the second quarter of 2020, 557 million workers worked from home, accounting for 17.4% of the world’s employment.  This estimate is remarkably close to the previous estimate from May 2020, based on an expert assessment of teleworkability adjusted for occupational distributions.

While the effectiveness of central bank’s verbal communication is well documented, little is known about the effectiveness of communication via non-verbal channels. This column discusses vocal features of Federal Open Market Committee communication and examines the impacts on financial markets. The results suggest that tone of voice can contain distinct information not captured in the texts of press conferences. A positive voice tone can lead to higher share prices and decreases in volatility, highlighting the importance of voice control for central bank communication.