The effects of the Covid crisis have been felt unevenly across sectors, and the output of customer service industries could remain well below its pre-Covid trend for some time. Economies with large customer service industries could grow more slowly in the near term, even after accounting for the stringency of containment measures and the severity of virus outbreaks. Model projections suggest that large advanced economies could face a "98% economy" until constraints on customer service industries ease. The outlook for some economies, such as China, is more positive.

Almost five decades after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, gold continues to form an important share of global foreign exchange reserves. This may be because gold has traditionally offered reserve managers many benefits, such as the absence of default risk. This paper explores whether these large investment shares in gold are also justified from a risk-return standpoint, or whether any other explanations have to be brought to bear.

We set out to analyse the monetary policy transmission mechanism by documenting how the annual investment of more than one million firms in Germany, Spain, France and Italy responded to monetary policy shocks between 2000 and 2016. We show that euro area firms react differently depending on their age and the industry they operate in: young firms and those producing durable goods react more strongly than the average firm. This confirms that monetary policy is affecting firms’ investment through two different channels.

I establish that US public firms holding real estate have persistently lower levels of productivity than non-holders. Rising real estate values relax collateral constraints for companies that own real estate and allow them to expand production. Consequently, an increase in house prices reallocates capital and labor towards inefficient firms, with negative consequences for aggregate industry productivity.