public-finance

We harmonize survey data on interest rates paid by approximately 15,000 small and medium enterprises across 125 firm surveys and 285,000 households across 83 household surveys spanning developing and rich countries to study the relationship between monetary policy rates and borrowing costs faced by SMEs and households. Using within-country variation in policy rates over time,…

Buoyed by AI stocks, global financial markets have largely shrugged off the war with Iran. Yet the conflict’s long-term economic costs are only beginning to emerge, as depleted strategic oil reserves, damaged refining capacity, and rising fuel and fertilizer costs increasingly weigh on lower-income economies. NEW DELHI—The on-again, off-again US-Israeli war against Iran has underscored…

Thursday, December 18, 2025 Mexican Crime Organizations and the Synthetic Drug Crisis Thousands of Americans die each year after overdosing on illicit synthetic drugs, including synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Transnational criminal organizations have played a central role in fueling this health crisis here in the United States. In a new report, we look specifically at…

The central trade-off for designing Disability Insurance (DI) is between providing insurance to those in need while maintaining incentives to work. This paper develops a novel revealed-preference approach to identify the insurance value of DI benefits. We show that comparing the DI take-up response to a change in benefits versus a change in wages identifies…

Thursday, January 8, 2026 Water Recycling Program Could Help Drought-Stricken Communities In some parts of the United States, growing populations and prolonged droughts are straining water supplies. Large-scale water recycling could offer these communities a solution to their shortages. In a new report, we looked at the status of these efforts and their challenges. We’ll…

This paper was prepared for a conference on “The Forces Shaping America’s Fiscal Future” in June 2026. The conference was organized by the Marriner S. Eccles Institute for Economics and Quantitative Analysis at the University of Utah, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, and the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution….

Frustrated at the collapse of his poorly-considered Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, President Trump has declared the US will reimpose its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and begin charging a 20 percent fee for passage. It’s genuinely astonishing for the government of the United States to blithely repudiate one of its most important contributions to international order. The US has…

New Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh was a “good choice” for the job, Warren Buffett told CNBC. Warsh made his mark during his first meeting as chair in June, holding rates steady while outlining changes to the central bank’s approach. In Congressional testimony on Tuesday, Warsh pledged a “regime change” in Fed policy and promised…

Netflix reports quarterly earnings on Thursday. The streaming platform’s stock has dropped more than 40% over the past year.