Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
This weekend marks 100 years since the end of World War 1. But is the history of the war that we learn at school the whole story? The 20 essays in a new VoxEU ebook on the economic history of the war challenge the conventional wisdom about how the war started, why it was won and lost, and its consequences. Tim Phillips talks to Mark Harrison of the University of Warwick, one of the book’s editors.
The ways we access news and, with it, the nature of political communication have radically changed since the advent of social media. This column uses a unique dataset that matches individuals to Facebook audiences to examine the extent and intensity of online political campaigns conducted on the site before the 2016 US presidential elections. The social platform had a significant effect in persuading undecided voters to support Trump and in persuading Republican supporters to turn out on election day, but had no effect on Clinton’s side.
November 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. This column introduces a new VoxEU eBook which takes the opportunity to reflect on recent work that provides a reassessment of the role of economics in the war.
In the UK’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, young voters were more likely than their elders to vote Remain. Applying new methods to a half century of data, this column shows that this pattern reflects both ageing and cohort effects. Although voters become more Eurosceptical as they age, recent cohorts are also more pro-European than their predecessors, which will offset at least in part the ageing of the electorate going forward. However, the existence of large nationwide swings in sentiment that have little to do with either seasoning or cohort effects suggests that demographic trends are unlikely to be the decisive determinants of future changes in European sentiment.
In today’s world of globalised finance, regulators in developing countries have to weigh up the international ramifications of their decisions. This column presents the results of a research project which combines cross-country panel analysis and in-depth case studies of the political economy of the adoption of Basel II/III in the developing world. It finds that regulators in developing countries do not merely adopt Basel II/III because these standards provide the optimal technical solution to financial stability risks in their jurisdictions; concerns about reputation and competition are also important.
