Beijing’s Secretive International Lending Programme

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New research finds that Chinese state-owned banks are muscular, commercially savvy lenders that use contracts to position themselves as ‘preferred creditors’, seeking repayment ahead of other commercial and official lenders. They often do so by asking borrowers for an informal source of collateral – bank accounts with minimum cash balance requirements that lenders can seize […]

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Effects of Banning the Veil in French Schools

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The question of whether banning Islamic veils in schools or public spaces cuts Muslim women off from a normal life or promotes their social integration has divided public opinion in Europe for 30 years. New research by Éric Maurin and Nicolás Navarrete Hernandez shows that the veil ban in French schools coincided with both an improvement […]

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Ageist Language in Job Ads Discourages Older Applicants

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Advertisements for jobs that include subtle ageist stereotypes related to physical ability, communications skills or technological aptitude are putting off older workers from applying. That is the central finding of new research by Ian Burn, Daniel Firoozi, Daniel Ladd and David Neumark, which uses new machine learning language processing tools and an experiment on Amazon’s […]

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Foreign School Students Get Lower Grades than Natives

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In parts of Italy that have seen large inflows of immigrants in recent years, immigrant children of primary school age are given lower grades by their teachers in non-blind tests compared with natives of similar ability, as measured by their performance in blindly-graded tests. Teachers in schools in areas characterised by small inflows of immigrants […]

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Neighbourhoods Won’t Be Improved by Banning the Unemployed

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Laws that ban unemployed people from moving to certain parts of a city are ineffective, according to new research by Hans Koster and Jos van Ommeren. First, they do not materially change the demographic composition of targeted neighbourhoods by attracting households with higher income levels. What’s more, the laws have significant adverse side effects, because […]

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Gender Discrimination in Politics

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Voters in French local elections seem to discriminate against women running for public office – but only when a male/female pair of candidates is representing a right-wing political party. That is the central finding of new research by Jean Benoit Eymeoud and Paul Vertier, which explores the electoral effect of having the woman candidate of […]

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Pay Transparency

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When women are informed about their relative wages with respect to colleagues, they react more strongly to differences relative to other women than to differences with men. That is one of the findings of new research by Marianna Baggio and Ginevra Marandola, which uses an online experiment to assess the impact of pay transparency measures […]

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Structural Reforms Boost Italian Growth and Jobs

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Three economic policy packages introduced in Italy between 2011 and 2017 have boosted the country’s GDP by between 2.5% and 6%, according to new research by Emanuela Ciapanna, Sauro Mocetti and Alessandro Notarpietro. What’s more, further increases are expected to materialise over the coming decade, bringing the overall long-run impact of the reforms on GDP […]

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Covid, School Closures and Children’s Futures

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As the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world in the spring of 2020, schools were shut down and millions of children faced major learning losses while their parents struggled to combine work, childcare and home education. A new research report by Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln explores the likely long-term impact of those closures on children’s future livelihoods […]

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