VoxTalks Economics

Data about the personal finances of the richest people in our society is hard to find. A team of economists in France have attempted to answer a question that increasing preoccupies both policymakers and the public: how much tax do the ultra-rich actually pay? Antoine Bozio talks to Tim Phillips about why France’s tax regime is no longer progressive – and what would happen if progressivity was res...

Economic development, especially in Africa, often implies improving crop agriculture. But many rural populations are pastoralists, grazing their cattle on land that policymakers have earmarked for crops. So is good news for crop farmers also a threat to the pastoralists’ way of life? Eoin McGuirk tells Tim Phillips about how some apparently successful development projects create conflict between c...

Women are under-represented in politics. If women aren’t chosen to stand for election, and voters are biased against them when they do, what can break this vicious circle? S Anukriti tells Tim Phillips about how local decision-making as part of a school-building programme in India has allowed women to show they are effective leaders, to change the political agenda, and even to convince sceptics th...

More new research from the CEPR-PSE Symposium 2024.  It’s infuriating when you’re expecting a digital payment to arrive, it is lost in the system somewhere, and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. Now imagine how devastating it is if that payment is all that’s keeping you and your family out of poverty. Yusuf Neggers is one of a team that have created an app to improve the administrat...

In our latest podcast from the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2024, we feature three of the young economists who made their mark at the conference. Tim Phillips talks to Alice Chiocchetti about the extent and impact of profit shifting by French firms, Yuan Hu about green technological change after natural disasters, and Christoph Semken about how we all underestimate the impact of our emissions-reducing li...

More new research from the CEPR-PSE Symposium 2024.  More than 100 countries have some form of quota regulation that requires firms to hire people with disabilities. Does this example of affirmative action help people who have a disability to find a job, and what is the impact on the firm, and on fellow workers? Christiane Szerman tells Tim Phillips about the surprising labour market effects of a...

If we’re going to get to net zero in time, economists argue that carbon taxation alone is the best policy. But less than a quarter of emissions are subject to any carbon pricing. And even then, the price of carbon is far too low. So how much climate finance will it take to fill that gap to get us to a socially optimal solution? Lasse Heje Pedersen talks to Alissa and Tim about how he estimates the...

The first in a series of VoxTalks Economics based on some of the most interesting presentations from the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2024. Imagine that one day, you are offered the chance to move to a new, better, bigger house in the same city as you live, with the government paying for 90% of your mortgage. This is what happens in Brazil, where millions of people have been given access to better housin...

If we want to help millions of working people who have high-polluting jobs to find news work during the green transition, first we need to know more about what they do and where they are. Orsetta Causa tells Tim Phillips about the location of dirty jobs, and whether policy to reskill workers can finally succeed. 

If the climate crosses any of a number of tipping points, what are the implications for climate finance? Tipping points are large, probably irreversible, changes in nature that may occur as a result of the increase in global temperature. Worse, crossing one tipping point may cause a cascade of others. Alissa and Tim talk to Tim Lenton, one of the authors of the Global Tipping Points Report, and Pa...

The #MeToo movement inspired many professions, and the men who work in those professions, to reflect on whether female colleagues were treated fairly. Economics had its own highly visible, and sometimes controversial, #MeToo moment. What has been the impact of #MeToo on patterns of co-authorship? Noriko Amano-Patino, Elisa Faraglia and Chryssi Giannitsarou deliver good and bad news to Tim Phillips...

Which firms are infiltrated by organised crime, and why? We know that organised crime has links to some firms in the legal economy. But how big is this infiltration, and what do they gain from it? Rocco Macchiavello tells Tim Phillips about which firms are infiltrated, how this occurs – and what the crime families have to gain.

Next week, there will be EU elections across Europe. Later this year, there is a closely fought election in the US. As traditional political right-left allegiances break down, what is influencing the way we vote? Andrés Rodríguez-Pose tells Tim Phillips how economic stagnation combined with increased interpersonal and regional inequality has been driving the populist vote.

We are increasingly aware of the number of people who secretly suffer from depression. Many sufferers are reluctant to seek help because they fear that others will assume they are weak or lazy. If depressed people discover that most of their peers feel sympathy rather than contempt for them, will they be empowered to seek help? Egon Tripodi and his colleagues tested that assumption. He tells Tim P...

Fake news threatens our electoral process and our social structure. Fabrice Collard tells Tim Phillips that it threatens economic stability too, and that the impact of the of the fake news epidemic can be detected as a rise in uncertainty that transmits to core economic statistics. 

If economics and finance are the key to creating a sustainable way to live, what is the role of business schools in training the people who will make that happen? Alissa and Tim talk to Peter Tufano of Harvard Business about how they should be taking the lead in teaching the tools of climate finance. They also discuss his research into what the public thinks the role of business in society should...

Where is Europe’s economy vulnerable, and how can it manage that risk? A new joint report from CEPR and Bruegel investigates the challenges to economic security for Europe in the face of recent supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical shocks. Jean Pisani-Ferry is one of the editors of the report, and he talks to Tim Phillips about what has changed for Europe, and how we should respond. EUROPE...

When a conflict ends, we know how minefields continue to destroy the lives of innocent people. But is there an economic, as well as a humanitarian, benefit to demining? Mounu Prem of Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance is one of the authors of a paper that provides the first estimates of the economic dividend when a minefield is cleared, using records from humanitarian operations in Colomb...

In March 2023, many experts supported an open letter that called for a six-month pause in giant AI experiments, and that development of these AIs should go ahead “only once we are confident that their effects will be positive, and their risks will be manageable”. In the second of our podcasts recorded at the 79th EP Panel, Tim Phillips asks Joshua Gans of the University of Toronto what might happe...

Recorded at the Spring 2024 Economic Policy Panel Meeting.  What will be the impact of AI on the labour market? Two new papers use the evidence from the early years of the 21st century to analyse who the winners and losers have been so far. Gino Gancia and Juan Jimeno analyse the labour markets of the US and Europe and tell Tim Phillips who the winners and losers have been so far.

This year’s World Economic Outlook report from the IMF features an intriguing piece of research that shows how rising policy rates bit harder in some countries than other because of differences in how existing mortgages are calculated, new mortgages are granted, and house prices. Rui Mano from the IMF’s Research Department tells Tim Phillips about how the housing channels of monetary policy help t...

The Spanish Civil War that ended in 1939 was brutal and destructive. But does it still affect how Spanish people think and behave today, three generations later? Felipe Valencia Caicedo and Ana Tur-Prats talk to Tim Phillips about a legacy of distrust and poisoned political beliefs. Photo credit: Generalitat de Catalunya 

What do we learn from the way central banks around the world responded to post-pandemic inflation? A new ebook from CEPR Press collects contributions from both academics and the central bankers who took the decisions. It explores what they did and how well it worked – and suggests some lessons that will help policymakers cope with the next inflationary episode. Bill English, one of the editors, ta...

Are markets acting efficiently when they price carbon risk? Alex Edmans talks to Alissa Kleinnijenhuis and Tim Phillips about how the earnings announcements of high emitters suggest mispricing of transition risk and argues that we should think of ESG is both extremely important – and nothing special.

Whether they war, disease or natural disasters, banks need to prepare for, and cope with, unexpected events. The third LTI report is published on 18 March by CEPR. Steven Ongena and Anna Pestova explain to Tim Phillips what the report reveals about how banks respond to these three types of disasters – and what that means for their customers.