Shows
VoxTalks EconomicsThe challenges to the international financial system
The 29th Geneva Report on the World Economy examines three pressures on the international financial system at once: global imbalances, the status of the dollar, and the stability of bond markets. Two of its authors, Valentina Bruno (American University, CEPR) and Cédric Tille (Geneva Graduate Institute, CEPR), tell Tim Phillips why stocks, the dollar and US Treasuries all fell on Liberation Day in April 2025, why that could happen again, and what we should do about it. So is this a rupture, or a transition in the world's financial system?The research behind this episode:...
2026-10-2327 min
VoxTalks EconomicsLife after divorce
Who gets the kids? Courts aim to decide custody in the child's best interests, but nobody has had the data to test how well those decisions work.Gordon Dahl (UC San Diego, CEPR), Costas Meghir (Yale, CEPR) and seven co-authors built the data themselves. They collected more than 56,000 Swedish custody rulings, scanning paper files by hand where no digital copy existed, and linked them to records of parents' earnings, prescriptions and children's school tests. It seems Swedish judges do not agree on how often to award joint custody. Some award it in about 60% of cases; o...
2026-10-1620 min
VoxTalks EconomicsNot wearing Prada
Since March 2022, it has been harder to buy an iPhone in Russia, because Apple chose to stop selling there. So did Prada, Renault, Starbucks, Nike and more than 1,000 other firms. These private sanctions added to the official sanctions imposed by 45 countries.Beata Javorcik (EBRD, Oxford, CEPR) and her co-authors wanted to know if private sanctions did anything more than generate good headlines. To do this, they matched millions of Russian customs records to the trademarks on the goods, so they could tell an iPhone from a Samsung phone and a Gucci scarf from a Gucci bag. Would...
2026-10-0918 min
VoxTalks EconomicsMerit, masters and China's imperial exam
For more than 1,300 years, China chose its top officials by written exam. Its top officials were chosen meritocratic ally -- or were they?When the results came out, each successful candidate went to pay his respects to the men who had marked his exam. He called the examiner master, and the bond lasted for life.Ruixue Jia (UC San Diego, CEPR) and her co-author Ying Bai followed 24,269 graduates of the Qing dynasty's imperial examination, from 1644 to 1905, to see who reached the top of the imperial state. A high mark in the examination was important, but...
2026-10-0221 min
VoxTalks EconomicsDecoupling from China after Trump's Trade Wars
In March 2025, Apple chartered cargo flights to deliver 600 tonnes of iPhones from India to the United States. A year earlier, four in five smartphones that imported to the US came from China. One of the aims of US trade policy has been to decouple the US economy from China. So is the strategy working? Chad Bown (PIIE, CEPR) tells Tim Phillips how he examined the US import data product by product to see how American importers coped with Trump's second trade war. In consumer electronics, many firms quietly built a second supply chain in tariff-exempt countries before 2025, a...
2026-09-2529 min
VoxTalks EconomicsLoosening inheritance law
In most of the world you do not get to choose who inherits your money. Across continental Europe, Latin America, and countries governed by Islamic law, a minimum share of your estate will be reserved for your children, your spouse, and in some places your surviving parents. Write a will that ignores them and the law overrules you. If you want a head start in life, choose your parents carefully.Switzerland changed the rules in January 2023. The compulsory share for children fell by one third and the share reserved for surviving parents disappeared altogether. In t...
2026-09-1825 min
VoxTalks EconomicsDoes sacking the manager work?
Your football team keeps losing. The season is slipping away. One thing can be changed by Friday, and the crowd is already singing about it: sack the manager.Jan van Ours (Erasmus School of Economics, CEPR, Feyenoord fan) has looked at seven seasons of the Dutch top flight and 31 managers who were sacrificed mid-season. To work out whether any of them deserved it, he uses bookmaker odds and expected goals to distinguish bad play from bad luck. The new-manager bounce is real: results improve after a new manager walks in. But also, not real: clubs t...
2026-09-1118 min
VoxTalks EconomicsLessons from Populism in Latin America
The new episode of VoxTalks Economics traces the effects of South Americans populism, left and right. Alejandro Werner (Georgetown Americas Institute) is one of the authors of a new paper that traces populist governments across Latin America back to 1970. He argues that they follow a strikingly similar script: they expand spending, weaken the institutions built to restrain them, and ride the wave until inflation catches up with them. But the most recent generation of leaders -- Chávez and Maduro, the Kirchners, Correa, and Morales -- lasted longer than their predecessors. Why?The research behind th...
