The World Development Report 2025 is on the theme “Standards for Development” (World Bank, December 2025, https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2025). In the press release for the report, Indermit Gill remarked:

 

“Standards are both central and unsung today. When they’re set right, they go unnoticed: the ship sails through the canal, the building withstands an earthquake, a kilogram weighs the same in Kenya as in Canada, and no one gives the gains that come a second thought. The standardized shipping container might well have catalyzed more trade in manufactured goods than all the trade deals put together. Digital standards could do the same for the services trade. When countries are active in adapting, aligning, and authoring standards, they are a powerful tool for growth and poverty reduction. This report is the first assessment of the role of standards in economic development--and a call to developing nations to make them a core component of their development strategies."

 

Christina D. Romer discusses "Rowing Together: Lessons on Policy Coordination from American History" (Hutchins Center Working Paper #105, February 2026, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rowing-together-lessons-on-policy-coordination-from-american-history/). “

 

It is not enough for monetary and fiscal policy to be well coordinated. They also need to be moving toward the appropriate goal. To put it another way: Rowing together is great when the boat is headed in the right direction; it can be a disaster when the boat is headed in the wrong direction. Coordinated policy was a godsend in 2009; it was a tragedy in 1931. A corollary to this fundamental point is that sometimes rowing in opposite directions can be preferable. At least then, the boat stays where it is rather than move in the wrong direction. If monetary or fiscal policy is going astray, it is vitally important that the other tool of macropolicy be uncoordinated. . . . In describing the cases I focus on two important ‘whys’: (1) Why was monetary and fiscal policy coordinated in some cases and not in others? (2) Why sometimes when policy was coordinated was it headed in the wrong direction?”

 

Pia M. Orrenius delivered the Presidential Address of the Southern Economic Association in 2025 on the subject “Temporary Fixes, Permanent Problems: Implications of the Growing Reliance on Liminal Status in U.S. Immigration Policy,” now published in a paper co-authored with Madeline Zavodny (Southern Economic Journal, October 2025, pp. 181-193, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/soej.12782). From the abstract:

 

“Record migrant inflows in the post-pandemic period have brought renewed attention to the problems associated with temporary fixes to immigration policy. In response to surges of vulnerable migrants and because of the failure to enact legislative change, multiple presidential administrations devised new ways to enable millions of migrants to remain in the United States for years and even indefinitely without lawful permanent resident status. This lack of permanent status is costly to migrants, employers, and the broader economy. It deters investments in human and physical capital, leading to a misallocation of resources and subpar productivity growth. It also leaves migrants vulnerable to policy changes triggered by a change in administration, most recently the threat of mass deportations. Solutions require Congress to address the coming demographic winter with, among other policies, higher volumes of legal immigration and more opportunity to earn permanent residence and a pathway to U.S. citizenship."

 

Alexander J. Field tells the story of the “The World War II US Rubber Famine” (Business History Review, Autumn 2025, 99: 365-390, 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-history-review/article/world-war-ii-us-rubber-famine/624C7C8F548C6A1F583A395A7C2BAEC0.) From the abstract:

 

“By April 1942, Japan had cut off almost all US supplies of natural rubber, a key raw material for which the country had effectively no domestic sourcing. The resulting shortage aggravated downward pressure on manufacturing productivity and seriously jeopardized military capability. The risks that this would happen, widely foreseen, could have been mitigated by more or earlier stockpiling, subsidization of domestic plant-based sources of latex, or development of a synthetic rubber industry. At the time of Pearl Harbor, each route had been pursued in a limited fashion or not at all. This paper explores why, highlighting the outsized role played by businessman/politician Jesse Jones, as well as the multiple channels through which the rubber famine adversely affected the country’s wartime economy. This history starkly illuminates a policy dilemma still with us: How much `insurance’ should a country carry when it depends heavily on interruptible foreign sourcing of a strategic input?”

 

Nicolas Sommet, Adrien A. Fillon, Ocyna Rudmann, Alfredo Rossi Saldanha Cunha and Annahita Ehsan find “No meta-analytical effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health” (Nature, January 22, 2026, 649: 926–937, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09797-z).

 

“Exposure to economic inequality is widely thought to erode subjective well-being and mental health . . . However, existing studies face reproducibility issues . . . Here we present a meta-analysis of 168 studies using multilevel data (11,389,871 participants from 38,335 geographical units) identified across 10 bibliographical databases (2000–2022). Contrary to popular narratives, random-effects models showed that individuals in more unequal areas do not report lower subjective well-being . . . Meta-regressions revealed that the adverse association between inequality and mental health was confined to low-income samples. Moreover, machine-learning analyses indicated that the association with well-being was negative in high-inflation contexts but positive in low-inflation contexts. These moderation effects were replicated using Gallup World Poll data (up to 2 million participants). These findings challenge the view that economic inequality universally harms psychological health and can inform public health policy.”

