VoxTalks Economics

Ukraine will emerge from this war with enormous debt. The conventional wisdom treats that as an obstacle: investors weigh it before committing capital, and the burden slows the recovery before it starts. Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Maurice Obstfeld of UC Berkeley argue the opposite. A thorough restructuring of Ukraine's war debts – including, for sufficiently large obligations, outright forgiveness –...

Recorded live at the CEPR Annual Symposium. We seem to be talking about the behaviour of alpha males on social media a lot recently. But what happens when we put them in charge of a country? The work of Mario Carillo of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona attempts to answer that question. He talks to Tim Phillips about when and why voters choose alpha males, and how they respond to being given power...

What type of manager would you be? An experiment in Ethiopia set out to measure the management traits of young professionals by setting them challenges in a video studio, and along the way also uncovered valuable (and surprising) information about the type of manager that employees and employers preferred. Simon Quinn of Imperial College London and CEPR and Tom Schwantje of Bocconi University were...

Recorded live at the CEPR Annual Symposium in Paris.  When VoxTalks Economics visits a symposium or conference, we try to find the most interesting new research from economists who are just starting out in their careers. In Paris we invited three of them to the CEPR Office to tell us about their work. In this episode, Tim Phillips talks to Lucie Giorgi, Aix-Marseille School of Economics (AMSE), wh...

Another special episode recorded at the CEPR annual symposium in Paris. On 20 Jan 2025 when the Trump administration declared foreign aid “antithetical" to American values and suddenly ended many of its overseas programmes. How many lives were lost as a result, and can others step up to try to minimise that damage?  Justin Sandefur is well qualified to speak on this topic – he leads Coefficient Gi...

Recorded at the CEPR Annual Forum in Paris. Many of the Trump administration policies have direct consequences for Europe. Some of them are directly targeted at Europe. So how should Europe respond?  The CEPR Press book The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration covers this in up-to-the-minute detail. In Paris Tim Phillips spoke to two of the editors, Beatrice Weder di Mauro and...

Recorded at the CEPR Annual Symposium in Paris. As we expect to live longer, what does this mean for the choices we make, and for the economy? What decisions will seniors be making about their later years, and do the opportunities given to them by society reflect their abilities, needs and ambitions?  In Paris Tim Phillips caught up with Martin Ellison of University of Oxford and Julian Ashwin of...

After Liberation Day, the dollar fell by 6%. We would usually expect tariffs to send exchange rates in the other direction. So what happened? In another episode recorded at the CEPR Annual Symposium in Paris, Giancarlo Corsetti tells Tim Phillips about new research that shows how exchange rates are responding to US tariffs since 2018. When tariffs are expected and retaliation is swift, he argues,...

In 2025, the trade story was about tariffs. And that story isn’t over. Does anyone know what happens next?  Richard Baldwin of IMD Business School and CEPR was author of the chapter on tariffs in the CEPR Press book The Economic Consequences of The Second Trump Administration , and also of The Great Trade Hack , published by CEPR press in 2025. Gene Grossman of Princeton and CEPR analysed the lega...

Another special episode recorded at the CEPR annual symposium in Paris. When does the level of debt in the US become a problem for the economy, and for ordinary Americans? And when it does, what are the policy options to fix it? That’s the topic of a Chapter in the CEPR book. The authors are Ugo Panizza of the Graduate Institute, Geneva and CEPR, and Antonio Fatás of INSEAD and CEPR. They talk to...

Stablecoins are digital tokens, pegged to a fiat currency. What could possibly go wrong? For one type of stablecoin the answer is: plenty, according to Richard Portes. The founder and honorary president of CEPR is also co-chair of the European Systemic Risk Board Crypto Asset Task Force. In this role he has been investigating the risks of multi-issuer stablecoins in Europe. He tells Tim Phillips t...

In another of our special episodes recorded at the CEPR annual Symposium, we ask: is it time for Europe to rearm? The message from the US could not be clearer: it is time for European countries to take care of their own security. If Europe decides to rearm, it has the industrial base – but Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute and CEPR warns that it isn’t converting that capacity into credible d...