2026-09-0433 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Dollar Anchor Is Slipping
April 2025: Liberation Day. President Trump announces sweeping new tariffs. And then, the dollar did something a safe haven currency is not supposed to do: it fell.Tarek Hassan (Boston University, CEPR), working with Thomas Mertens, Jingye Wang and Tony Zhang, has been investigating what makes a currency the global anchor. Being the world's biggest economy helps, but what really matters is how far an economy's shocks affect world prices. Tariffs reduce this effect. But are we near a tipping point, when the euro takes over as the global reserve currency? We might be closer than you think...
2026-09-0226 min
VoxTalks EconomicsFiscal Populism and Monetary Policy
There is a saying in Spanish: get burned by hot milk, and the sight of a cow makes you cry. New research implies that, decades after a populist government leaves office, the central bank it once tried to control is still flinching.Martín Uribe (Columbia) and Nicolás Magud (IMF) have investigated the long-run effect of populist governments that leaned on their central banks to print money and feed inflation. They find that these central banks raise interest rates more aggressively than others when inflation drifts above target, even decades later.This is the se...
2026-08-2816 min
VoxTalks EconomicsTariffs, Uncertainty, and the Exchange Rate
Textbook economics says a tariff should strengthen a country's currency. Since the start of 2025, as US tariffs rose ... and the dollar fell.In the first of four episodes of Voxtalks based on papers presented at the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues conference, Alfonso Merendino (Bocconi University) and Tommaso Monacelli (Bocconi University, CEPR) tell Tim Phillips what they found when they looked for reasons. Their conclusion: for tariffs, it's not size, it is how permanent people expect it to be. They call this structural trade policy uncertainty. When that uncertainty is low, a...
2026-08-2624 min
VoxTalks EconomicsCombatting sexual harassment in the military
Norwegian conscripts arrive at boot camp straight out of school. They are assigned at random to a shared room and they live in it for the next eight weeks. Whatever the culture of that room turns out to be, they are stuck with it.We know that the military everywhere has a poor record on sexual harassment. Johanna Rickne (Stockholm University, CEPR) and her co-authors wanted to reduce its acceptance, and the number of incidents. Compulsory training, standing a in a room a showing a PowerPoint, has a poor record. It can even inspire a b...
2026-08-2121 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWhat price to save Japan's ghost towns?
In the oldest Japanese municipalities, close to half the residents are already over 65. As young people move to cities, the retailers close, then the clinics, then the bus that used to reach the next town. Rural Japan is not simply ageing: it is emptying.Elisa Giannone (CREI, CEPR) and her co-authors have analysed Japan's 1,741 municipalities from 1980 onwards. The oldest quarter of them lost around 26% of their population by 2010; the youngest quarter grew by 22%, and the gap between them is still widening. Taxing city dwellers could reverse the trend. But that's a century-long policy, that would a...
2026-08-1418 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Next Generation: PSE 2026
Travel broadens the mind. So the Voxtalks visits a conference, we find the most interesting research from economists just starting out, and hand three of them a microphone. Ad that is today's episode, recorded at the CEPR Paris School of Economics Policy Forum 2026.Listen to hear three findings that undercut conventional wisdom. Guido Lamarmora (University of Nottingham) argues that the usual policy prescription for developing economies that want to industrialise of raising agricultural productivity can deepen their reliance on farming rather than break it. Costanza Tomaselli (Imperial College London) studies what an energy price shock in Mexico...
2026-08-0733 min
VoxTalks EconomicsAbsorbing shocks since 1891
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2026.A country wants a stable exchange rate, it wants money to move freely across its borders, and it wants to set its own interest rates. It's a well-known trilemma. Central bankers must pick any two, because you cannot have all three. History, it turns out, did not read that memo.Eric Monnet has spent years reading the balance sheets that central bankers kept on each other. Since 1891 the Bank of France paid teams of multilingual economists to copy out the weekly and monthly accounts of every other c...
2026-08-0520 min
VoxTalks EconomicsTariff Confusion
If you run a business that exports to the United States, how big is the tariff you have to pay? In 2025 that question was hard to answer. Between February and December, 53 separate announcements introduced, delayed, reinstated or changed US tariffs, with different countries and products pulled in or exempted each time.Kalina Manova (UCL, CEPR) and her colleagues built a database of every one of those announcements, but they also measured the confusion that those announcements created. She tells Tim Phillips about how tariff confusion has become a second tax on trade, as confusion puts off exporters: b...