 

Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson envision "Building pro-worker artificial intelligence" (Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, February 2026, https://www.hamiltonproject.org/publication/paper/building-pro-worker-ai/). They write:

 

"We define pro-worker technologies—including AI—as technologies that make human skills and expertise more valuable by expanding worker capabilities." . . . AI’s demonstrated prowess in narrow domains has fostered inflated expectations about what pure automation can achieve. The logic runs as follows: If AI has already surpassed human performance in specific tasks, it must be capable of replicating everything experts do—just without the experts themselves. This assumption shapes thinking across the spectrum, from enthusiasts championing AI’s potential to critics warning of its dangers. . . . In this framing, AI does not enhance expertise—it eliminates the need for it entirely. . . . Though full automation remains a distant prospect for much decision-making work, the opportunities for human-AI collaboration are immediately available. AI excels as a partner precisely because its strengths—inexhaustible memory, fast pattern recognition, and continuous operation—compensate for human limitations. Where experts struggle to recall every relevant precedent, consider all possible scenarios, or synthesize insights across disparate fields, AI can fill these gaps. In doing so, it often enhances distinctively human capacities: interpreting context, making ethical judgments, generating novel solutions, and understanding how individual tasks advance larger objectives. The choice between automation and collaboration need not be absolute, and the division of labor between human judgment and AI capabilities will shift as the technology matures.

 

Eric Fruits and Kristian Stout offer “AI, Productivity, and Labor Markets: A Review of the Empirical Evidence” (International Center for Law & Economics Issue Brief, February 5, 2026, https://laweconcenter.org/resources/ai-productivity-and-labor-markets-a-review-of-the-empirical-evidence/).

 

“The empirical literature points to a clear pattern. Controlled field experiments and randomized trials document large productivity gains at the task and firm level, often alongside quality improvements. Across writing, customer support, software development, accounting, law, and translation, studies report 15% to more than 50% reductions in task-completion time, meaningful quality gains, and disproportionately large benefits for less-experienced workers, producing `skill compression’ within occupations. At the same time, aggregate labor-market indicators through 2024–2025 show limited disruption, despite rapid adoption. . . . Adjustment to date has occurred through task reallocation and within-firm productivity gains, rather than mass displacement. Macroeconomic projections remain uncertain. Credible estimates range from modest productivity gains to large output increases, depending on assumptions about task coverage, diffusion speed, organizational redesign, and complementary investment.”

 

Alex Imas offers a complementary overview of the evidence in “What is the impact of AI on productivity? Reconciling the micro and the macro evidence” (Ghosts of Electricity, January 29, 2026, https://aleximas.substack.com/p/what-is-the-impact-of-ai-on-productivity).

 

“At the micro level, the evidence is mixed but leaning heavily towards positive productivity benefits. Studies find productivity gains ranging from modest increases on some tasks to substantial returns (50%+) to AI. There is also variation in who benefits from AI. While the literature has thus far documented a prevalence for an equalizing effect—with less experienced/skilled workers benefiting most—there are notable exceptions. At the macro level, these gains have not yet convincingly shown up in aggregate productivity statistics.” Imas also provides a list of AI-and-productivity studies that he will continually update. Thus, his March 2026 update reads: “In the initial version of the post, I had said that the micro productivity data was not yet showing up in the aggregate statistics, but that I expected that to change in the near-term. I believe that the newest batch of aggregate data—which shows a big upwards revision—is showing signs of AI productivity gains. Of course this is not the final word, but the trend is worth noting.”

 

Tim Sablik interviews Anton Korinek “On how rapid advances in AI might reshape the nature of work and how economists can help society prepare” (Econ Focus: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Fourth Quarter 2025, https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2025/q4_interview).

