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Lifespan of royal bloods between 1669 and 2022 | Mostly Economics
Interesting research by Alberto Batinti, Joan Costa-i-Font and Vasuprada Shanda on voxeu: Social status can have a long-lasting influence on people’s health and longevity. This column explores the lifespan of royals – whose status is determined by hereditary rules – between 1669 and 2022. While royals still live longer than their average subject, the gap…
A Python Package to Assist Macroframework Forecasting: Concepts and Examples | Mostly Economics
Sakai Ando, Shuvam Das and Sultan Orazbayev in this IMF paper discuss a python package to assist macro forecasting: In forecasting economic time series, statistical models often need to be complemented with a process to impose various constraints in a smooth manner. Systematically imposing constraints and retaining smoothness are important but challenging. Ando (2024) proposes…
How People Use ChatGPT | Mostly Economics
New NBER paper (Aaron Chatterji, Thomas Cunningham, David J. Deming, Zoe Hitzig, Christopher Ong, Carl Yan Shan & Kevin Wadman) Despite the rapid adoption of LLM chatbots, little is known about how they are used. We document the growth of ChatGPT’s consumer product from its launch in November 2022 through July 2025, when it had been adopted by around 10% of the…
Afghan Exodus: Regional Macroeconomic Implications and Policy Challenges | Mostly Economics
IMF economists (Rhea Gupta,Chandana Kularatne,Dirk V Muir,Pedro C Rodriguez,Li Zeng) 'on macro challenges in Afghanistan: Afghanistan has endured decades of war and political turmoil, leading to repeated waves of displacement (refugees and internally displaced persons) and emigration. This paper documents key stylized facts of the Afghan displacement and emigration crisis, assesses its macroeconomic impacts from…
Mostly Economics
New NBER paper (Aaron Chatterji, Thomas Cunningham, David J. Deming, Zoe Hitzig, Christopher Ong, Carl Yan Shan & Kevin Wadman) Despite the rapid adoption of LLM chatbots, little is known about how they are used. We document the growth of ChatGPT’s consumer product from its launch in November 2022 through July 2025, when it had been adopted by around 10% of the…
Book Review: History for Tomorrow | Mostly Economics
Book Review: History for Tomorrow Roman Krznaric. 2024. History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity. W H Allen. ISBN 9780753559635 Trade Paperback. Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU Suppose you are, like me, more often than not hating the past, fearing the present and having…
Folk economics of Housing | Mostly Economics
Christopher S. Elmendorf, Clayton Nall and Stan Oklobdzija discuss housing shortages in US in Journal of Econ Perspectives:Why is housing supply so severely restricted in US cities and suburbs? Urban economists offer two primary hypotheses: homeowner self-interest and political fragmentation. Homeowners, who outnumber and have organizational advantages over renters, are said to lobby against development…
How banks strategically develop brand images using adveritsing videos | Mostly Economics
Xugan Chen, Allen Hu & Song Ma on impact of banks adveritising: This paper examines how banks strategically develop brand images and how these efforts influence franchise value and the transmission of monetary policy. Analyzing TV advertisements via video embeddings, we measure banks' images along three dimensions: pricing advantages, service quality, and building trust and emotional connections. Banks…
Malfunctioning Democracies: Understanding Accountability Failures in Developing Countries | Mostly Economics
A new NBER paper on malfunctioning democracies in devleoping countries (by Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan): This chapter examines why democracies in the developing world frequently underperform in providing effective governance. We argue that these shortcomings stem from weaknesses in accountability mechanisms, which leave governments vulnerable to corruption, clientelism, and elite capture. Our framework distinguishes three accountability…
Exit barriers as entry barriers: Explaining India’s odd development path | Mostly Economics
Shoumitro Chatterjee, Kala Krishna, Kalyani Padmakumar and Yingyan Zhao in IdeasforIndia blog: Despite an abundance of low-skilled labour, India never experienced the kind of take-off in labour-intensive manufacturing seen in other countries at similar income levels. This article argues that a central reason for this is the institutional exit barriers faced by manufacturing firms. Leveraging…