2026-07-3131 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHow superpowers shape trade
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics.Tariffs move trade around, but so does economic power. When one economy dominates, other countries fall into step with it. They trade with the dominant economy, and also with each other. Alberto Martin (Barcelona School of Economics, CEPR) is one of a team that has tracked the influence of hegemons, large dominant economies, on trade from the start of the 19th century. In our latest VoxTalk he tells Tim Phillips about how they used treaties (not necessarily about trade) as a proxy for alignment, and bu...
2026-07-2915 min
VoxTalks EconomicsNavigating industrial policy
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris.In 2019 the IMF called the increasing adoption of industrial policy: "The return of the policy that shall not be named". No one is scared to name it in 2026. Governments in rich and poor economies alike are intervening to change what their countries produce, and the pace has picked up sharply.Zsóka Kóczán (EBRD) was one of the leads on the Transition Report 2024-25, which draws on a database of more than 31,000 industrial policies in 150 economies. She talks to Tim Phillips about who is using these pol...
2026-07-2421 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Safety Paradox
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics, June 2026.In 1941 the United States banned oil exports to Japan, to punish aggression without fighting a war. Historians now argue the embargo did the opposite, and hastened Japan's entry into the war.Isabelle Méjean (Sciences Po, CEPR) calls this "The safety paradox". Trade between rivals makes war more expensive. Cut that trade to protect your interests, and you make conflict cheaper, for your rival as well as for you. In a new VoxTalk she talks to Tim Phillips about economic coercion, decoupling, and why E...
2026-07-2220 min
VoxTalks EconomicsMaking teenagers read newspapers
French teenagers carry a smartphone with access to almost anything, but few of them have been using it to read the news.Julia Cagé (Sciences Po, CEPR) ran an experiment to test the one barrier everyone assumes matters most: the price of a newspaper. She and her co-authors gave free digital subscriptions to Le Monde and media education to thousands of French high school students for a year, and then tracked what the students actually read. It's a bit like persuading kids to eat vegetables when there are fries on the table, she tells Tim Phillips. Can a...
2026-07-1720 min
VoxTalks EconomicsAre net zero commitments greenwash?
Sixty-three percent of large companies worldwide had made a net zero commitment by 2023, up from close to none in 2018. But if the target date is 2050, that's several corporate lifetimes away, and the planet needs emission reductions today. What actually changes in the boardroom when a pledge is signed?Simon Dietz (LSE, CEPR) has tracked climate management practices and emissions at nearly 2,000 companies to find out. He tells Tim Phillips that the picture is not the one that either side of the debate might expect. A net zero pledge doesn't usually signify an immediate cut in emissions, but...
2026-07-1524 min
VoxTalks EconomicsEurope in 2050
Recorded at the Paris School of Economics-CEPR Policy Forum 2026. Europe is under attack from the US, and under a different kind of attack from China.That is Olivier Blanchard's diagnosis. Blanchard (MIT, Paris School of Economics, Peterson Institute) is one of four economists leading Europe 2050, a new CEPR initiative asking where Europe wants to be in 25 years, and how it gets there. Blanchard's overriding principle: a vision without plumbing goes nowhere, and plumbing without vision is just reacting to the next tweet.Who can combine the vision and the plumbing, and produce ideas t...
2026-07-1020 min
VoxTalks EconomicsEurope in the Middle
China cannot sell as much as it used to in the United States. That trade has to go somewhere, and somewhere might be Europe.In this week's VoxTalk, Tim Phillips asks Pol Antràs (Harvard) and Beata Javorcik (EBRD, Oxford) what this means for European producers and consumers.Antràs and Andrea Presbitero have mapped which countries and sectors face the sharpest competition from redirected Chinese exports, and which stand to gain. Does cheap Chinese tech ease Europe's energy cost crisis, or squeeze European manufacturers of wind turbines and electric cars?If Europe de...
2026-07-0820 min
VoxTalks EconomicsAddressing Global Imbalances
Episode recorded on 19 June 2026 at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum in Paris.Twice before, the world's savings and debts have piled up in the wrong places, and twice the imbalance broke something. The first time it took the Plaza Accord to fix it. The second time it took a global financial crisis.Now we are in a third wave. Gita Gopinath (Harvard, former IMF Chief Economist and First Deputy Managing Director) and Philip Lane (European Central Bank, CEPR) join Tim Phillips to ask what is different this time.Household and bank balance sheets are...
2026-07-0324 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHelping the over-50s find work
Lose your job at 25 and someone will help you find another. Lose it at 55 and the talk quietly turns to how you might wind down towards retirement.Policymakers tend to assume job search training works for the young and not the old, so they rarely spend money trying. Bas van der Klaauw (Tinbergen Institute) thinks they got that wrong.In this week's VoxTalks Economics, he tells Tim Phillips about a Dutch experiment that put older unemployed workers through an intensive programme built on one idea: teach people over 50 to find work the way younger workers...
