Publications

The increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape and the rapid advance of artificial intelligence have turned geopolitical risk and economic policy uncertainty indices into essential tools. But what do they measure and how do they do it?

The last two years in Latin America have been marked by differences in macroeconomic policy strategies. Chile and Peru have made significant interest rate reductions as their inflation has allowed. Meanwhile, Colombia and Mexico are more reluctant to implement significant reductions in their rates.

The way some economic policy measures are designed results in unnecessary increases in production costs in Spain, hinders companies' growth, discriminates between individuals in similar circumstances, leads to lost tax revenue and can even affect people's health.

The world economy outperformed expectations in 2023, especially considering the outlook in the early part of the year and the shocks it faced.

Amid economic slowdown, recently, the authorities promulgated policy stimulus on the housing market and at the same time loosened “zero-Covid” policy restrictions to tackle these two main risks of the economy.

Chinese authorities face "Impossible Trinity" of policy targets in 2022. They reverted to “old" economic growth engine-infrastructure, real estate and exports-to stimulate growth from Shanghai lockdown.

We have become used over the last decade to major shocks to the economy coming from factors which are not strictly economic in nature; whether they are protectionist policies, COVID-19 or, now, the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has worsened the global outlook and increased uncertainty.

Bearing in mind the enormous uncertainties that exist, rather than give forecasts, it makes more sense to simulate the impacts of various possible scenarios in relation to energy and other commodity prices, and of pressures on financial markets, and to assess the sensitivity of GDP growth and inflation through them.