The US Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates to restore price stability and to bring balance to the labor market. The demand for new hires is exceeding the supply of available workers in the US, as the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level in over 50 years, and this has contributed to higher inflation. To help bring the economy back into balance, IMF analysis shows that staying the course and keeping interest rates elevated this year...

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Dow Lecture by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research | London, 16 February 2023 | Introduction It is an honour to deliver this year’s Dow Lecture. Christopher Dow had a distinguished career as an applied macroeconomist, both in the United Kingdom (at the Bank of England, the Treasury and here at NIESR) and internationally (as OECD Chief Economist from 1963 to 1973). Moreover, he extensively analysed my...

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Speech by Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at an event organised by the Centre for European Reform, the Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom and the ECB Representative Office in London | London, 16 February 2023 | It is a pleasure to be with you here in London today. The energy shock stemming from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has prolonged and aggravated a sequence of unprecedented supply shocks. These shocks, combined with the...

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Most countries in the world agreed on a major tax reform in 2021. Now it’s time to follow through with implementation. The international tax system—shaped by the League of Nations in April 1923—has come under intense pressure in recent years. Globalization, digitalization, and tax competition have made it increasingly hard for countries to raise revenue from multinational companies in an effective, fair, and efficient manner. Following a decade of debate, 138 countries recently agreed to the first major overhaul of...

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Today, the European Commission has proposed ambitious new CO2 emissions targets for new heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) from 2030 onwards. These targets will help to reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector - trucks, city buses, and long-distance buses are responsible for over 6% of total EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and more than 25% of GHG emissions from road transport. These strengthened emissions standards would ensure that this segment of the road transport sector contributes to the shift to...

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Almost one year after Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine, the EU economy entered 2023 on a better footing than projected in autumn. The Winter interim Forecast lifts the growth outlook for this year to 0.8% in the EU and 0.9% in the euro area. Both areas are now set to narrowly avoid the technical recession that was anticipated for the turn of the year. The forecast also slightly lowers the projections for inflation for both 2023...

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US historian Gary Gerstle explains how globalization helped entrench neoliberalism while also bringing about its demise Some moments in US history need decades to be fully grasped—they aren’t bound by the two-, four-, and six-year election cycles. Such periods, called “political orders” by US historian and Cambridge professor of American history Gary Gerstle, author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, are a new way of rethinking political time. The New Deal and the neoliberalism that followed were...

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Today, the first baseline reports on the implementation of the Code of Practice are available online, as the first version of the Transparency Centre of the Code of Practice on Disinformation goes live. 30 Signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation, including all major online platform signatories (Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, Twitter), have submitted their first baseline reports on the implementation of the commitments they took under the Code of Practice on Disinformation. Signatories had six months after signing the...

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Today, the Commission has proposed detailed rules to define what constitutes renewable hydrogen in the EU, with the adoption of two Delegated Acts required under the Renewable Energy Directive. These Acts are part of a broad EU regulatory framework for hydrogen which includes energy infrastructure investments and state aid rules, and legislative targets for renewable hydrogen for the industry and transport sectors. They will ensure that all renewable fuels of non-biological origin (also known as RFNBOs) are produced from...

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Novel survey shows how concerned people are about climate change, how they view mitigation polices, and what drives support for climate action People across the world worry about climate change, but that concern alone doesn’t translate into support for climate mitigation policies. That’s our finding based on a recent survey designed to better illustrate how people perceive the risks from climate change and their support for government climate actions. Responses also show that those who were more concerned about climate change tend...

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