2026-07-0119 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe success of the embedded state
Who kept the courts sitting and the streetlights lit when the state had almost no money to pay anyone?Two hundred years ago, British local government ran on unpaid labour. In a parliamentary survey of the boroughs from 1835, two in three of the people doing local government work were not paid at all.James Robinson (University of Chicago, CEPR) explains how this succeeded in this week's episode of VoxTalks Economics. Robinson and his co-authors call this the "embedded state". Members of the elite willingly took the unpaid jobs because the postings carried prestige and led...
2026-06-2620 min
VoxTalks EconomicsMaking defence spending pay
Defence spending is rising whether voters like it or not. The UK has committed to 2.5% of national income and aims for nearer 3.5% over the next decade, £30bn a year for each percentage point. What does the country get back? Can defence spending be pro-growth?In this week's VoxTalk, John Van Reenen (LSE) argues that getting a return on investment based on innovation need not be left to luck. For example nuclear power, GPS and the internet all began as military projects. The spillovers can be planned for; the trick is to make defence spending innovation-rich, and make p...
2026-06-1926 min
VoxTalks EconomicsDid the sewing machine liberate women?
In January 1860 the New York Times gave its blessing to a new machine: the sewing machine. These "iron needle-women", it wrote, were the only invention that could be claimed “chiefly for women's benefit”. Sewing was women's work in the nineteenth century, rich or poor, and a machine could now do it in a fraction of the time. So did it set women free?Philipp Ager and Davide Coluccia have traced the adoption of the sewing machine in Massachusetts between 1850 and 1900, using census records and digitised business directories to work out who was exposed to it, in the fact...
2026-06-1219 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe digital money supply
Every day, billions of transactions settle between strangers who have no idea which bank the other uses. That lack of friction is not automatic. Nine-tenths of the money in daily circulation has been created by commercial banks, but it stays trustworthy only because central banks stand behind it, and keep the system in balance.In this week’s episode Tim Phillips talks to Stephen Cecchetti (Brandeis University, CEPR) about what happens when new forms of digital money test that architecture. Cecchetti is one of the authors of the eighth Barcelona Report in The Future of Banking series, pa...
2026-06-0527 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHow well does patent screening work?
Someone once held a patent on the swing. A piece of wood. Two ropes. The US Patent Office granted it. How often does that actually happen, and what does it cost when the system gets it wrong? Or, how often is a valid patent claim rejected?Until now, no one knew. Tim Phillips talks to Mark Schankerman of LSE and CEPR, who with co-authors William Matcham spent eight years building the tools to find out. Using natural language processing across a dataset of around one million patent applications, twenty million claims, and fifty-five million examiner decisions, they...
2026-05-2932 min
VoxTalks EconomicsRedefining the monetary standard
The fiat money system has survived the Great Inflation, the global financial crisis, and a pandemic. But can it survive digital currencies?Bitcoin and the blockchain solved a genuine problem in computer science: how to stop people spending the same money twice. Forty years of successful inflation control means central bank money is stable; that is the stability in stablecoins, attempting to solve the volatility problem. What's next? What if the unit of account itself were indexed to consumer prices? Digitalisation might finally make that approach viable at scale. Price stability, by design.Will we...
2026-05-2226 min
VoxTalks EconomicsGuns and Butter
Europe's NATO members have pledged 3.5% of GDP to rearmament. The political argument is already about which social programmes will be sacrificed to pay for this, when the government chooses guns instead of butter. What does history tell us about what politicians will do?Christoph Trebesch and Johannes Marzian spent four years assembling the Global Budget Database: 150 years of primary government budget documents from 20 countries, with 116 identified military spending booms in peace and war. They find that governments almost never cut social spending when they rearm; they expand both military and welfare budgets simultaneously. The bill arrives later...
2026-05-1521 min
VoxTalks EconomicsImmigration and integration in Europe
More than one in eight people living in the EU today was born in another country. In fourteen of the bloc's largest economies, it is closer to one in six. For ten years, the same team of researchers has asked what happens to those people next: do they find work, close the gap with their native-born neighbours, and build a settled life? The tenth Migration Observatory report is about to be published, and the decade-long picture it paints is not what the political debate might lead you to expect.Tommaso Frattini of the University of Milan, one...
