Institutional research & analysis

Source: VoxEU

RESEARCH

Research ColumnJune 15, 2026

Fiscal rules compliance and sovereign borrowing costs: Some evidence from the euro area

Governments with well-designed fiscal rules generally enjoy lower yields but less is known about whether investors price compliance with these rules. Using a panel of euro area member states over 1999–2025, this column finds that markets may be selective. Compliance with the deficit and the debt rule – observable, nominal, and unambiguous – is associated with lower sovereign bond yields. Results for other rules, involving more complex fiscal aggregates, are mixed. During financial stress, def...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 14, 2026

Taking the pulse of global trade policy

How much has trade policy changed globally? This column introduces the Trade Policy Activity Index, a monthly measure of policy changes across 197 economies since the Global Financial Crisis. Underlying it is a dynamic factor model that distils the common dynamics across diverse instruments and data sources. The index documents identifiable peaks coinciding with trade tensions in 2018–19 and 2025, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine, amid a rising trend. It also shows that restrictive measures h...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 14, 2026

Reciprocal sovereignty: A third constitutional tradition for Europe

The central constitutional question for Europe is how sovereign democracies can govern common goods together without creating a sovereign European state. This column proposes reciprocal sovereignty as an answer. Reciprocal sovereignty understands sovereignty as the democratic capacity to enter relations of mutual responsibility. It offers a constitutional alternative to both federal centralisation and purely intergovernmental cooperation. The ‘democratic triple knot’ – linking joint financing...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 13, 2026

Not all reserves are born equal: Why the source matters for sovereign risk

Emerging market economies hold foreign exchange reserves to insure against currency crises and to cushion exchange rate movements. Reserves are generally associated with lower sovereign spreads. This column argues that how those reserves are built up is also important. Using a balance-of-payments classification that separates reserves accumulated through private inflows from those financed by public external borrowing, it finds that only privately financed reserves are robustly associated wit...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 12, 2026

Regulation and growth reloaded: Lessons from 25 years of retail trade and professional services reforms

Retail trade and professional services employ a large share of workers across OECD countries and provide key intermediate inputs to downstream sectors. This column examines how regulation in these sectors spills over to productivity in the wider economy. New data show that anti-competitive regulations in upstream service sectors curb long-run labour productivity performance in downstream sectors. On average across the OECD, deregulation in retail trade and professional services between 1998-2...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 11, 2026

Did the Sewing Machine Liberate Women?

In January 1860 the New York Times gave its blessing to a new machine: the sewing machine. These "iron needle-women", it wrote, were the only invention that could be claimed “chiefly for women's benefit”. Sewing was women's work in the nineteenth century, rich or poor, and a machine could now do it in a fraction of the time. So did it set women free? Philipp Ager and Davide Coluccia have traced the adoption of the sewing machine in Massachusetts between 1850 and 1900, using census records and...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 11, 2026

The unequal burden of oil shocks: Labour markets and monetary policy

The war in Iran has sent oil prices sharply higher, reviving the question of who bears the cost of energy shocks and how central banks should respond. Using nearly half a century of German data, this column shows that oil supply shocks disproportionately impact low earners, reducing their labour income and their chances of finding and keeping a job. The central bank’s moderate response to past oil shocks added little to this real damage, even as it held down inflation. With energy-driven infl...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 10, 2026

When private insurance buys faster access to public care

Supplemental private health insurance is becoming more common in universal healthcare systems as a way to secure faster access to specialists, diagnostics, and elective care. This column examines how such insurance affects healthcare use and access. New evidence from Sweden shows that gaining coverage increases and expedites healthcare use, while much of the extra care is still delivered and financed within the public system through referrals back from private providers. As coverage is concen...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 9, 2026

Increasing employment in pre-retirement years slows cognitive decline

Dementia affects an estimated 6 million Americans. This column uses data from the Health and Retirement Study spanning 1996-2018 to assess the impact of employment before retirement on cognitive decline, which is a key precursor to dementia. The authors find that employment declines driven by local labour demand shocks are associated with cognitive decline of men ages 51-64, suggesting a role for work in slowing cognitive decline. Efforts to promote work at pre-retirement ages would not only ...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 9, 2026

Pension funds, unlisted firms, and Europe’s Capital Markets Union

Europe's Capital Markets Union debate is again centred on how to turn savings into productive investment. This column uses Danish ownership and register data to show that pension fund equity investment is associated with higher productivity only among unlisted firms. It argues that this is consistent with four distinct channels: capital supply, long-term commitment, engagement, and signalling. This has implications for the tension between microprudential safety and macroeconomic risk-bearing....

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 8, 2026

Fighting misinformation with truth: Why mainstream news matters on social media

How can misinformation on social media be countered in the age of AI-generated content? This column uses an experiment conducted during the 2024 US presidential campaign involving 10,000 users of X to demonstrate that nudging users to think before sharing content can outperform fact-checking interventions in reducing misinformation. The experiment also reveals that users often struggle to distinguish true from false news, and that interventions are substantially more effective when users are ...

VoxEU1 min read

Research ColumnJune 7, 2026

Why some digital payment systems replace cash and others don’t

Digital payment systems promise to extend financial services to people underserved by banks, and overcoming barriers to the adoption of such systems is thus central to financial inclusion. This column argues that instant payments can substitute for cash when adoption moves quickly beyond high-income early users. Evidence from Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico suggests that the key is a rapid low-income gradient: systems must combine low adoption costs, dense networks, supply-side coordination, a...

VoxEU1 min read