 

“Almost all economists I talk to have come to appreciate that these tools can be very helpful. Economics is a very instrumentalist discipline. When economists realize that something is economically useful, they won’t put up a lot of barriers against it. That said, it’s important to acknowledge that we need to be careful with these tools because they do sometimes produce mistakes. They need to be overseen. It’s kind of like working with a research assistant. We would not take everything that research assistants produce for us without checking it, and it’s the same with our AI systems. . . . [I]f we get AI systems that transform society at the same scale as the Industrial Revolution, the economy is going to be a big part of that transformation. Economists are well positioned to provide insights into how our economy might be reshaped. One thing to consider is that we may have to redesign our systems of taxation. Right now, roughly two-thirds of all income derives from labor, and probably more than two-thirds of all tax revenue comes from taxing that labor income. If the value of labor suddenly falls dramatically because of transformative AI, then we’re going to have to tax differently. I prepared a paper for an NBER meeting on public finance in the age of AI in September where my co-author and I argue that if labor becomes a less important part of the economy, we may want to switch to more consumption taxation. And then if human consumption becomes a less important part of the economy, we may ultimately have to switch to taxing the capital behind the AI systems themselves.”

 

James Tebrake, Bachir Boukherouaa, Jeff Danforth, and Niva Harikrishnan describe “StatGPT: AI for Official Statistics” (International Monetary Fund, March 9, 2026, https://www.imf.org/en/publications/departmental-papers-policy-papers/issues/2026/03/10/statgpt-ai-for-official-statistics-573514). They did an experiment with ChatGPT and other AI tools: “The prompt `Can you generate a table of economic growth rates for the G7 countries taking the data from the latest issue of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook. Can you provide data for 2018 to 2025. Can you provide the output in a CSV file.’ was entered 10 times in the same conversation—10 times in 10 different conversations, and 5 times in the same conversation with a copy of the latest World Economic Outlook loaded in memory (total of 25 prompts).” They find:

 

“Overall, ChatGPT provided a correct response 34 percent of the time when the prompts were entered into the same conversation. The level of accuracy declined to 17 percent when the request was made using unique conversations. When the latest publication of the World Economic Outlook was loaded into ChatGPT, the level of accuracy fell to 14 percent.” The authors describe how to use a series of prompts so that the AI tool will focus in on a specific dataset and retrieve the specific data you want. They also dream of building “a true Global Trusted Data Commons—a comprehensive, AI-ready index of official statistics data . . .” 

 

The OECD Debt Report 2026 is subtitled: “Sustaining Debt Market Resilience Under Growing Pressure" (March 2026, https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/global-debt-report-2026_e9d80efd-en.html).

 

“Central banks remain the largest domestic holders of government debt in many OECD countries, but as many major central banks have continued to shrink their balance sheets, the market is increasingly dependent on more price-sensitive investors, including hedge funds, households and certain foreign holders. This transition away from price-insensitive demand, in many ways a normalisation of the investor composition, could increase market volatility. Corporate bond markets have seen a parallel shift in investor composition following the post-2008 regulatory overhaul, with open-ended investment funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and, more recently, principal trading firms, playing an increasingly important role. Changes in the sovereign investor base reverberate in the corporate market. Investors willing to hold riskier securities at a time of lower yields may rebalance their portfolios as central banks withdraw, leaving the growing new corporate issuance to be absorbed by a smaller investor base. . . . These risks must be carefully managed to ensure that sovereign and corporate bond markets, with a combined size of USD 109 trillion, continue to provide stable financing to governments and corporations. This is especially important as they are set to play an increasing role in funding AI investment and defence spending, at a time when decisions on monetary policy, public debt and pension fund asset allocation are coming under growing pressure.”

 

The January 2026 Global Economic Prospects report includes a special topics chapter on "Rebuilding Fiscal Space: The Case for Fiscal Rules," with a focus on emerging market and developing economies (World Bank, January 2026, https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects).

 

“At a time when global shocks have become more frequent and government debt among emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) has climbed to a 55 year high, fiscal rules are an important policy tool for promoting fiscal discipline. More than half of EMDEs have at least one fiscal rule, up from about 15 percent in 2000. Fiscal rules are associated with improvements in budget balances that extend to the medium and long term. Among EMDEs, improvements in the cyclically adjusted primary balance (CAPB) peak five years after fiscal rules are adopted, reaching a cumulative 1.4 percentage points of trend GDP. The gains are more pronounced when institutions are strong and economic conditions are favorable at the time of adoption, and the use of a deficit rule is central to durable improvements. Fiscal rules are also associated with a greater likelihood of fiscal adjustment episodes—multiyear periods of improvement in the CAPB as a percent of trend GDP. . . . Further, fiscal rules need not be complex to be effective. Simple rule frameworks are associated with a higher likelihood of revenue-based adjustment.”

