VoxTalks Economics

Governments are desperate to create innovation hubs or attract tech companies to kickstart economic growth, but that creates winners and losers. Richard Blundell tells Tim Phillips how policy can balance the impact of innovation on inequality and create policies so that creative destruction and social mobility can go hand-in-hand.

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, some cable news hosts cast doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines. Matteo Pinna tells Tim Phillips about his research on the impact of Fox News on vaccination rates.

Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine: forced migration is constantly in the news, but these events have been happening for hundreds of years. Sascha Becker tells Tim Phillips about new research that is discovering the economic impact of mass displacement in history, both on refugees and on communities – and the lessons we can learn from the past.

Scientists create innovation. Is this because they are paid to do it, or because they care about the outcome? Tim Besley tells Tim Phillips how motivated science drives down the cost of innovation and may accelerate the green transition.

Are the Ukrainian economy and financial system holding up to Russia's bombardment? Yevhenii Skok tells Tim Phillips whether emergency policies have been able to maintain liquidity and financial stability, how much damage has been done to Ukraine's productive capacity, and what a post-war financial rebuild would look like.

Does compulsory religious education make us more likely to believe as adults, and does it make us more ethical? Ludger Woessmann, Larissa Zierow, and Benjamin Arold explain to Tim Phillips what educational reform in Germany can tell us.

Until the second half of the 19th century, coverture laws granted married men almost unlimited power over the household. Moshe Hazan and David Weiss tell Tim Phillips about how abolition changed the number of children in a family, and how well those children were educated?

Which economic sanctions against Russia are lawful, which are politically feasible, and which will bite? Luis Garicano - economist and MEP - describes what has been done so far and what more can be done.

China's Covid lockdown in early 2020 shocked the business world. How did this surprise disruption affect the firms that rely on imported Chinese products? Isabelle Mejean tells Tim Phillips about the economic impact in France, and which firms were most resilient. 

Inflation reduces economic welfare by distorting demand. But what is the inflation rate that minimises these distortions? Maybe it's a lot higher than our models assume, Klaus Adam tells Tim Phillips.

A recent experiment in Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine attempted to overcome deep-seated prejudice against the LGBT community using information. Ralph De Haas and Cevat Aksoy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development tell Tim Phillips about which messages cut through, and what impact can they have in the face of religious and state hostility.

One of the most remarkable achievements of the French Revolution for ordinary people was the reorganisation of local government. Cédric Chambru, Emeric Henry and Benjamin Marx tell Tim Phillips how local state capitals emerged as a result, and what this tells us about how state capacity develops.

Since the GFC the UK has used innovative macroprudential and monetary policy tools to maintain stability. But the UK is an international financial centre, and so does this policy framework create spillovers in other places, and do influences from elsewhere affect stability in the UK? Yes and yes, says Thorsten Beck.

Covid-19 demonstrated that modern global supply chains do not guarantee food in supermarkets or PPE in hospitals. Richard Baldwin tells Tim Phillips how risky these supply chains really are, and what we could do to shore them up.

In the 20th century at least 6 million African Americans migrated from poor southern states to northern cities to escape discrimination and poverty, changing the course of American history. At least as many whites also migrated, taking their ideas with them. Samuel Bazzi tells Tim Phillips that they have also influenced social structures and politics in the US.

The Chinese government isn't just a world leader in the use of AI for facial recognition, its orders are funding innovation in its domestic industry too. But what's good news for entrepreneurs may be bad news for political protest, Noam Yuchtman tells Tim Phillips.

Are the differences between what men and women like decided at birth, or do we learn to prefer different things? Klaus Desmet tells Tim Phillips about new research that investigates global patterns in 45,397 Facebook interests.

Refugees from conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and many other countries travel thousands of miles seeking a new life in Europe. But how likely are these refugees to be recognised as asylum seekers, and does it matter in which country they apply? Tim Hatton tells Tim Phillips that, despite efforts to standardise the process of granting asylum, there are still big differences in recognition rates ac...

New research uses German census data to track the association between success for a child and the earnings of the parent at a much higher level of detail than was previously possible. Sebastian Findeisen and Paul Schüle tell Tim Phillips about the impact of investment in education that was intended to improve social mobility.

Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens shared the Nobel in 2021 for their pioneering work on natural experiments that, in the words of the committee, "revolutionised empirical research". Steve Pischke tells Tim Phillips about the history of natural experiments, and the impact of the methods pioneered by this year's Laureates. © Nobel Prize Outreach 2021 Ill. Niklas Elmehed

Two new papers pinpoint the election of 1992 as a turning point in the attitudes of Americans to same-sex relationships, and ask, what has caused this change? Raquel Fernandez and Sahar Parsa of NYU tell Tim Phillips about the complex relationship between political and social attitudes.

Do we have children to provide for us in our old age? Pauline Rossi tells Tim Phillips about the impact on the size of families in Namibia after the government granted a state pension – research that might have important implications for economic development in Africa. Picture credit: paolafrog@flickr

Tournaments are increasingly being used in business to solve non-routine problems. Florian Englmaier tells Tim Phillips about new research into what gives these teams the will to win. Do they respond to having a common sense of identity, do they want kudos and status from other people, or are they just looking for a cash prize? 

Repeated environmental and economic crises in recent years are encouraging many people to ask, is this really the best way to run a planet? Markus Brunnermeier tells Tim Phillips how we can do a better job of coping with shocks.

When we live through a financial crisis, many of us think differently about money afterwards. Neuroscientists can show that the experience changes the physical structure of our brains, and Ulrike Malmendier tells Tim Phillips how this should also change the way that economists think about preferences for risk.