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VoxTalks Economics

VoxTalks Economics

VoxTalks 462 Episodes Aug 21, 2026

Learn about groundbreaking new research, commentary and policy ideas from the world's leading economists. Presented by Tim Phillips.

Episodes

S9 Ep49: Combatting sexual harassment in the military
S9 Ep49: Combatting sexual harassment in the military Aug 21, 2026 1279 Norwegian conscripts arrive at boot camp straight out of school. They are assigned at random to a shared room and they live in it for the next eight weeks. Whatever the culture of that room turns out to be, they are stuck with it.We know that the military everywhere has a poor record on sexual harassment. Johanna Rickne (Stockholm University, CEPR) and her co-authors wanted to reduce its acceptan
S9 Ep48: What price to save Japan's ghost towns?
S9 Ep48: What price to save Japan's ghost towns? Aug 14, 2026 1092 In the oldest Japanese municipalities, close to half the residents are already over 65. As young people move to cities, the retailers close, then the clinics, then the bus that used to reach the next town. Rural Japan is not simply ageing: it is emptying.Elisa Giannone (CREI, CEPR) and her co-authors have analysed Japan's 1,741 municipalities from 1980 onwards. The oldest quarter of them lost aro
S9 Ep47: The Next Generation: PSE 2026
S9 Ep47: The Next Generation: PSE 2026 Aug 7, 2026 2000 Travel broadens the mind. So the Voxtalks visits a conference, we find the most interesting research from economists just starting out, and hand three of them a microphone. Ad that is today's episode, recorded at the CEPR Paris School of Economics Policy Forum 2026.Listen to hear three findings that undercut conventional wisdom. Guido Lamarmora (University of Nottingham) argues that the usual pol
S9 Ep46: Absorbing shocks since 1891
S9 Ep46: Absorbing shocks since 1891 Aug 5, 2026 1225 Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2026.A country wants a stable exchange rate, it wants money to move freely across its borders, and it wants to set its own interest rates. It's a well-known trilemma. Central bankers must pick any two, because you cannot have all three. History, it turns out, did not read that memo.Eric Monnet has spent years reading the balance sheets that central bankers ke
S9 Ep45: Tariff Confusion
S9 Ep45: Tariff Confusion Jul 31, 2026 1876 If you run a business that exports to the United States, how big is the tariff you have to pay? In 2025 that question was hard to answer. Between February and December, 53 separate announcements introduced, delayed, reinstated or changed US tariffs, with different countries and products pulled in or exempted each time.Kalina Manova (UCL, CEPR) and her colleagues built a database of every one of t
S9 Ep44: How superpowers shape trade
S9 Ep44: How superpowers shape trade Jul 29, 2026 954 Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics.Tariffs move trade around, but so does economic power. When one economy dominates, other countries fall into step with it. They trade with the dominant economy, and also with each other. Alberto Martin (Barcelona School of Economics, CEPR) is one of a team that has tracked the influence of hegemons, large dominant economies, on trad
S9 Ep43: Navigating industrial policy
S9 Ep43: Navigating industrial policy Jul 24, 2026 1283 Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris.In 2019 the IMF called the increasing adoption of industrial policy: "The return of the policy that shall not be named". No one is scared to name it in 2026. Governments in rich and poor economies alike are intervening to change what their countries produce, and the pace has picked up sharply.Zsóka Kóczán (EBRD) was one of the leads on the Transition R
S9 Ep42: The Safety Paradox
S9 Ep42: The Safety Paradox Jul 22, 2026 1200 Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics, June 2026.In 1941 the United States banned oil exports to Japan, to punish aggression without fighting a war. Historians now argue the embargo did the opposite, and hastened Japan's entry into the war.Isabelle Méjean (Sciences Po, CEPR) calls this "The safety paradox". Trade between rivals makes war more expensive. Cut that trade t
S9 Ep41: Making teenagers read newspapers
S9 Ep41: Making teenagers read newspapers Jul 17, 2026 1229 French teenagers carry a smartphone with access to almost anything, but few of them have been using it to read the news.Julia Cagé (Sciences Po, CEPR) ran an experiment to test the one barrier everyone assumes matters most: the price of a newspaper. She and her co-authors gave free digital subscriptions to Le Monde and media education to thousands of French high school students for a year, and th
S9 Ep40: Are net zero commitments greenwash?
S9 Ep40: Are net zero commitments greenwash? Jul 15, 2026 1451 Sixty-three percent of large companies worldwide had made a net zero commitment by 2023, up from close to none in 2018. But if the target date is 2050, that's several corporate lifetimes away, and the planet needs emission reductions today. What actually changes in the boardroom when a pledge is signed?Simon Dietz (LSE, CEPR) has tracked climate management practices and emissions at nearly 2,000
S9 Ep39: Europe in 2050
S9 Ep39: Europe in 2050 Jul 10, 2026 1257 Recorded at the Paris School of Economics-CEPR Policy Forum 2026. Europe is under attack from the US, and under a different kind of attack from China.That is Olivier Blanchard's diagnosis. Blanchard (MIT, Paris School of Economics, Peterson Institute) is one of four economists leading Europe 2050, a new CEPR initiative asking where Europe wants to be in 25 years, and how it gets there. Blanchard'
S9 Ep38: Europe in the Middle
S9 Ep38: Europe in the Middle Jul 8, 2026 1235 China cannot sell as much as it used to in the United States. That trade has to go somewhere, and somewhere might be Europe.In this week's VoxTalk, Tim Phillips asks Pol Antràs (Harvard) and Beata Javorcik (EBRD, Oxford) what this means for European producers and consumers.Antràs and Andrea Presbitero have mapped which countries and sectors face the sharpest competition from redirected Chinese ex

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