 

Melissa S. Kearney and Luke Pardue have edited a collection of four essays on the subject of Demographic Headwinds: The Economic Consequences of Lower Birth Rates and Longer Lives (Aspen Economic Study Group, February 2026, https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/demographic-headwinds/). As one example, Nicola Bianchi and Matteo Paradisi discuss “The Age Divide in the American Workplace.”

 

“In the late 1970s, workers over 50 earned roughly 35 percent more per week than workers under 30. Over the following four decades, this gap widened steadily, reaching a peak in the early 2010s, when older workers earned about 55 percent more. . . . And because working lives are now longer, with many employees remaining in senior roles well into their late sixties, there is little reason to expect this pay gap to return to the more modest levels observed in the 1970s . . . [O]ver time, younger workers have become considerably more likely than their 1970s counterparts to be in the bottom quarter of the wage distribution and less likely to be in the top quarter. For workers over 50, the pattern is broadly reversed. Relative to 1976, their probability of being in the bottom quartile has gradually fallen, reaching around 15–17 percent below its baseline level during the 2010s, while their probability of being in the top quartile has typically been between 5 and 15 percent higher. . . . In the mid-1970s, workers over 50 were about 5 percentage points more likely than workers under 30 to be employed in management occupations in the top quarter of the wage distribution. By 2024, this gap had widened to almost 8.3 percentage points. . . . [T]hese patterns are common to most high-income economies, rather than being unique to the United States.” 

 

Dirk Niepelt has edited Frontiers in Digital Finance, a collection of 20 short and readable essays (Centre for Economic Policy Research, November 2025, https://cepr.org/publications/books-and-reports/frontiers-digital-finance). From his introduction:

 

"The digitisation of payment, trading, and settlement systems is reshaping the financial architecture. New technologies are transforming how value is created, stored, transferred, and accounted for, altering the balance between public and private money, enabling the bundling of services, challenging traditional financial institutions, and prompting a wave of regulatory and institutional responses. . . . Some regions are leapfrogging others, and conflicting ideologies about the proper role of the state in money give rise to fragmentation and concerns about monetary sovereignty. This book offers an overview of major trends, as analysed by leading researchers and policymakers. It is structured in four parts. Part 1 presents regional perspectives, examining the approaches taken by India, Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, and the euro area. . . . Part 2 delves into stablecoins—the shooting stars in the digital financial ecosystem. . . . Part 3 turns to the concept of monetary ‘singleness’—the principle that all forms of money in a currency area should be fully interchangeable and trade at par . . . Part 4 brings together chapters on tokenisation, digital platforms, and decentralized finance (DeFi), and their broader impact on service bundling, credit allocation, financial inclusion, and consumer protection.”

Marc-William Palen looks back at the first age of globalization in “When Free Trade First Faltered” (Finance & Development, September 2025, https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2025/09/when-free-trade-first-faltered-marc-william-palen).

 

“In the 60 years or so before World War I, global trade grew rapidly despite the ever-higher tariff walls built by the rising protectionist empires of the United States, Germany, Russia, France, and Japan. Geopolitical conflicts and trade wars grew more common even as markets became more integrated. These contradictions were at the heart of heated debates over free trade and economic nationalism that dominated the industrializing world at the time. . . . The similarities between then and now are hiding in plain sight. The quarter century between the end of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the start of the global turn to protectionism in the early 1870s saw unprecedented trade liberalization, as did the 25 years after the end of the Cold War. And much as the 19th century liberal free-trade advocates underappreciated the political appeal of nationalism and economic self-sufficiency, so too were their intellectual successors in the late 20th century precipitous in predicting the end of the nation-state—and even the end of history.”

 

Andrew Biggs points out that “It’s Fine to Embrace FDR’s Vision of Social Security, But You Don’t Need to Embrace Nixon’s and Carter’s” (Little Known Facts, January 29, 2026, https://littleknownfacts.substack.com/p/its-fine-to-embrace-fdrs-vision-of).

 

“I’ve long been an advocate of a flat benefit structure for Social Security. That is, rather than acting as an increasingly expensive pension plan—where the top half of the income distribution receives almost two-thirds of total benefits—Social Security reform should follow other Anglo countries and gradually transition the retirement program into a robust but limited safety net for poor seniors. . . . But here’s another take: even if one wanted to preserve Social Security in the wage-replacement model exactly as it was envisioned by FDR, I would take the deal. Why? . . . What makes Social Security so expensive today—and increasingly expensive in the future—is not the benefit formula that first started paying benefits out in 1940. It is a series of benefit increases enacted mostly in the 1970s by politicians seeking reelection, supported by a small group of policy leaders who envisioned a far more expansive program than FDR or ordinary Americans did.”