Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels“Cashback” apps make an enticing promise. You download an app or click on a web browser extension. You go about your online shopping as usual, spend money, but then get some cash back. It sounds simple, right?
In recent years, cashback programs have made a serious splash with online shoppers.
Every few months, someone in the superannuation industry declares that Australians now “need” around A$1 million to retire comfortably. It’s a big, scary number.
But consumer advocates say most people can retire with far less.
Independent estimates suggest something closer to $322,000 is enough for many retirees who own their own home. So who’s right – and what assumptions drive these wildly different targets?
Less capital, more risk, familiar consequences. The latest move on big-bank rules suggests that too big to fail was never solved, only deferred.
The latest move to ease capital rules for large banks is being sold as a technical adjustment. It is nothing of the sort. It is another step in a long retreat from the post-2008 financial crisis promise to discipline concentrated financial power and protect the public from having to underwrite private risk.
That is the old too-big-to-fail bargain, dressed again in the language of efficiency.
Dario Caldara, Haroon Mumtaz, and Molin ZhongWe characterize asymmetric tail risk across over one hundred U.S. macroeconomic and financial variables using a dynamic factor model with stochastic volatility. The model unifies growth-at-risk, inflation-at-risk, and sectoral heterogeneity through common factors whose volatility responds endogenously to shocks, combined with heterogeneous factor loadings.
Ece Fisgin, Johannes Fleck, Keith RichardsWe show that the EU’s 2018 retaliation against US steel and aluminum tariffs targeted goods with low US import dependence and high substitutability. For the majority of tariffed goods, the US share of EU imports declined notably and remained below pre-2018 levels even after the retaliatory tariffs were lifted, reflecting asymmetric effects of tariffs on trade diversion.
Nils Gornemann, Eugenio Rojas, Felipe SaffieDoes global financial risk affect long-run growth? Using a panel state-space model for emerging and advanced small open economies, we measure the effects of U.S. monetary policy uncertainty shocks. A one-standard-deviation shock lowers the level of the stochastic trend in emerging markets by at least 25 basis points after three years, with little effect in advanced economies.
Sinem Görücü via Better Images of AI, CC BYAustralia’s research and innovation system is “broken” and needs “bold reform”, according to a major new independent report released on Tuesday.
David Splinter and Jeff LarrimoreCirculation into and out of the top one percent is pronounced in the U.S. One third exit after a year and two-thirds exit after a decade. This mobility lowers top income shares when shifting from annual to multi-year income measures. Intragenerational mobility over two decades lowers recent top one percent fiscal income shares by over 10 percent. Two-decade mobility reduces top 0.1% shares by over 20 percent, top 0.01% shares by 30 percent, and top 0.001% shares by 40 percent.
A case for tackling the corporate machinery driving extreme wealth, and the reforms that could truly curb it.
Targeting billionaires with California’s proposed wealth tax is an eye-catching idea, but perhaps the real problem is how some of these people become billionaires in the first place.
Madalyn Cox/UnsplashLast month, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court determined that plant-based drink maker Oatly could not trademark the phrase “Post Milk Generation” – effectively banning the use of the word “milk” on their cartons.
