New research explores the scope for managing migration using a government-regulated competitive market for work permits. Michael Lokshin and Martin Ravallion propose that host-country workers should be granted the legal option to rent out the ‘work permits’ that effectively come with citizenship for a period of their choice, while foreign workers can purchase taxable time-bound […]
While central banks have become increasingly more independent over the last five decades, there is still a large variation across regions. New research by Davide Romelli (Trinity College Dublin) investigates what drives the timing, pace and magnitude of legislative changes in central banking for a set of 155 countries over the period from 1972 to […]
The share of so-called ‘zombie firms’ among listed non-financial companies in the advanced economies has risen dramatically over the past three decades – from just 4% in the late 1980s to more than 17% today. New research by Ryan Banerjee and Boris Hofmann examines the anatomy and life cycle of these weak and unprofitable firms […]
At the height of the Covid-19 wave in Italy and Spain in March and April 2020, there was substantial public support for assistance packages for EU countries hit by economic decline as a consequence of the coronavirus crisis. Survey evidence from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, collected by Roel Beetsma and colleagues in […]
Promotion incentives that layout clear and objective thresholds that must be achieved to make career progress can be a key motivating tool to foster the productivity of high-skilled public employees. That is the conclusion of new research by Marco Nieddu (University of Cagliari and CRENoS) and Lorenzo Pandolfi (University of Naples and CSEF). Making use […]
The pandemic and associated lockdowns have hit new businesses hard. According to new research by Cristiana Benedetti-Fasil (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission), Petr Sedláček (University of New South Wales and Oxford University) and Vincent Sterk (University College London), even if the disruption to startups is short-lived, it could lead to large aggregate employment […]
The mental health of American women has suffered far more from lockdown and social distancing measures than men’s, according to new research by Abi Adams-Prassl (University of Oxford), Teodora Boneva (University of Zurich), Marta Golin (University of Oxford) and Christopher Rauh (University of Cambridge). Their analysis of geographically representative survey data collected in the early […]
