When data come in ranges: a new way to predict the unpredictable
How do you make predictions when your data – such as salaries, house prices, survival times or pollution levels – come in ranges rather than precise values? New research makes an advance in handling uncertain data, with applications spanning economics, healthcare, environmental science and beyond.
Keep reading
How professional economists are using AI – and what it means for teaching
Economists in business, policy and academia are deploying artificial intelligence across a wide range of cognitive tasks. The most important employability skill in this age of AI is not a single fixed capability, but the broader, layered meta-competence of ‘learning to learn’ with the new tools.
Keep reading
Inflation fears: why the 2022 spike didn’t break our trust in the future
In the wake of soaring prices in 2022, people’s long-term expectations for future inflation rose sharply. This jump was mostly caused by the sheer size of the surprise, not by a belief that rising prices were here to stay. In contrast with the 1980s, today’s inflation expectations remain anchored.
Keep reading
The hidden role of corporate deposits in monetary policy transmission
The balance sheets of firms matter for the transmission of monetary policy to inflation and real economic activity. Both deposit rates on corporate deposits and the interaction between debt and liquid balances shape the ultimate effects of a central bank’s decision to increase its policy rate.
Keep reading
Faster, better, stronger: the UK economy, in real time
Being able to know what’s happening in the economy in something close to real time is of great value to policy-makers, business leaders, journalists and households. A new ‘nowcasting’ tool developed here at UCL Economics provides updated ways to measure both GDP and inflation with greater accuracy.
Keep reading
Global innovation by German multinationals
Multinational companies are at the heart of both the fragmentation of production and the internationalisation of innovation. Evidence from Germany shows that larger MNCs file more patents of higher quality, and both at home and abroad. They also enable the spread of new technologies across borders.
Keep reading
How financial distress drives firms into the arms of organised crime
Evidence from Italian businesses whose revenues collapsed during lockdown illustrates how the mafia operates as a predatory lender of last resort, stepping in when a firm’s financial foundations begin to fail. The state must provide fast, accessible liquidity to beat the criminals at their own game.
Keep reading
The hidden costs of wildfire pollution for health and education
Breathing smoke from wildfires doesn’t just send people to hospital: it leaves lasting scars on human development. Public health responses should focus on the most vulnerable, including pregnant women; while investing in fire prevention today will save money on healthcare and education tomorrow.
Keep reading
