Reform chatter and democracy
It is often argued that democracy is the least imperfect form of government mainly because of the existence of a ‘self-correcting’ mechanism stemming...
Which programming language is best for economic research: Julia, Matlab, Python or R?
The most widely used programming languages for economic research are Julia, Matlab, Python and R. This column uses three criteria to compare the...
Market Fragmentation and Contagion
We study the transmission of liquidity shocks from one sector of the economy to other sectors in a general equilibrium model with multiple trading...
Support for small businesses amid COVID-19
A sizeable proportion of enterprises, especially SMEs, in receipt of financial assistance from the government will fail to repay. This column asks...
Time inconsistency in recent monetary policy
A decade of near-zero, and even negative, interest rates in advanced economies has both encouraged the continued accumulation of debt and a search for...
Who Bears Risk in China’s Non-financial Enterprise Debt?
This paper analyses of how risk is allocated in China’s markets for debt issued by non-financial enterprises. Compared to other major corporate bond...
Firms in Financial Distress
We use simple accounting measures to estimate the share of private manufacturing firms in financial distress under a hypothetical scenario of losing...
Coronavirus panic fuels a surge in cash demand
Despite regular reports in the media over the past decade on the imminent death of cash amid rapid innovation in payment technologies, cash in...
Finance and politics: New insights
A rapidly expanding literature has shown the importance of political economy factors for legislative and regulatory actions in the financial sector...
Firms in Financial Distress
We use simple accounting measures to estimate the share of private manufacturing firms in financial distress under a hypothetical scenario of losing...
Reform Chatter and Democracy
We explore the dynamics of media chatter about economic reforms using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages. We show...
The neighbourhood effect of reforms after crises
Countries reform when their neighbours have reformed too, especially in the aftermath of economic crises. This column examines business regulatory...
Financial Volatility and Economic Growth, 1870–2016
We investigate the causal impact of financial risk on economic growth, using a panel spanning 150 years and 74 countries. Persistent low risk...
Wisdom of Crowds Detects COVID-19 Severity Ahead of Officially Available Data
During the unfolding of a crisis, it is crucial to determine its severity, yet access to reliable data is challenging. We investigate the relation...
Higher-Order Uncertainty in Financial Markets: Evidence from a Consensus Pricing Service
We assess the ability of an information aggregation mechanism that operates in the over-the-counter market for financial derivatives to reduce...