2026-05-0825 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe right to choose to die
Content note: this episode discusses assisted dying, end-of-life choices, and suicide. Some listeners may find the content distressing.In April 2024, Daniel Kahneman — one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century — emailed his close friends to say goodbye. He was 90 years old, his kidneys were failing, his mental lapses were increasing, and he had decided it was time to go. He flew to Switzerland to end his life at an assisted dying clinic there, because New York, where he lived, did not permit it. Thirteen American states currently allow medical assistance in dying; most require a term...
2026-05-0123 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe public origins of American innovation
The standard story of American innovation features Silicon Valley, venture capital, and the heroic startup founder.When you trace the history of the internet, GPS, mass-produced penicillin, or the COVID vaccine, the starting point is not a term sheet but a government grant. How much does this matter, and can we measure it?Tim Phillips speaks to Paolo Surico of London Business School and CEPR who, working with Andrea Gazzani, Joseba Martinez, and Filippo Natoli, has built the first systematic empirical account of how government-funded innovation has shaped US productivity since the Second World War. The headline r...
2026-04-2431 min
VoxTalks EconomicsRebalancing the Chinese economy
In 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao warned that China's growth model was unbalanced between supply and demand, over-reliant on investment and exports. More than 20 years later, the imbalance is smaller — but China is vastly larger. What its economy produces and exports now moves global markets. The argument about China's external surplus is no longer just a spat between Beijing and Washington.Yiping Huang, Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and Bruegel, examining China's structural imbalances from the inside. His argument: the same po...
2026-04-2027 min
VoxTalks EconomicsStablecoins and Global Imbalances
A radical macroeconomic experiment is under way at exactly the moment the US external position is showing signs of real stress.Gilles Moëc, Chief Economist at AXA, has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and Bruegel, on stablecoins: what they are, why the US government is so keen to promote them, and what risks they carry. His argument is that stablecoins are a fast-growing digital asset backed almost entirely by short-dated US government debt. When investors buy a dollar stablecoin, they are effectively buying into a US T-bill at zero i...
2026-04-1331 min
VoxTalks EconomicsGlobal imbalances redux
Three times since the 1970s, global imbalances have grown large. In the 1980s, the US trade deficit ballooned under Volcker's tight money and Reagan's tax cuts and military spending. In the 2000s, a global savings glut and then a US housing credit boom pushed the deficit to 6% of GDP. Today, the imbalances are back. The US current account deficit stood at 3.9% of GDP in 2025. The policy medicine this time: tariffs.Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and CEPR has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and B...
2026-04-1334 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWorld War Trade
On 2 April 2025, the United States imposed tariffs on almost every country on earth. The next day, China responded with export controls on the entire world. In the space of one week, world trade had been weaponised as it has never been in peacetime.Richard Baldwin of IMD Business School, the founder of VoxEU and a former president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, wrote World War Trade to make sense of the events of the last 12 months. The dramatic April salvos have settled into a trade Cold War; US tariffs and Chinese export controls are lodged...
2026-04-0226 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Bank of England's capital mistake?
"When you look at the world now, does it look more uncertain or less uncertain?" In December 2025, the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee (FPC) answered that question by cutting the equity capital requirement for UK banks. David Aikman (NIESR) and John Vickers (University of Oxford), two former senior Bank insiders who helped to design the regulatory framework post-GFC, think the committee got it wrong.The FPC lowered the benchmark capital requirement from 14% to 13% of risk-weighted assets, a move that could free up roughly £30 billion of capital across the UK banking system. Aikman and Vickers see no c...
2026-03-2724 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWhat triggered January 6?
Two explanations circulated immediately after the March to Save America on January 6, 2021 turned into a riot: a mob manipulated by a demagogue, or ordinary citizens defending democracy against a stolen election. Konstantin Sonin, David Van Dijcke, and Austin Wright have used anonymised location data from forty million mobile devices to investigate why the protests escalated so dramatically.No surprise: partisanship was the strongest predictor of attendance, proximity to Proud Boys chapters and use of the far-right social network Parler also increased participation. But political isolation amplified the movement: the communities most over-represented among those who traveled to...
2026-03-2020 min
VoxTalks EconomicsCan blockchain decentralise money, contracts, and finance?
Every Bitcoin transaction needs to be verified on the blockchain. There is no central authority that does this, but Bitcoin's blockchain has run uninterrupted since 2009 and now carries a market capitalisation of $1.3 trillion, roughly 4% of US GDP. Its original promise was more radical: that we do not need a trusted intermediary to spend money, write contracts, or create finance. In the fifth LTI report, published today, Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou, Bruno Biais, and Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni ask how much of that promise has held. Bruno talks to Tim Phillips about blockchain’s potential, its flaws, and its future. It i...
