This paper examines the influence of political leaders' spouses on resource allocation and regional development. We construct two new global datasets: one tracking leaders' and spouses' characteristics and one that geocodes aid projects, including new data from the United States and 18 European donors. For 1990-2020, we find that Western bilateral donors direct significantly more aid to spouses’ birth regions during their partners' tenure, while leader birth regions do not experience compar...| CEPR
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Recent events in Europe provide ample evidence that the political aftershocks of financial crises can be severe. This column uses a new dataset that covers elections and crises in 20 advanced economies going back to 1870 to systematically study the political aftermath of financial crises. Far-right parties are the biggest beneficiaries of financial crises, while the fractionalisation of parliaments complicates post-crisis governance. These effects are not observed following normal recessions ...| CEPR
VDEV/CEPR/BREAD Seminars is an online seminar series, featuring invited speakers in the area of Development Economics. It was set up in the spring semester of 2020 as the VDEV seminar and is now organised jointly by the group of researchers below, CEPR and BREAD. The seminars are held on Zoom and consist of a 45-minute presentation, followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. A moderator collects questions on the chat and selects a few of general interest to be asked to the speaker at reasonable intervals...| CEPR
Union membership across the developed world has been falling for decades. This column uses data on wages and hours worked in the US over the last 50 years to examine whether this has led to a fall in the ‘union wage premium’. The authors find that while the hourly wage premium for union members has fallen notably since the 1970s, the differential in weekly wages has remained large, driven in part by union members working longer hours. This underexplored role of unions is important for the...| CEPR
As the global economy fragments along geopolitical lines, countries are seeking new ways to flourish, or at least insulate themselves against geopolitical shocks. Drawing from a newly constructed database, this column explores the concept of ‘connector’ countries, which can be vertical along supply chains or horizontal across markets. The authors argue that vertical connectors may increasingly come under political pressure, whereas horizontal connectors may be more resilient to geopolitic...| CEPR
Estimates of China’s military spending relative to the US vary widely from around one quarter of US spending to near parity. This column argues that the use of appropriate relative prices and unbiased economic measurement techniques greatly reduces the range of reasonable estimates. Given current data, China’s military expenditure in PPP terms is estimated to be $541 billion, or 59% of US spending, and its equipment levels are only 42% of US levels. Comparing trends over time shows that t...| CEPR
The traditional antitrust analysis of acquisitions by large digital conglomerates relies on a handful of mechanisms to leverage market power from one narrow market into another. Yet large digital conglomerates often own fungible assets, and capabilities that can be deployed across markets. This first in a series of two columns argues that we need new approaches to articulate how an existing constellation of assets and capabilities may matter to the analysis of a deal.| CEPR
Trade union membership has been declining since the 1980s. Recently, however, there has been renewed interest in the potential of collective bargaining to address rising wealth inequality and poor wage growth. This column presents an OECD report on collective bargaining institutions and practices across member countries and selected emerging economies. Despite substantial variation across member countries, the overall pattern is one of a broad decline in the use of collective bargaining to se...| CEPR
Since the early 1980s, the US has seen a falling labour share and slow wage growth for typical workers, while measures of corporate valuations and measured markups have increased. A number of papers have argued that increasing monopoly or monopsony power can explain these trends. This column argues instead that the decline in worker power in the US economy is a more compelling explanation for recent macro trends than a broad-based rise in monopoly power.| CEPR
The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined. China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. This column uses the recently released 2023 update of the OECD TiVA database to paint an eight-chart portrait of China’s journey to superpower status and the asymmetric impact that its dominance has had on global supply chains.| CEPR