VoxTalks Economics

Most high earners bounce back from recessions. But Gianluca Violante tells Tim Phillips that, for the last 50 years, it has been a different story for low earners. 

The Covid-19 lockdown has provided the opportunity to measure the financial value we give to 'free' digital services like social media and Google search. Diane Coyle and David Nguyen tell Tim Phillips what they discovered, and whether this value should be counted in GDP. Read the paper in Covid Economics 33, or this article on VoxEU.

Skilled artisans were needed to build, improve and mend the machines that powered the industrial revolution. Joel Mokyr tells Tim Phillips how this can help explain why the revolution happened when - and where - it did.

In the recovery from Covid-19 we urgently need to boost productivity. But which policies move the needle? Filippo di Mauro tells Tim Phillips about what CompNet's firm-level productivity data tells us about both the problem and the solution. Find out more about what the data is telling us .

Low profitability, non-performing loans, and competition from Big Tech. A new report from the CEPR concludes that the banking sector faces "deep restructuring". Xavier Vives tell Tim Phillips why. Read about the report and download it .

Kaushik Basu's time as World Bank chief economist inspired him to think radically about how to change the way the global economy works. He tells Tim Phillips about why public ownership and profit-sharing may be essential, and what we can still learn from Karl Marx.

A new ebook from the CEPR and the International Development Policy Journal discusses the threat to developing and emerging economies from the pandemic, and what we can do about it. Ugo Panizza is one of the editors, and he joins Tim Phillips to discuss capital flight, conflict, and what advanced economies and can do to help. Download Covid in Developing Economies - it's free .

Different countries and cities have different rates of Covid exposure, but what can explain the difference in incidence between neighbourhoods? New York residents Milena Almagro and Angelo Orane-Hutchinson tell Tim Phillips what made the difference in their city. Read their research in Covid Economics 13 .

Thomas Philippon's new book argues that in the last 20 years the US has “given up” on free markets. As a result, he tells Tim Phillips, American families are each $5,000 a year poorer.

This week the CEPR launches a new research programme called STEG - Structural Transformation and Economic Growth. Ahead of the kick-off workshop on June 4 and 5, Joe Kaboski and Doug Gollin tell Tim Phillips what STEG hopes to achieve, and Rachel Glennerster explains why DFID is funding it. Register for the workshop or discover STEG here .

The mortality statistics of the Covid-19 outbreak suggest that your country's medical infrastructure has a big influence on how likely you are to survive. Nathan Sussman has examined the data and tells Tim Phillips why all countries should be urgently investing in their health services. Read "Time for Beds" in issue 11 of  Covid Economics .

Should competition authorities intervene more often in tech mergers? Be careful, Luis Cabral tells Tim Phillips: they risk stifling innovation if they do. 

In every crisis, economists will tell us that it is time for helicopter money, and Covid-19 is no different. But the helicopters never seem to take off. Donato Maschiandaro tells Tim Phillips why not. Read about helicopter money in Issue 7 of Covid Economics.

Do we close our public spaces to protect our communities from Covid-19, or keep them open, as in Sweden? Dirk Krueger tells Tim Phillips that informing the public and then trusting individuals to make good choices might deliver a decline in infections, while minimising the Covid recession. Download Covid Economics 5 , including Dirk's paper. Picture: Creative Commons/Vogler

On the 75 anniversary of the VE Day, David Edgerton tells Tim Phillips that Britain's belief in its go-it-alone scientific and inventive genius is “deluded”, and has stunted the nation's postwar growth. Download The Economics of the Second World War Seventy-Five Years On , featuring David's chapter.

Last month the media accused New York's wealthy residents of jumping the queue for Covid-19 testing. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé, a New York resident herself, ran the numbers. She tells Tim Phillips what she discovered.

In a new paper called Born out of necessity , a group of economists and  lawyers propose a way for developing and emerging countries to temporarily redirect debt repayments to fund Covid-19 relief. Ugo Panizza and Mitu Gulati tell Tim Phillips how it would work. Read about this controversial idea at VoxEU.

Keynes amassed an extensive collection of fine art during his lifetime. David Chambers tells Tim Phillips what the financial returns on his investment have been, and the insight this gives us into how to value an art portfolio as an asset. 

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone affected an area which included a pioneering experiment in community healthcare. Oeindrila Dube tells Tim Phillips about the lifesaving impact of this experiment - and two important lessons we can learn that may help to contain the spread of Covid-19 in Africa.

When Covid-19 wasn't even on the radar of most policymakers, Warwick McKibbin of ANU used his experience from previous pandemics to create seven scenarios for its impact. All implied a major shock to the global economy. Tim Phillips asks him how his model was able to capture the nature of Covid-19, and which policymakers listened to the warning. Read about McKibbin's scenarios in Chapter 3 of Econ...

In international crises, disasters and wars, private lenders disappear. But governments have stepped in and lent far more to each other than we previously thought. Christoph Trebesch tells Tim Phillips that new data on  200 years of official lending may contain unexpected good news for countries crippled by Covid-19. Read 'Coping with disasters: Lessons from two centuries of international response...

Enrico Perotti tells Tim Phillips that while regulatory reform means that banks are unlikely to be at risk, the same is not true for the shadow banking sector. Does this threaten financial stability, and what should policymakers do about it?

How can euro area countries work together to protect their economies? A diverse group of economists has suggested the creation of an emergency Covid credit line. Beatrice Weder di Mauro tells Tim Phillips how it would work. Read about the Covid credit line on VoxEU

In a VoxTalks special, Danny Quah tells Tim Phillips how Singapore defended itself against the health and economic impact of Covid-19, and what other countries can learn from its actions. Download the VoxEU book Mitigating the Covid Economic Crisis .

We think about political polarization as a disagreement about policies. But what if the voters can't even agree on the facts? Stefanie Stantcheva tells Tim Phillips about new research that has profound implications for democracy.