2026-03-1733 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWill AI transform economic growth?
Could AI transform our economies to produce explosive growth? Most economists are sceptical at best. Anton Korinek of the University of Virginia, leader of the CEPR research policy network on AI, thinks the threshold is closer than those models suggest.In his latest work, Korinek, Tom Davidson, Basil Halperin, and Thomas Houlden, have built a growth model that captures what happens when AI starts automating AI research itself. Automation does two things simultaneously: it accelerates research, and it offsets the diminishing returns that have historically stopped self-improving processes from compounding. Three reinforcing feedback loops: software quality, hardware...
2026-03-1331 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe next generation: Paris ‘25
Recorded live at the CEPR Annual Symposium in Paris. When VoxTalks Economics visits a symposium or conference, we try to find the most interesting new research from economists who are just starting out in their careers. In Paris we invited three of them to the CEPR Office to tell us about their work.In this episode, Tim Phillips talks to Lucie Giorgi, Aix-Marseille School of Economics (AMSE), whose research tracks the impact of sex segregation in French elementary schools; Alishuba Philip of the University of Zurich, who has investigated why slum redevelopment often doesn’t ben...
2026-02-1334 min
VoxTalks EconomicsA hundred lessons from historyThe International Macroeconomic History Online Seminar Series, hosted by CEPR, is turning 100 this month — not years, but episodes. What began as a lockdown experiment has become a global fixture for anyone who believes economics never forgets. In a special edition of VoxTalks Economics, Tim Phillips talks with organisers Nathan Sussman and Rui Esteves of the Geneva Graduate Institute about the moments that shaped the series and what a hundred lessons from history can teach us today. Why does history matter so much to economists? And how can the series help us understand current events? Nathan’s selectionThe g...
2025-10-1731 min
VoxTalks EconomicsTastes, geography, and cultureIt’s cultural meme that teenagers in New York and Seoul will have more in common with each other than with their parents. Has where we come from been downgraded as an influence on what we like, or is there still what Thierry Mayer of Sciences Po and CEPR calls “gravity in tastes”? His research focuses on a very important aspect of this question: regional French food. Is there still a France of butter, and a France of olive oil? And, if there is, can we draw it on a map, or is this now a cultural and social...
2025-09-2629 min
VoxTalks EconomicsPopulism and warWhat effect do populist rulers of economic superpowers have on international relations, peace, and inequality? If a populist takes power in one of these countries, does it lead to more conflict in other places? Massimo Morelli describes Donald trump as “The quintessential populist”. As Trump prepares to resume his presidency in the US, he shares some surprising conclusions with Tim Phillips about the places that have a higher risk of conflict as a result. The first in a short series of VoxTalks inspired by papers from the 3rd Kiel-CEPR Conference on Geoeconomics.
2024-11-2922 min
VoxTalks EconomicsFinancing the green transitionThe second of three special episodes of VoxTalks Economics recorded at the Climate Change and the Environment Conference in Paris, jointly organised by the AXA Research Fund and CEPR. The green transition needs investment. So who will fund it, and under what conditions? Tim Phillips asks Gilles Moec of AXA and Katheline Schubert of the Sorbonne and PSE about how capital can be mobilised to get us to Net Zero.
2024-11-0522 min
VoxTalks EconomicsInsuring the world of the futureThe first of three special episodes of VoxTalks Economics recorded at the Climate Change and the Environment Conference in Paris, jointly organised by the AXA Research Fund and CEPR. Weather patterns are changing around the world, and weather-related insurance claims are rising. As climate change increases losses from these events, is it the responsibility of governments to compensate those who lose their homes and businesses, or can the insurance industry step up to provide that service? Thierry Langreney of the NGO Les Ateliers du Futur, and Mathieu Godart, Head of P&C - AXA France, discuss the issues with Tim...
2024-11-0125 min
VoxTalks EconomicsLocation, location, locationThe 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 housing. But how big is this prize really? Gabriel Ulyssea tells Tim Phillips how many of the beneficiaries discovered that location matters most in real estate.
2024-06-2823 min
VoxTalks EconomicsA new explanation for wage stagnationLow-skilled workers are concentrated in sectors with fast productivity growth, so why isn't their pay rising? Rachel Ngai tell Tim Phillips that one explanation is in how low-skilled workers are reallocated between different sectors.
2020-08-2111 min
VoxTalks EconomicsBailing out the kidsHow much do we bail out our family in a crisis? By matching financial transactions and administrative data in Denmark, Niels Johannesen comes up with an answer for Tim Phillips.
