Presented by Lloyds Banking Group By EMILIO CASALICCHIO with NOAH KEATE PRESENTED BY Send tips here | Subscribe for free | Listen to Playbook and view in your browser Good afternoon. This is Emilio…

Why the Budget shouldn’t trigger a meltdown (this time . . .)

Experts responding to the CfM-NIESR survey reveal the main factors driving the UK's high borrowing costs. They agree it is inflation expectations and fiscal sustainability concerns.

Stock market participation remains low, especially among the older, less affluent, and less educated households, despite its clear benefits for wealth preservation and growth. Although digitisation has reduced some barriers, many households remain disengaged. Using data from a Chinese investment platform, this column shows that digital nudges and financial education via the platform increase stock market participation, promote portfolio diversification, and improve risk-adjusted returns, even among the older, less educated, and less affluent individuals. Digital platforms can help democratise finance by delivering scalable, low-cost financial education.

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 marked a turning point in how firms and investors view generative artificial intelligence. This column measures the extent and tone of firms’ discussions of GenAI in earnings calls, and finds that early engagement with AI topics boosted stock market performance beyond the immediate impact on expected earnings.

Many European countries have adopted the American model of doctoral training and academic evaluation. While this model suits America’s vast, mobile labour market, in Europe it has created perverse incentives and distorted research priorities. This column argues that Europe needs a more pluralistic, socially grounded, and inclusive system for the training of economists. It proposes a two-track approach for PhD training and evaluation that balances both frontier research and applied economics and policy. Europe should also consider broader evaluation and promotion criteria, more diversified PhD programmes, invest in policy-oriented research institutes, and promote the social relevance of the discipline.

Technological innovation, including disruptive innovation, is a driving force for economic growth and social change, but early identification of such technologies and assessments of their impact are challenging. This column introduces recent approaches to identifying innovative and disruptive technologies from academic literature, with an application to Japanese research. The methods can help allow policymakers to appropriately discuss which fields should receive intensive support and also identify areas of risk.

Infrastructure diplomacy has become a central arena for strategic competition. This column examines how China’s Belt and Road Initiative has reshaped Japan’s overseas infrastructure engagement and diplomacy with participants of the initiative. It finds that Japanese project counts fell and foreign leaders visited Japan less often. To be successful, Western initiatives such as Build Back Better World and the EU’s Global Gateway need coordinated strategies and rapid deployment mechanisms. They should also integrate infrastructure finance with strategic diplomacy, ensuring that development efforts reinforce political engagement instead of attempting to replace it.

Over the past decade, cities and states in the US have enacted ‘fair workweek’ laws to stabilise worker schedules. This column uses administrative data on US workers’ paycheques and firms’ payrolls to document considerable monthly fluctuations in earnings. Pay instability is widespread, disproportionately hits lower‑paid hourly workers, and is largely driven by firms’ labour demand rather than worker-related determinants such as childcare demands. These fluctuations represent genuine, welfare-relevant risk that materially shapes household decisions and has attendant effects on the economy.

Central banks rarely speak with one voice. At the Federal Reserve, for instance, each official brings a distinct perspective, and markets parse every speech for hints of where policy is headed. Different views may help make better decisions, but do they also help when explaining those decisions to the public? And what happens when voices diverge? This column shows that alignment in communication matters: speeches that echo the preceding Chair’s post-FOMC press conference reinforce monetary transmission, while dissonant voices create noise that weakens it.

Quantitative analysis of how AI impacts our professional lives, the integrity of organisations, and even our cognitive skills is essential to harness the power of these new technologies. This column summarises evidence on some of the benefits AI can bring and also the complex challenges it presents, and highlights the need to create a system that will allow AI and other new technologies to contribute to solving global challenges and social issues.

This book presents the World Bank’s most comprehensive assessment yet of investment in developing economies. It explores why investment matters, why it has stalled in many countries, and what it will ...

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Public procurement contracts worldwide often face high risks of cost overruns and project delays, raising questions about the scope for contract modifications. This column examines the impact of eased renegotiation rules on procurement outcomes in the Czech Republic between 2015 and 2020. Easing renegotiation rules did not substantially change procurement outcomes but led to a sharp increase in renegotiations and lower winning bid values, as firms anticipated adjustments from renegotiation. A better understanding of transaction costs associated with different policy regimes is needed to shape policy.

Loss of confidence in the US dollar’s reserve currency status could trigger a collapse of the US Treasury market and international financial fragmentation. This column argues that hedging is a rational response to recent fluctuations in the US dollar, as investors look to insure against exchange rate risks. However, widespread hedging itself makes Treasuries less attractive, which further weakens confidence. The Federal Reserve has multiple tools to stabilise markets in the short term, including providing time-limited liquidity, activating dollar swap lines, supporting non-bank cash conduits, and lending to non-banks. These actions buy time but are not sufficient by themselves to restore long-term confidence.

Commodity prices have historically been considered leading indicators of inflation, but the relationship has weakened since the mid-1980s, making them less reliable predictors. This column analyses more than a million Reuters news articles between 2001 and 2023 to capture supply and demand dynamics in commodity markets. The findings show that text-based indicators of supply and demand disturbances significantly enhance inflation forecasting accuracy, allowing policymakers to better understand the nature of inflationary pressures and adjust their responses accordingly.

Preliminary data releases can diverge significantly from subsequently revised figures, complicating economic policy decisions made in real time. This column shows how real-time GDP releases understated the strength of the post-pandemic recovery in both the euro area and the United States. This distorted view painted a more pessimistic picture than subsequently revised data revealed, masking demand pressures.

Central banks facing post-pandemic inflation often considered ‘looking through’ supply shocks. Using a New Keynesian framework in which agents gradually learn whether a cost-push shock is temporary or persistent, this column shows that such look-through strategies can amplify inflation when information is incomplete. In contrast, a standard Taylor rule prevents an additional demand-driven inflation impulse and dominates look-through in most plausible calibrations. When policymakers revise beliefs and lift off earlier once persistence becomes sufficiently likely, disinflation is faster – especially with steeper price and wage Phillips curves. The case for look-through survives only when the Phillips curve is very flat and society puts unusually high weight on output stabilisation.