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Inflation narratives and expectations

12/01/2025 European Central Bank Central banks

I study how demand-supply narrative disagreement between general and specialized newspapers can explain households’ absolute gap in inflation expectations with experts. I measure inflation narratives via a Causality Extraction algorithm that can identify causal relationships between events in a text and, hence, extract the perceived triggers of inflation. Causal relations can explain why narratives affect people’s beliefs and cannot be captured by dictionary methods, topic models, and word embeddings.

Global or regional safe assets: evidence from bond substitution patterns

12/01/2025 European Central Bank Central banks

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on portfolio rebalancing in international bond markets through the prism of investors’ demand for bonds. Using a granular dataset of global government and corporate bond holdings by mutual funds domiciled in the world’s two largest currency areas, I estimate heterogeneous and time varying demand elasticities for bonds. Safe assets such as US Treasuries or German Bunds face especially inelastic demand from investment funds compared to riskier bonds. But spillovers from these safe assets to global bond markets are strikingly different.

Inflation narratives and expectations

12/01/2025 European Central Bank Central banks

Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings

11/30/2025 New York Times USA

The scores aimed to predict a property’s risk from fires, floods and storms, but some in the real estate industry as well as homeowners have called them inaccurate.

Passing on a family business isn’t easy. Here’s why – and what factors predict success

11/30/2025 The Conversation News & Comments

Maskot/GettyEarlier this year, the world watched with interest as the Murdoch family’s real-life Succession drama came to a close.

U.S. Black Friday Sales Defy Tariffs and Economic Woes

11/29/2025 New York Times USA

Data on spending this week shows that consumers are shopping big for the holidays despite inflation and economic worries.

What the budget means for the NHS

11/28/2025 The Conversation UK

The NHS didn’t receive a great deal of specific attention in Rachel Reeves’ budget. She mentioned it, but in fairly general terms around plans to invest and cut waiting lists.

Ukraine’s peace talks reveal the risks of replacing diplomats with dealmakers

11/28/2025 The Conversation News & Comments

Recent reports about the role of Donald Trump’s special envoy, American businessman Steve Witkoff, in the Ukraine peace negotiations have raised wider questions about why political leaders turn to business figures in high-stakes diplomacy – and whether this can ever work.

What five years of evidence on hybrid working tells us about the future of employment

11/28/2025 The Conversation UK

insta_photos/ShutterstockThe COVID pandemic accelerated remote and hybrid working practices across the world. It also provided evidence that these approaches could work for a wide variety of jobs.

Three reasons why China wants global green leadership after Cop30 – and two reasons it doesn’t

11/28/2025 The Conversation UK

Ahead of the UN’s Cop30 summit, China appeared keen to take on the mantle of new global leader on climate change, stepping into the gap left by the US’s withdrawal from the top spot under Donald Trump.

In trying to understand what China wants from this role, it’s worth examining three areas motivating Beijing to take over leadership, and two others which it is trying to avoid.

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