2020-08-1812 min
VoxTalks EconomicsDoes social media make us xenophobic?Xenophobic attacks are on the rise around the world. Does social media help cause them? Maria Petrova tells tim Phillips about shocking new research from Russia.
2020-08-1408 min
VoxTalks EconomicsEurope's zombie lendingViral Acharya tell Tim Phillips that the action to save Europe's financial sector after 2008 has delayed reform in the banking sector - creating a decade of lending to zombie firms that has stifled economic growth. Acharya on Zombies and disinflation at VoxEU.
2020-08-0737 min
VoxTalks EconomicsRecessions increase inequalityMost 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.
2020-07-3118 min
VoxTalks EconomicsValuing digital servicesThe 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.
2020-07-2414 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe mechanics of the industrial revolutionSkilled 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.
2020-07-1719 min
VoxTalks EconomicsSolving Europe's productivity puzzleIn 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.
2020-07-1025 min
VoxTalks EconomicsBanks under pressureLow 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.
2020-07-0815 min
VoxTalks EconomicsTo each according to their needsKaushik 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.
2020-07-0331 min
VoxTalks EconomicsCoping with Covid in developing economiesA 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.
2020-06-2615 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWho gets exposed to Covid-19?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.
2020-06-1914 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Great ReversalThomas 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.
2020-06-1224 min
VoxTalks EconomicsStructural transformation and economic growthThis 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.
2020-06-0314 min
VoxTalks EconomicsTime for bedsThe 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.
2020-05-2919 min
VoxTalks EconomicsTech industry mergersShould competition authorities intervene more often in tech mergers? Be careful, Luis Cabral tells Tim Phillips: they risk stifling innovation if they do.
2020-05-2216 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHelicopter moneyIn 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.
2020-05-1812 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Swedish solution to Covid-19Do 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
2020-05-1517 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe myth of British inventive geniusOn 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.
2020-05-0817 min
VoxTalks EconomicsDo the rich get more coronavirus tests?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.
2020-04-2915 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWe need a Covid-19 debt standstillIn 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.
2020-04-2722 min
VoxTalks EconomicsJohn Maynard Keynes's art portfolioKeynes 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.
2020-04-2116 min
VoxTalks EconomicsLessons from the Ebola crisis on dealing with Covid-19The 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.
2020-04-0912 min
VoxTalks EconomicsModelling the economic consequences of Covid-19When 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 Economics in the Time of Covid-19.
2020-04-0713 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHow much do governments lend to each other in a crisis?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' at VoxEU
2020-03-2711 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe coronavirus shock to financial stabilityEnrico 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?
2020-03-2520 min
VoxTalks EconomicsA Covid credit line for EuropeHow 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
2020-03-2311 min
VoxTalks EconomicsSingapore's response to Covid-19In 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.
2020-03-2019 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe polarization of realityWe 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.
2020-03-2016 min
VoxTalks EconomicsEconomics in the time of Covid-19How big are Covid-19's economic consequences? That's the theme of a new VoxEU book with contributions from many of the world's most experienced policymakers with expertise in this area. Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Richard Baldwin, the book's editors, give Tim Phillips the (mostly) bad news.Download the book: it's free.
2020-03-1018 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWomen in EconomicsWomen are under-represented in economics, and the situation is not improving. Economists Shelly Lundberg, Donna Ginther, Jenna Stearns and Erin Hengel talk to Tim Phillips about VoxEU's new book on the subject that examines the barriers that women face in the profession, and also suggests ways to support the next generation of female economists.Download the book here, it's free.
2020-03-0620 min
VoxTalks EconomicsDigital market merger policyIn the last decade, global digital giants have snapped up hundreds of smaller, innovative companies. Should competition authorities have intervened more often? Tomaso Duso tells Tim Phillips about new research that suggests they should.
2020-02-2817 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe history of immigration quotasA century ago, American nativists succeeded in establishing immigration quotas to drive up the wages of US workers. What happened next? Not what you might think, Leah Boustan tells Tim Phillips.
2020-02-2119 min
VoxTalks EconomicsEducation creates peaceNew research shows how a school-building programme in Indonesia successfully reduced conflict. Dominic Rohner tells Tim Phillips about this unanticipated peace dividend, and how the CEPR's research and policy network on conflict reduction will help policymakers.
2020-02-1417 min
VoxTalks EconomicsCentral banks and regional inequalityIs regional inequality a problem that central banks should worry about? Andy Haldane of the Bank of England tells Tim Phillips why he thanks the answer is yes: but why we also need to think about what, and how, we measure.
