Economic Issues

Review: The Rich and the Poor by Kitcher, P.

2026-07-08T09:43:45+00:00

Review: From Marx to Markets: An Intellectual Odyssey by Hodgson, G.M.

2026-07-08T09:53:07+00:00

Has the ECB Implicitly Combined an Average Inflation Targeting Regime with an Inflation Tolerance Band?

2026-07-08T08:54:05+00:00

In line with the consensus that price stability is the primary objective of monetary policy, central banks increasingly announce numerical inflation targets. However, recognising the inherent challenge of precisely meeting such targets, central banks often supplement these objectives with explicit or implicit tolerance bands. In the Eurozone, it remains unclear whether the ECB operates under a regime of point inflation targeting or employs an implicit point target with a tolerance band around the 2 per cent objective, potentially asymmetric prior to the July 2021 strategy review. This paper assesses whether, in practice, the ECB tolerated inflation deviations within a certain range, irrespective of the formal specification of its target. To identify the width of this range, we estimate a nonlinear monetary policy reaction function in which the response to inflation weakens within candidate intervals. The preferred specification is selected based on goodness of fit. We find that, until July 2021, the ECB’s behaviour was consistent with an inflation range between 1.0 per cent and 1.7 per cent. This result points to a lower tolerance for inflation close to 2 per cent, contrasting with the “below but close to 2 per cent” formulation and previous estimates in the literature, and indicating an asymmetric policy stance prior to 2021.

Business environment constraints and foreign equity participation in Africa

2026-07-08T08:31:35+00:00

Using logit regression on firm-level survey data, this study examines the linkages between foreign equity participation and different aspects of the business environment for a selection of ten African countries. The findings suggest that factors relating to finance (access to finance) and institutions (access to land, customs and trade regulations, corruption and the judiciary) significantly lower the probability of foreign equity participation. The business environment constraints are also examined according to different firm characteristics, namely the degree of foreign ownership, the size of the firm and the industry in which the firm operates.

Examining the Linkages Between Remittances and Electricity Consumption in Shaping Energy Security in the Philippines

2026-07-08T09:07:24+00:00

Energy security is widely recognised to be critical for sustainable development. Despite being a significant recipient of remittances in the Asia-Pacific region and making progress towards improving access to electricity, energy security challenges continue to be a major concern for policymakers in the Philippines. The main goal of this paper is to investigate empirically the effects of remittances on electricity consumption in Philippines using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag modelling approach using annual time series data from 1977 to 2022. The results reveal a stable cointegrating relationship between remittances, real income, financial development, and electricity consumption. We find that an increase in economic growth, financial development, and remittances tends to stimulate electricity consumption both in the long run and short run. The findings withstand robustness checks and assist policymakers in better understanding the remittances-electricity consumption nexus. These insights underscore the importance of policy reforms to encourage remittances-dependent households towards clean energy adoption and efficiency initiatives. Moreover, financial sector reforms are essential to boost efficiency and effectively facilitate investment in renewable and clean energy infrastructure projects to address existing energy security challenges.