Acne has been the scourge of teenage boys and girls for as long as there have been teenagers. Indeed, acne is the eighth most common disease among humans, affecting nearly 650 million people worldwide. But might acne have a silver lining?
Economists are increasingly interested in the economic returns to physical attractiveness, an interest largely ignited by Hamermesh and Biddle […]
Talented individuals are often excluded from leadership positions if they belong to a group that faces discrimination. Such discrimination is, of course, extremely hurtful and unfair to the individuals. But is it also costly in a more general sense?
In particular, do corporations become less profitable when they adopt discriminatory attitudes and exclude highly qualified individuals from leadership roles? How […]
Industrial policies, broadly defined as policies that shape a country’s or region’s industry structure by either promoting or limiting certain industries or sectors, have been widely used in developed and developing countries. Historic examples include the U.S. and Europe after World War II, Japan in the 1950s and 1960s, South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, […]
Like all things Brexit, Theresa May’s intention of building “Global Britain” outside the European Union has been controversial from the outset. Government ministers have expended a good deal of political capital championing “why Global Britain matters”, framing it as an exercise in creating an “outward-looking” country confidently meeting global challenges. For its advocates, Global Britain is about connecting with […]
For a long time, economists have known that rising globalisation can bring substantial aggregate gains, but also produce winners and losers. The source of this growing inequality may be heterogeneous effects on employment, wages, and prices. Trade barriers have been shrinking since the end of World War II, reaching its lowest levels in the years since the fall of […]
Britain has an extensive canal and navigable river network, which played a vital role in transporting goods from the Industrial Revolution through the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th centuries. Their use for transporting freight had all but disappeared by the mid-20th century, and many had fallen into disrepair or been abandoned. Since then, the canal and […]
The African continental free trade area (AfCFTA) was signed in Kigali, Rwanda, on 18 March 2018. With Egypt’s parliamentary ratification, three weeks from the anniversary of the signing, 19 out of the required 22 ratifications are in hand, signalling that meeting the objective of ‘entry into force’ (30 days later) is within reach.
This is no mean feat given that […]
While economists extol the virtues of trade, advocates of free trade face stiff political headwinds these days. The economic ideas for the benefits of trade go back more than 200 years to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but empirical evidence for these benefits has been much harder to come by and is much more recent.
In particular, empirical economists have […]
Between 1978 and 2015, China moved from a poor, underdeveloped country to the world’s leading emerging economy. Despite the decline in its share of world population, China’s share of world GDP increased from less than 3 per cent in 1978 to about 20 per cent by 2015 (see Figure 1). According to official statistics, real national income per adult […]
The assessment of credit risk is a critical part of the macro-prudential analysis, with the aggregate non-performing loan (NPL) ratio serving as a proxy for the economy-wide probability of default of the banking sector’s overall loan exposure. High NPL ratios affect banks’ balance sheets and profitability, overall slowing down economic growth. Therefore, the factors driving NPL ratios in different […]
The venture and innovation worlds are focused on idea-based venture development. They spend money on incubators and very-early-stage venture capital (VC) seed funds in hopes of building giant ventures from seemingly promising ideas and technologies. But is this wasted capital? Can angels, incubators, venture developers and universities see potential before it is proven? Or can they show more results […]
In her final article at the Financial Times, business editor Sarah Gordon summarises what she learned over 20 years and concludes, “Many businesses are badly run, but business is not bad”. It is a pretty damning conclusion, supported by the large list of examples she offers. Her conclusion does not surprise me. In my past writings I have often referred […]
European policy-makers have given Mrs May the option to push her 585-page withdrawal agreement through Parliament for the third time (!!!) around or decide what to do with Brexit by the 12th of April. In fact, the EU’s decision to allow Mrs May to ‘sort out’ Brexit by the 12th of April is largely down to economic considerations. On the […]
Have you ever witnessed (or been involved in) one of those endless Facebook discussions where users fight each other on sensitive issues with nonsensical arguments and rude comments filled with hate and stereotypes? How did this make you feel?
“When it’s a faceless, person-less comment, and it’s comment after comment after comment, it makes you lose faith in humanity”, once […]
In the past decade, mobile payment systems (MPS) have rapidly emerged in many developing economies, addressing several well-known gaps in the provision of financial services. MPS, also known as mobile money, has allowed consumers who are often unbanked or underbanked, to transact and to store money more efficiently, thereby reducing the costs of engaging in undertaking all transactions, including […]
The impact of the Brexit vote can now begin to be evaluated with greater accuracy than previous forecasts, thanks to the emergence of new data. In the run-up to the UK’s referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) in June 2016, a number of research reports estimated the likely economic impact of Brexit (see, for example, Dhingra et […]
The recent controversy over Canada’s ‘supply management system’ of agricultural protection during the regional US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) negotiations was a timely reminder of the entrenched protectionism in nations that retain a theoretical commitment to international ‘free trade’. It also indicates that deviations from free trade in many guises thrive in market economies where benefits are concentrated, and costs […]
Fundamental changes in information technologies have profound implications for labour markets, for the production and spread of knowledge, and for the evolution of politics and beliefs. But competition among producers also influences the use of these technologies and their impact on multiple dimensions of life. The introduction of Gutenberg’s printing press crystallised these dynamics and profoundly shaped the long-run […]
Modern metropolitan areas include vast concentrations of economic activity, with Greater London and New York City today accounting for around 8.4 and 8.5 million people, respectively. These intense concentrations of population involve the transport of millions of people each day between their home and work, as surveyed in Redding and Turner (2015). Today, the London Underground alone handles around […]
You have been in your current job for some time. You have learned a lot, acquiring valuable knowledge and skills as well as getting to know people in your workplace. You enjoy what you do. Now there is an opportunity to move to another job within the organisation. The job is quite different from what you have been doing, […]
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