2020-02-0713 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe origins of tech clustersWhy are cities so keen to create their own technology clusters, and why is it so difficult? Bill Kerr of Harvard Business School tells Tim Phillips what economists know (and don't know) about where tech clusters come from.
2020-01-3127 min
VoxTalks EconomicsBetting on the LordAn experiment in Haiti shows that people take more risks in the presence of religious images, even if there is less chance they will win. Emmanuelle Auriol tells Tim Phillips about the challenges that belief in a higher power presents for economic development.
2020-01-2412 min
VoxTalks EconomicsRegenerating the cities that were left behindWhen the industries that have sustained our cities decline, how can we regenerate urban areas? At the SUERF conference in Amsterdam, Tony Venables and Charles Goodhart tell Tim Phillips that redevelopment policies may have made regional inequality and social conflict worse.
2020-01-1714 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWill there be a post-Brexit financial services deal?In 2020, the UK and the EU will try to strike a post-Brexit deal in financial services. At the SUERF conference in Amsterdam, David Miles and Iain Begg explain to Tim Phillips what's at stake in the negotiations, and who would suffer most if there's no deal.
2020-01-1015 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHas the randomista revolution gone too far?This year's Nobel prize celebrated the work of the economists who popularised randomised controlled trials, “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. But is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Tim Phillips investigates.Picture © Nobel Media 2019. Illustration: Niklas Elmehed.
2019-12-2314 min
VoxTalks EconomicsBurying bad newsNew research demonstrates what we all suspected: for decades, politicians have routinely used busy news days to bury unpopular announcements. Ruben Durante educates Tim Phillips in the politics of distraction.
2019-12-2015 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHelping parents to read with their childrenLanguage skills for preschoolers help them achieve more when they get to school, but some parents are better than others at helping their kids to develop these skills. Denis Fougère and Carlo Barone tell Tim Phillips about a successful experiment in Paris to help less-educated parents spend time reading with their children.
2019-12-1322 min
VoxTalks EconomicsWealth taxesFew countries tax their citizens' wealth annually, but Switzerland is one of them. Marius Brülhart tells Tim Phillips about a natural experiment in Switzerland's cantons that teaches us about how people would respond if more countries decided to tax wealth instead of income.
2019-12-0618 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHow the mobile internet changed politicsThe mobile internet, promises to give us access to information anywhere, 24 hours a day. So how has it influenced trust in governments, politics, and politicians? Sergei Guriev tells Tim Phillips about how, all over the world, 3G has reduced trust in government and aided the rise of populism.
2019-11-2919 min
VoxTalks EconomicsCan the stock market help save the planet?We think about climate policies as moderating or interceding in markets. But a new paper implies that when stock markets play a bigger part in the economy, polluting industries become cleaner. Tim Phillips asks Ralph De Haas of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development whether we already have a green finance initiative under our noses.
2019-11-2219 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe Great Expectations of the middle classWhen there's a financial crisis, policymakers and politicians increasingly kowtow to the demands of an influential group: the global middle class. Jeffrey Chwieroth and Andrew Walter tell Tim Phillips how their Great Expectations are destabilising the world economy.Read about Great Expectations at VoxEU.
2019-11-1530 min
VoxTalks EconomicsHow to improve consumer credit ratingsDoing a good job of deciding who can borrow is fundamental for the global economy. Stefania Albanesi tells Tim Phillips that current consumer credit ratings do a poor job at predicting which of us will default, and explains how she has used machine learning to improve them.
2019-11-0827 min
VoxTalks EconomicsLet's stay togetherWhen the law changed to allow same-sex partners to get married, did the symbolism of marriage have any effect on the stability of relationships? Shuai Chen tells Tim Phillips about a surprising result from The Netherlands.
2019-11-0112 min
VoxTalks EconomicsThe cost of dyingHow much is spent on end-of-life care, and who foots the bill? Eric French of UCL tells Tim Phillips about the total cost of the last year of our lives, and how different countries have very different ideas of who should pay it.Read about the research at VoxEU.org, and download the VoxEU book about the economics of ageing.
2019-10-2518 min
VoxTalks EconomicsIncreasing diversity in economicsThe Royal Economic Society has launched Discover Economics, an ambitious three-year campaign to attract more women, minority students and students from state schools to study the subject. Sarah Smith and Arun Advani, co-chairs of the campaign, plus Rachel Griffith, RES president, tell Tim Phillips about how they plan to make this happen.Read about Discover Economics at VoxEU.
2019-10-1614 min