Masculinity norms and their economic consequences | Mostly Economics
Victoria Baranov, Ralph De Haas, Pauline Grosjean and Ieda Matavelli on masculinity norms: While economists have extensively studied gender norms affecting women, masculinity norms – the informal rules that guide and constrain the behaviours of boys and men – remain underexplored. This column reviews how such norms can shape economic outcomes in labour markets, health,…
White paper on Mutual Fund- Voluntary Retirement Account (MF-VRA) scheme | Mostly Economics
Association of Mutual Funds in India or AMFI has proposed a new type of mutual fund for retirement planning named Mutual Fund- Voluntary Retirement Account (MF-VRA) scheme. It has released a white paper to explain the idea: India’s demographic shift toward an aging population and the limited reach of formal pension systems create an urgent…
What happens when Private Equity firms sell medical practices? | Mostly Economics
Victoria Berquist, Lev Klarnet and Leemore Dafny in this HBSWK paper: Private equity (PE) ownership of physician practices is increasing, with owners targeting sales, or exits, in 3 to 7 years. Little is known about the association of exit with physician retention and subsequent employment. Using panel data over the period 2014-2020, we find physicians…
Revenue Drivers Of Global Banks In Bullion Business | Mostly Economics
IFSCA (International Financial Services Centre Authority) has released its first research paper on global banks in bulllion business. It is written by Ramakrishnan Padmanabhan of IFSCA: Global bullion banks – including firms like JP Morgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, ICBC Standard, Citi, and others – derive revenue from a diverse array of business lines in…
Equity Mutual Funds: Transforming India’s Savings Landscape | Mostly Economics
Team of RBI researchers (Mayank Gupta, Satyam Kumar, Abhinandan Borad, Subrat Kumar Seet and Pratibha Kedia) in Aug-25 Monthly Bulletin article: This article examines the evolving landscape of household savings in India, highlighting the increasing preference among retail investors for equity mutual funds (MFs) as a key investment avenue. It presents a comprehensive analysis of…
EV Policies and Two-Wheeler EV Adoption: Evidence from Indian States | Mostly Economics
Team of RBI researchers (Atal Singh, Satyam Kumar, Abhyuday Harsh and Tista Tiwari) analyse EV adoption across Indian States: With nearly three-fourths of vehicle registrations in India comprising two-wheelers (2W) in 2024-25, it is imperative that any initiative aimed at promoting electric vehicles (EVs) must focus on the adoption of 2W-EVs to meet the country's…
Central banking manual for fighting crises: the need for split personalities | Mostly Economics
David Marsh of OMFIF in this article discusses central bank manual for fighting crises: Patrick Honohan, governor of the Central Bank of Ireland from 2009 to 2015 – the seminal period of euro area sovereign debt upsets – is a central banker who almost literally grew up with economic and financial crises. Honohan understands, all…
20 Years of Jackson Hole Conference and Rajan’s paper on financial development | Mostly Economics
It is really rare for an economics conference to make it to any headlines. Jackson Hole conference organised by Kansas City Fed is one such rare conference which not just makes headlines but its discussions shape economic policy and research in future. The conference started in 1978 and just held its 47th edition. In its…
Central Bank of Mexico celebrates 100 years | Mostly Economics
Central Bank of Mexico is celebrating its 100th anniversary. It was established in Sep-1925. Banco de México, which was created on September 1, 1925, was the pinnacle of a long-awaited aspiration by Mexicans. Its creation ended a long period of monetary instability and anarchy, dating back to the beginning of the XIX century, and during which…
Five ‘C’s for Central Bank Research | Mostly Economics
Catherine Mann, MPC member of Bank of England in this speech at the centenary celebrations of Bank of Mexico points to 5 Cs of central bank research: Economic research at central banks plays an important role: for the institutions themselves, the economists employed there, and for the decision-makers. Here are 5 ‘Cs’ of research, relevant…
A Teacher Writes to Students Series (52): Listen to Kolodko-5 | Mostly Economics
