Publications

In May, we examined how the quality of Chinese exports—as measured by the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) developed by Harvard’s Growth Lab—has significantly improved over the past three decades and…

For the first time in over a decade, momentum is building in the United States to raise the federal minimum wage. On April 8, 2025, lawmakers in Congress introduced the…

The United States has accused China of leveraging an unfair advantage in trade relations and is threatening the imposition of substantial new tariffs. This raises two fundamental questions: are the…

Introduction The scale and servicing cost of government debt are both rising. This will increase the amount of money that governments will have to suck out of economies over the…

WP 2025-05. Executive Summary The temptation to rely on findings from behavioral economics to condition human behavior has given rise to libertarian paternalism, an approach to public policy design that…

Introduction The recent major fall in global stock markets was too large to be solely attributable to Trump’s tariffs. It is an adjustment and possibly the introduction to a period…

On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day”, launching a dramatic protectionist turn that may trigger the greatest global economic disruption since the Great Depression. He announced a…

Wealth taxes are present in most European countries, but they still form a relatively small share of tax revenues. Indeed, politicians keep referring to wealth as a fat tax base…

We don’t know whether the trade war triggered by President Donald Trump stems from his ignorance of the potential consequences, it is a poorly conceived strategy of “conquering” global markets,…

The European Union has long positioned itself as a global climate leader, promoting policies to cut emissions and enhance sustainability. One of its latest initiatives, the ReFuelEU Aviation regulation, mandates…