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Since the beginning of March, US regulators have closed and sold three banks: Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic. The failures are the biggest to hit the US…

Introduction Central banks have undertaken many investigations, pilots and proofs-of-concept into Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), proving little beyond the lack of a convincing case in their favour, but unearthing…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon become a major force in the economy, affecting nearly all aspects of production and consumption as well as the labour market. Many jobs which in…

In times of crisis, governments frequently express concern about the potential harm to consumers caused by price gouging, which involves charging unusually high prices for essential goods and services, particularly…

Slower is safer. In 1973, Pierre Messmer, the then French prime minister imposed a 120 km/h speed limit on motorways. The decision was motivated by the desire to save fuel…

Since the Agreement on Agriculture of the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into force in 1995, global trade patterns have changed, but a number of distortions have remained. For example,…

Wealth taxes have played a minor role in the tax systems of the OECD bloc: they have declined from about 7.9% of total tax revenues in the mid-1960s to about…

The bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland is probably the longest living project in the world. According to some historians, it dates back to the Romans. The idea had…

Introduction How resilient is the global banking system? Are banks’ capital buffers now much larger than they were going into the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8, as authorities claim? The…

The template created after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8 to shield taxpayers from direct bailouts of failed banks has already folded – authorities dare not use it. The template…