A Teacher Writes to Students Series (52): Listen to Kolodko-5 Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU I am choosing and reproducing six pragmatic discussions from the experiential perceptions of the great Polish economics Professor Grzegorz W. Kolodko for your perusal and consideration. He had his own political-economic practice as a…
An AI-powered Tool for Central Bank research | Mostly Economics
Nicholas Gray, Finn Lattimore, Kate McLoughlin and Callan Windsor in this paper higlight how Reserve Bank of Australia is using AI in research: In a world of high policy uncertainty, central banks are relying more on soft information sources to complement traditional economic statistics and model-based forecasts. One valuable source of soft information comes from…
The Birth of Modern Finance | Mostly Economics
Fatimah Khan writes about the birth of modern finance in this Richmond Fed article: Since the 1950s, a series of theories and models have come to largely define financial and investment practices, transforming a trial-and-error practice into a quantitative academic field. Collectively, these innovations have become known as modern financial theory. If you have ever…
Commercialisation over tradition: Jagannath Temple at Puri | Mostly Economics
Ankita Subudhi writes a brave article in TheIndiaForum: The Puri Jagannath temple’s organic sanctity has been eroded by commercialisation, turning tradition into spectacle and control. Devotion has been reduced to regulated ritual, and the Rath Yatra now emphasises order over faith, with crowd management in 2025 failing to provide even basic care. One could write…
Jackson Hole 2025: AI breakthroughs are transforming industries, from healthcare to finance | Mostly Economics
The 2025 edition of Jackson Hole Conference concluded recently. The theme was Labor Markets in Transition — Demographics, Productivity and Macroeconomic Policy. The 2004 conference was also based on demographics. It was interesting to see the conference inviting Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Google, Porat spoke about AI and how it transforoming the…
Robinson Meets Roy: Monopsony Power and Comparative Advantage | Mostly Economics
Mark Bils, Bariş Kaymak, and Kai-Jie Wu in this NBER paper: Research on labor markets is increasingly focused on the role of monopsony power, examining its impact on income inequality and labor’s allocation, as well as its implications for policy interventions, specifically minimum legal wages. While traditional approaches associate monopsony power with firm characteristics—especially a…
onetary Economics at 30: A Reexamination of the Relevance of Money in Cashless Limiting Monetary Economies | Mostly Economics
The M is missing by purpose in Monetary. In this NBER paper, Ricardo Lagos on relevance of money: The well-known cashless-limiting result in Woodford (1998) has become the theoretical foundation for a large body of work that treats the costs and benefits of holding money as irrelevant for monetary transmission. I reexamine this result and…
Adam Smith at 250 | Mostly Economics
Michael Spence in Project Syndicate (HT: Prof A.J.C. Bose) : Nearly 250 years ago, Adam Smith identified two potential constraints on economic specialization: the “extent of the market” and the inevitable risks. Today, the risk constraint is proving to be the more powerful, and another, more fundamental challenge to Smith’s model of specialization has emerged.…
A Teacher Writes to Students Series (51): Listen to Kolodko-4 | Mostly Economics
A Teacher Writes to Students Series (51): Listen to Kolodko-4 Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU I am choosing and reproducing six pragmatic discussions from the experiential perceptions of the great Polish economics Professor Grzegorz W. Kolodko for your perusal and consideration. He had his own political-economic practice as a…
Italy and the cost of unintelligible laws: 110 billion euros a year | Mostly Economics
Tommaso Giommoni, Luigi Guiso, Claudio Michelacci and Massimo Morelli in this voxeu post estimate costs of unintelligible laws in Italy: Over the past 30 years, laws in Italy have become longer, more convoluted, and frequently unintelligible even to seasoned legal professionals. This column exploits variation in the ability of lower courts to interpret poorly drafted…
Book Review: Wellbeing Science and Policy | Mostly Economics