In another of our episodes recorded at the CEPR Paris Symposium, we ask: When Gen AI can do an undergraduate’s problem set in seconds, how should teaching, and the syllabus, respond?  Who better to answer this than Wendy Carlin of UCL and CEPR? Wendy – who has recently become Dame Wendy – was at the symposium to talk about her project to change economics teaching through the CORE Project, which mo...

Another special episode recorded at the CEPR annual symposium in Paris. The Trump administration says it wants America to lead in AI, but what does that mean in practice for trade and productivity? Will AI make growth great again, or just inflate a short-term capital spending boom? Gary Gensler of MIT and CEPR (also a former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission) unpacks the administrati...

At the CEPR annual Symposium in Paris we sat down with Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a distinguished fellow of CEPR, and a global authority on geopolitics and trade to discuss the profound changes in the multilateral order in 2025, how countries will adjust to this new normal – and whether the changes we have seen will ever be unwound.

Who would be a policymaker right now? The list of economic problems that we need to solve ranges from “very difficult” to “existential”. An ambitious new book collects the ideas of many influential economists on how to approach these challenges. But can it avoid the mistakes of previous attempts to find an economic policy consensus? Andrés Velasco and Tim Besley are two of the editors of The Londo...

Economic sanctions are the big geoeconomic bazooka. But what does history tell us about how well they work, and their relevance today. And does the theory match the data? Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and CEPR talks to Tim Phillips about the evidence of the history of sanctions on what they can achieve, whether we expect too much too soon from small sanctions – and...

Biodiversity is essential for the wide range of economic activities that our planet needs. Yet, the economic consequences of its global decline are hard to estimate, because most population studies focus on individual species in isolation. Frederik Noack of the University of British Columbia argues that this misses a central insight about biodiversity: a healthy environment depends not just on ind...

In 2021, at COP26, the International Accounting Standards Board announced it would create a standard for this reporting. It wants to integrate sustainability reporting with traditional IFRS accounting. Should firms be compelled by regulators to disclose their impact on the climate in their corporate reporting? Investors value convergence in sustainability reporting standards, but they are facing s...

In Europe and beyond, populist politicians continue to gain ground. What message are voters sending? Are politicians from other parties listening, and explaining their policies in a way that will successfully reach supporters of populist parties? There are one set of policies for which this may be a huge problem soon. What does this mean for that those tricky choices that politicians will have to...

Our economy is embedded in nature, but nature is in danger. External funding is needed, especially in the Global South, to support the conservation of our natural ecosystems. Markets can play a role, but the way in which voluntary carbon markets do this has low public trust which, from recent news, may be deserved. Estelle Cantillon of Université libre de Bruxelles and CEPR tells Tim Phillips abou...

“ What is needed is non-marginal, transformative change to shift the economy, technology, and society”. That’s the typically forthright recommendation from Rick van der Ploeg of the University of Oxford and University of Amsterdam for how to ensure that climate policy is effective at changing our habits and behaviour. He argues that the gradual changes in habits that current policies target don’t...

We are familiar with climate policy to reduce emissions. We know about the policies to adapt to climate change. But can we successfully reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and how do we create policies and incentives to invest in, and take advantage of, those technologies? Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chair of the European Scientific A...

"The Economics of Biodiversity” was published by the UK Treasury in 2021. It sets out how economic systems value biodiversity and natural capital, and which policies would preserve and restore nature. The project leader was Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge. In the latest of our special episodes recorded at the first Hoffmann Centre / CEPR / ReCIPE Conference continue, h...

Can COP 30 get the green transition back on track? It’s not a great time for international cooperation right now and, with hindsight, was the period from 2017 to 2022 a “golden moment” the climate transition, and was it an opportunity missed? That’s the argument presented by Livio Stracca, Deputy Director General Financial Stability at the European Central Bank, also the chair of NGFS work on clim...