Post-Corona balanced budget fiscal stimulus: The case for shifting taxes onto land
Land’s share in economies’ nonfinancial assets equals between 40% and 60%, and in the US currently equals over 50%. This constitutes a very large base...
Opinion Pieces
Why some nations’ labour markets did better during the pandemic
Leaving human capital out of policy discussions might lead to incorrect inferences about which measures were most successful during the pandemic...
The new global tax deal arrives (but expect bumps ahead)
Nearly 140 countries have agreed to a new global tax deal, which was years in the making. Estonia, Hungary and Ireland, the last holdouts, joined the...
Simpler approaches to a global tax plan
More than 130 countries have lined up in favour of a global redesign of corporate taxes. The redesign calls for multinational giants to pay their...
Changing bankruptcy law has given firms time to adapt and recover
Bankruptcies are costly, but economists worry about keeping doomed firms alive. Simeon Djankov (LSE) argues that restructuring bankruptcy laws has...
Gendered laws curb Olympic success
Legal gender equality is key for female participation in the labour market. The association between women’s legal empowerment and success in sports is...
Reducing the compliance costs of regulation
In much of the world, property sales are highly regulated and expensive. Using World Bank data, this column shows that while regulators and...
Measuring human capital: Learning matters more than schooling
Human capital is a critical component of economic development. But the links between growth and human capital – when measured by years of schooling –...
US business dynamism rises
Steep falls in entrepreneurial activity were recorded in early 2020 across G7 economies. In the US, however, the creation of US startups shot up by 24...
As COVID rages, bankruptcy cases fall
Bankruptcies have fallen sharply in OECD economies because of the array of COVID-related support available to businesses, as well as imposed moratoria...
Vaccine challenges
Last week brought welcome news about the apparent effectiveness of a potential Covid-19 vaccine. While the challenges of manufacturing and...
Financial policymaking after crises: Public versus private interest
Financial crises invariably lead governments to intervene in one way or another, whether to ease the damage to middle-class voters, to respond to the...
Making furlough portable would encourage people to move into new jobs
Furlough is here to stay – in the UK, at least until March. The author argues that making part of furlough income portable would encourage people to...
Reform bankruptcy laws to save businesses from going under
Faced with the prospect of hundreds of thousands of businesses going under, the UK changed its bankruptcy laws in June. Other G7 countries that put...
COVID-19 hurt women’s employment the hardest
Changes to maternity leave and pension regulation, among other policy tools, can lessen the burden on women.
Reviving tourism in the COVID era: bungs, tax cuts and no more tour buses
Tourism has taken an enormous hit during the pandemic. Simeon Djankov (LSE) looks at some of the ways governments are trying to revive the sector –...
