VoxTalks Economics

Today generative AI makes it easy to create and distribute convincing fake news stories, pictures, even videos. We’ve all been hoodwinked – but does that undermine our trust and confidence in the mainstream media? Ruben Durante of National University of Singapore, IPF-ICREA and CEPR is one of the authors of new research that tests how AI-generated misinformation affects our desire for real news. H...

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, attended by thousands of business and policy VIPs – is one of those events that pops up on the news every year, as we see photos of multinational CEOs shaking hands with world leaders and taking part in panel discussions on the future of the planet. But how valuable is it to the business people who pay hundreds of thousands of Swiss Francs...

The belief that women are in some way inferior to men has been around for centuries. And throughout that time, women have suffered the consequences. Economists have lately been trying to understand more about the origins of gender biased norms, to help create better policies to challenge them. Their work can build on insights from sociology, anthropology and gender studies, but also raises importa...

On 4 August, Paul Atkins, the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, launched “Project Crypto”. The SEC wants to make the US “the crypto capital of the world”. Crypto investors make a lot of noise, but who are they, and do they behave differently to other retail investors? A new CEPR discussion paper called “Do you even crypto, bro?” summarises what a representative sample of US citiz...

How do criminals choose the weapons they carry, the number of accomplices, the types of business they target? Economists have long argued that decisions to commit economic crimes are strategic, based on a calculation of risk and reward.  The Italian justice system changes the punishment for a crime depending on how it is committed, and so a new analysis of thieves and their crimes, based on data f...

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025.  The gender wage gap in advanced economies isn’t shrinking. What can firms do to eliminate the part of the wage gap that comes from discrimination? The OECD has analysed the data from countries with pay transparency legislation to discover how much of the gender pay gap arises from the different treatment of equally qualified men and women. Stéphane...

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025.  One of the mysteries for economists and policymakers has been the reluctance of men to take paternity leave, no matter how generous the terms offered to them. In her presentation, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago Booth School mentioned some new research from Japan that is helping to shine a light on this topic, in an innovative and en...

From our series recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025. How much progress have we made in finding out the source of gender inequality at work? At the Forum, Barbara Petrongolo of the University of Oxford and CEPR gave the keynote lecture on “Questions and challenges for 21st century labour markets”. In conversations with Tim Phillips, she points out that there are still many unanswered qu...

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025.  This week, we interview three of the next generation of economists. At the forum, a group of young researchers were presenting their work in the main theatre and at poster sessions during the breaks. Tim Phillips took the opportunity to talk to some of them about their research.  Pelin Ozgul of the University of Maastricht has investigated whether...

Are global economic flows collapsing, or are they reorganising? That’s one of the intriguing questions asked by a new CEPR publication called The State of Globalisation. It brings together a series of essays on both the changes that are happening in the global economy, and the policies that can respond to these changes. So how should trade policy and industrial strategy adapt when globalization is...

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025.  Now that many of us work part or all our week at home, does that mean we want to move to a different area, or a larger house? And what is the effect on housing for those who cannot work from home? Morgane Richard of Stanford has researched how Londoners sought out new homes post-Covid to match their flexible work arrangements. She tells Tim Phillip...

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025.  Go back six or seven years and working from home was an exception. Bosses discouraged it, contracts didn’t mention it, and we didn’t have the technology to do it.  Covid changed all that. But since then, how have work patterns changed? Should we believe the press reports that we’re all being summoned back to the office, or is remote work now part o...

If we focus on the cutting edge of AI implementation, we’re also focusing on a small set of technologically advanced countries. How will AI affect work in the rest of the world, what should those countries do to prepare, and how can they make best use of the technology? Giovanni Melina of the IMF is one of the authors of two papers that calculates both the exposure of jobs to AI around the world,...

 In the second of special series recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025, we are asking, how good is AI at doing real-world job task? And how can we measure their capability without resorting to technical benchmarks that may not mean much in the workplace? Since we all became aware of large language models, LLMs scientists have been attempting to evaluate how good they are at performing ex...

Recorded live at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2025.  This year the annual Paris School of Economics-PSE Policy Forum is organized around three themes: artificial intelligence and labour reallocation, working conditions and remote work, and inequality in the workplace. In short, what's work going to look like in the future?  Our series of podcasts, recorded live at the event, starts with David Autor’s...

The Bank for International Settlements Annual Economic Report has just dropped, and there’s a markedly less positive tone than last year, when it was celebrating imminent soft landings in the global economy. It warns of a deteriorating outlook for growth, coupled with vulnerabilities in the global financial system.  So, what exactly is the BIS worried about, how can policy and regulation respond,...

Whether you are looking at the link from education to economic growth, household earnings or individual happiness, there’s no doubt that a better-educated population is good news. But how can policy improve education in a cost-effective way? You might assume that a good route would be to improve the management of schools, but existing research is not conclusive, and often top-down attempts to impr...

Pedestrianised areas, car-free streets, or low traffic neighbourhoods are increasingly visible in major cities. Whether in London, Paris, New York or Barcelona, these changes are always controversial – but does the loud criticism that we often hear in social media or newspapers really represent the views of voters who are affected by these policies? Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal of the Universitat de...

What’s the point of having a job? Clearly, to make money for ourselves and our families. But is it possible for us to discover some bigger purpose or meaning at work. And, if we do, who benefits? That’s the idea that a multinational organisation had when it called in a team of economists to analyse its internal programme called “Find your Purpose” (FYP). The resulting RCT set out to measure whethe...

Does the public take more notice of the opinions of male or female economists? We know that female experts, whether in science, politics or the media, suffer from an authority gap: their expertise is often not given as much weight by the public as opinions held by less qualified men. But does the gap persist for the very highest achievers? And, if it closes or even reverses for them, what lessons...

What if trade policy wasn’t really about trade at all? What if it was about revenge, power, and punishment, tariffs as tantrums and diplomacy as drama? You won’t find the Grievance Doctrine in economics textbooks, but there is one book that explains what it is, what its policies are, and the way it is currently being implemented. Richard Baldwin of IMD Business School in Lausanne, the founder and...

China’s growth as an economic superpower has been based in a large part on its increasing ability to design and manufacture sophisticated, hi-tech goods. But, until recently, it was far from a superpower when it came to creating new knowledge and cutting-edge academic research. Luc Laeven of the ECB and CEPR and his co-authors recently published an analysis of the research output in top journals f...

Does economic growth inspire us to trust our governments? A new paper finds a surprisingly strong and consistent relationship between trust and economic growth – not for this quarter, or this year, but over our lifetimes. Tim Besley of the London School of Economics tells Tim Phillips how we can measure trust in a government around the world, and the strong and consistent relationship between long...

Recently, students all over the world have been demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza or in support of the policies of the Israeli government. At times, police have been required to keep the two sides apart. Protests, sit-ins and encampments are scenes familiar on many campuses. Sciences Po in Paris, is one of the locations where protests have made national news. But a decade ago,...

With the major geopolitical powers squaring up to each other, tariffs on trade and political turmoil, is it time for economics to focus more on the consequences for the world economy of great power rivalry? A new paper defines the emerging field of geoeconomics, reviews the existing research, and sets out an agenda to fill the gaps in what we know. Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the...