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By Will Abel, Silvana Tenreyro, and Gregory Thwaites This post first appeared on Vox. The growing prominence of giant companies in advanced economies has raised concerns about the increase in monopoly power (e.g. Eeckhout and de Loecker…

Housing bubbles may crowd out credit from other sectors, but they may also have a crowding-in effect by providing collateral to real estate-owning firms or generating attractive assets which banks can securitise and use to increase their…

A general challenge facing competition authorities in the digital era is learning how to apply the traditional tools of competition policy in multi-sided platform environments. This column argues that the Google Android case offers a great…

Between 1985 and 2018, the global average statutory corporate tax rate fell by more than half. This column uses new macroeconomic data to argue that profit shifting is a key driver of this decline. Close to 40% of multinational profits were…

In December 2017 the US federal corporate tax rate on profits over $10 million was reduced from 35% to 21%. This column examines the plausibility of the Council of Economic Advisers’ estimates of how a cut in the corporate profit tax rate…

Since Emmanuel Macron’s election as French president in May 2017, hope has lingered that a mythical friendship between France and Germany will help complete the gaps in the euro area architecture. As this column discusses, however, history…

There are growing signs that a trade war is possible, and that the multilateral trading system may not be able to prevent it. This column asks what would happen with tariffs around the world if countries were to move from cooperative tariff…

Two European elections – in Germany on 24 September 2017 and Italy on 4 March 2018 – warn that the peoples of Europe are drifting apart. Much of the recent deepening of these divisions can be traced to Europe’s single currency, the euro.…

A recent literature has explored growing personal wealth inequality in countries around the world. This column explores the widening wealth gap between regions and across states in Europe. Using data going back to 1900, it shows that…

There is a notable lack of long-run analyses of monetary systems and their stability. This column addresses this gap by looking at the monetary systems of major European states between 1300 and 1914. The evidence collected suggests that,…