Book Review: Wellbeing Science and Policy Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve. 2023. Wellbeing Science and Policy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-29892-6 Hardback. Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU Are you wondering if there is any scientific non-Marxist, non-socialist policymaking to promote wellbeing or happiness in the world, i.e. without…
Continuity and Change in the Federal Reserve’s Perspective on Price Stability | Mostly Economics
David López-Salido , Emily J Markowitz and Edward Nelson in this paper research statements by Fed leadership: We examined statements made by Federal Reserve leadership since the early 1950s and established there has been considerable continuity in policymakers’ perceptions of the benefits of price stability. Policymakers have consistently contended that deviations from price stability give rise to greater…
A Tale of Two Transitions: Mobility Dynamics in China and Russia after Central Planning | Mostly Economics
Kristina Butaeva, Lian Chen, Steven N. Durlauf & Albert Park in this NBER paper: This paper examines intergenerational mobility in China and Russia during their transitions from central planning to market systems. We consider mobility as movement captured by changes in status between parents and children. We provide estimates of overall mobility, which involves mobility…
Prospero Theory to Prosepct Theory: Shakespeare and Behavioral Economics | Mostly Economics
Interesting paper by Jim Leitzel of University of Chicago. He says many aspects of behavioral economics are found in Shakespeare: Prospect theory, a mainstay model of behavioral economics, was designed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) to offer a better descriptive account of human decision making than that provided by rational choice theory -- and in many…
Do Global systemically important banks engage in window-dressing behavior? | Mostly Economics
Kamil Pliszka and Carina Schlam in this Bundesbank paper: This paper examines whether global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) engage in window-dressing behavior to circumvent or reduce regulatory requirements, increasing vulnerability to economic shocks. Using a comprehensive global bank sample, we uncover evidence of such practices: G-SIBs reduce year-end exposures used for G-SIB capital buffer calculations,…
Social Defaults and Plan Choice: The Case of Spousal Following | Mostly Economics
Tal Gross, Timothy Layton, Daniel Prinz & Julia Yates in this NBER paper choose how couples choose insurance. Simple: follow the partner! We study how couples in the Medicare Part D program choose an insurance plan. Over 70 percent of enrollees choose the same plan as their spouse. Even among those with differing healthcare needs,…
Mind the App: do European deposits react to digitalisation? | Mostly Economics
A team of ECB economists (Luisa Fascione, Beatrice Scheubel, Livio Stracca, Nadya Wildmann and Juan Ignacio Jacoubian) in this paper study the depositor response to digital banking: The March 2023 banking turmoil has intensified discussions whether social media and the digitalisation of finance have become significant factors in driving severe deposit outflows. We introduce the…
Who are the “bond vigilantes” on sovereign debt markets? | Mostly Economics
Pablo Anaya Longaric, Katharina Cera, Georgios Georgiadis and Christoph Kaufmann in this ECB blogpost: Financial markets are sensitive to macroeconomic and political news, especially given the high debt levels in several euro area countries. On sovereign bond markets, investment funds – which invest the money of households, companies and others – have become key players.…
Why Did Air Conditioning Adoption Accelerate Faster Than Predicted? Evidence from Mexico | Mostly Economics
Lucas W. Davis & Paul Gertler in this new NBER paper: A common theme in the vast literature on climate change is the estimation of models using historical data to make predictions many decades into the future. Although there is a large and growing number of these types of studies, researchers rarely return later to check the…
Book Review: Nattukottai Chettiars Bankers of the East | Mostly Economics
Prof Raman Mahadevan has recently written an insightful monograph on Nattukottai Chettiars. It is part of the Penguin Series on Indian Business History edited by Gurcharan Das. Here is my review of the book published in the Frontline magazine. How a Tamil business community dominated 19th-century South-East Asian commerce before colonialism and World Wars cemented…