Skip to content
Nakitte

Institutional research & analysis

Source: VoxEU

RESEARCH

Research ColumnMay 14, 2026

Macroeconomic policies for AI

While some observers argue that artificial intelligence may lead to large productivity gains, there are also concerns that it may lead to technological unemployment and rising inequality by triggering a wave of automation. This column uses a macroeconomic framework to study monetary and fiscal policies for AI. The authors argue that coupling advances in AI with an appropriate macroeconomic policy mix is crucial to ensure that it benefits workers and leads to shared prosperity. Indeed, macroec...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 14, 2026

The dollar’s status through the lens of foreign exchange reserves

The US dollar’s share of global foreign exchange reserves has fallen since the 1990s. This column argues that changes in aggregate reserve shares conflate two distinct channels: preferences for dollar assets as a share of reserves and changes in holdings of total reserves. It highlights that a small number of large holders can shape the constructed global aggregates without any changes in preferences. It shows that the key drivers of portfolio allocations have continued to be traditional macr...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 13, 2026

Some chickens are coming home to roost: EU fiscal policies in 2025

For years, the European fiscal landscape was characterised by a reliable, if tense, dichotomy: a frugal core led by Germany providing the ‘fiscal space’ that anchored the euro area, and a periphery of high(er)-debt countries stretching the limits of EU fiscal rules. This column describes how that geography is shifting. Since 2025, countries with debt below 90% of GDP, above all Germany, decided to add fiscal stimulus while high(er)-debt countries, pressed by increasingly evident constraints, ...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 12, 2026

The impact of emissions trading systems on manufacturing installation productivity: Evidence from Japan

Emissions trading systems have been widely studied globally, but less attention has been paid to their impacts on the productivity of the regulated facilities. This column examines the impact of Japan's regional emissions trading systems on productivity during both the pre-compliance transition period and the compliance period. The findings indicate that although no evidence supports total factor productivity increases during the transitional period, installations improve their productivity d...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 12, 2026

The different effects of oil and gas supply shocks on euro area inflation

The surge in energy prices since March 2026 has revived questions about the pass-through to consumer prices. This column argues that oil supply shocks have immediate but short-lived effects, while gas supply shocks have broader and more persistent effects on euro area inflation. The pass-through to prices varies significantly across sectors of the economy and is stronger in a regime characterised by elevated energy or core inflation. So far, the 2026 shock is more contained than the 2021-22 e...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 11, 2026

When the ruler is made of the thing it measures: Multi-model evidence on AI occupational exposure scores

To estimate how AI is reshaping work, it is now standard to ask AI itself to score how exposed each occupation is. The instrument is thus an instance of the phenomenon. This column replicates the most common scoring procedure using four frontier AI models and identical task data. The share of US occupations classified as ‘high direct exposure’ to AI differs widely, ranging from 2.7% to 51.5% depending on the model used. The findings imply that any analysis based on AI-generated exposure score...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 10, 2026

How UK firms are responding to the war in Iran: Early evidence from the Decision Maker Panel

The conflict in the Middle East has pushed energy prices sharply higher, but the implications for UK inflation will depend on the scale and duration of the shock as well as its propagation through firms’ costs, prices, margins, and wages. This column uses new survey data from UK firms to provide early evidence on how business expectations are responding. Firms currently expect higher prices and lower margins to be the main margins of adjustment, especially among energy-intensive firms. Consis...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 10, 2026

China’s real estate reckoning: Lessons from Japan’s lost decade

A growing debate has emerged over whether China risks repeating elements of Japan’s post-real estate bubble stagnation of the 1990s. This column compares China’s current real estate adjustment with Japan’s experience and uncovers striking parallels in investment dynamics and consumption responses. The key lesson from both episodes is that overinvestment during a housing boom simply cannot be unwound quickly. Excess supply hangs over the economy, discouraging new investment and weighing on act...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 10, 2026

Repenser l'Europe dans une économie mondiale fracturée : le rapport de Florence

Les événements dramatiques qui se déroulent à l'échelle mondiale, qu'il s'agisse de guerres, de bouleversements géopolitiques ou de perturbations commerciales, ont pris l'Europe au dépourvu. Le Rapport de Florence 2026 exhorte l’UE à remplacer son « modèle de responsabilité réduite », qui a fait ses preuves, par un nouveau contrat social européen intégrant la défense, les finances et la fourniture de biens publics. Dans cette tribune, les rédacteurs du rapport soutiennent que ce changement pe...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 9, 2026

How to get the Green and the Deal: Recalibrating EU industrial policy

Europe is recalibrating its industrial policy in response to external challenges including China’s state-driven overcapacities and protectionist US tariffs, but also as an opportunity to address its economic security risks while at the same time moving beyond its middle-technology trap. This column investigates the goals of this recalibrated approach and key components for success. The findings point to the need for Europe to increasingly rely on more directional and centrally designed strate...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 9, 2026

Identifying monetary policy shocks in newspapers using GPT

Identifying the shock component of monetary policy is a precondition for measuring its causal effects. This column proposes a novel approach: using large language models, it analyses the coverage of major European newspapers and classifies the policy action as expected, unexpectedly contractionary, or unexpectedly expansionary. The resulting series tracks a high-frequency identification benchmark in normal times, is markedly more stable in times of financial turmoil, and finds only a small ro...

VoxEU1 min read
Research ColumnMay 8, 2026

Chris Sims and the role of money in economic fluctuations

The contributions of Chris Sims, who passed away in Mach 2026, to macroeconometric methodology are well-known and justly celebrated. This column describes how his contributions to structural macroeconomic modelling, while less widely discussed, have been crucial for the development of the field. It is a great loss that we no longer have Chris to lead the way in facing the challenges for macroeconomic modelling that recent fiscal trends in the US and many other countries pose.

VoxEU1 min read