VoxTalks Economics

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1. S9 Ep61: Cooperatives in the 21st century

   30 oktober 2026 · 27 min

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   Go to work, follow orders all day, and your living standards will rise. That is the deal behind the capitalist economy. In his forthcoming book, Cooperatives in the twenty-first century, Francesco Caselli (LSE, CEPR) argues that the deal has been broken for two generations. Pay at the top keeps climbing. Pay in the middle and at the bottom has barely moved. Lees meer

   The usual fixes for spiralling inequality are higher taxes on the rich and stronger unions. Francesco's answer is to change who owns the firm. In a worker cooperative there are no outside shareholders, so the profits stay with the people who produce them. In conversation with Tim Phillips, he explains which of the economic objections to cooperatives are red herrings, and which ones are more serious.

   The research behind this episode:

   Caselli, Francesco. 2026. "Worker-Managed Firms Can Curb Inequality and Protect Free Markets." VoxEU.org, 7 October.

   Caselli, Francesco. Forthcoming. Cooperatives in the Twenty-First Century: How Worker-Managed Companies Can Curb Inequality and Support Free Markets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, and Francesco Caselli. 2026. "Cooperatives in the 21st century." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Francesco Caselli is Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Director of the Macroeconomics and Growth Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society. His research spans growth, technical change and inequality, the sources of economic development, the economic and political effects of natural resource wealth, and how voters select politicians.

   Research cited in this episode

   The labour share. The labour share is the part of national income paid to workers as wages; the rest goes to the owners of capital as profit. Caselli's point is that profits flow mostly to people at the top of the income distribution, so when the l…

2. S9 Ep60: The challenges to the international financial system

   23 oktober 2026 · 27 min

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   The 29th Geneva Report on the World Economy examines three pressures on the international financial system at once: global imbalances, the status of the dollar, and the stability of bond markets. Two of its authors, Valentina Bruno (American University, CEPR) and Cédric Tille (Geneva Graduate Institute, CEPR), tell Tim Phillips why stocks, the dollar and US Treasuries all fell on Liberation Day in April 2025, why that could happen again, and what we should do about it. Lees meer

   So is this a rupture, or a transition in the world's financial system?

   The research behind this episode:

   Bruno, Valentina, Steven B. Kamin, Angel Ubide, and Cedric Tille. 2026. "Changing Structure and Challenges of the International Financial System: Imbalances, Currencies, and Financial Stability." Geneva Reports on the World Economy 29. Geneva: International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies; Paris and London: CEPR Press. Free to download.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, Valentina Bruno, and Ceric Tille. 2026. "The challenges to the international financial system”. VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guests

   Valentina Bruno is Professor of Finance at the Kogod School of Business, American University, where she holds the Arlene R. and Robert P. Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Finance. She is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in the Banking and Corporate Finance programme. Her research spans macroeconomics and finance, with recent work on how the US dollar transmits global financial conditions. She has worked at the World Bank and been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Board.

   Cédric Tille is Professor of International Economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, where he heads the Bilateral Assistance and Capacity Building for Central Banks programme. He is a Research Fellow of CEPR in the International Macroeconomics and Finance programme. His research spans financial globalisation, the dynamics of countries' external assets and liabilities, an…

3. S9 Ep59: Life after divorce

   16 oktober 2026 · 21 min

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   Who gets the kids? Courts aim to decide custody in the child's best interests, but nobody has had the data to test how well those decisions work. Lees meer

   Gordon Dahl (UC San Diego, CEPR), Costas Meghir (Yale, CEPR) and seven co-authors built the data themselves. They collected more than 56,000 Swedish custody rulings, scanning paper files by hand where no digital copy existed, and linked them to records of parents' earnings, prescriptions and children's school tests.

   It seems Swedish judges do not agree on how often to award joint custody. Some award it in about 60% of cases; others in about 20%. But that decision makes a huge difference to the lives, and happiness, of both parents and children. They tell Tim Phillips whether joint or sole custody has, on average, better outcomes.

   The research behind this episode:

   Canessa, Stella, Gordon Dahl, Anna Hasselqvist, Costas Meghir, Susan Niknami, Marten Palme, Helmut Rainer, Olof Rosenqvist, and Pengpeng Xiao. 2026. "Life After Divorce: Effects of Joint Custody on Parents and Children." CEPR Discussion Paper 21780.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, Gordon Dahl, and Costas Meghir. 2026. "Life after divorce." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guests

   Gordon Dahl is Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, and a Fellow in the Labour Economics programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research spans the family, public policy and the labour market, including how family income shapes children's achievement, peer effects among co-workers and family members, the effects of incarceration on employment, and how welfare use passes between generations.

   Costas Meghir is the Douglas A. Warner III Professor of Economics at Yale University and a CEPR Fellow in the Labour Economics, Development Economics and Public Economics programmes. His research spans labour supply and welfare programmes, marriage markets and how resources are shared within households, informal labour markets, and ea…

4. S9 Ep58: Not wearing Prada

   9 oktober 2026 · 19 min

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   Since March 2022, it has been harder to buy an iPhone in Russia, because Apple chose to stop selling there. So did Prada, Renault, Starbucks, Nike and more than 1,000 other firms. These private sanctions added to the official sanctions imposed by 45 countries. Lees meer

   Beata Javorcik (EBRD, Oxford, CEPR) and her co-authors wanted to know if private sanctions did anything more than generate good headlines. To do this, they matched millions of Russian customs records to the trademarks on the goods, so they could tell an iPhone from a Samsung phone and a Gucci scarf from a Gucci bag. Would imports of goods under voluntary sanctions stop? Would the brands cheat? Would importers find an other way to get goods into the country through the back door? She tells Tim Phillips what private sanctions on Russia have achieved.

   The research behind this episode:

   Chupilkin, Maxim, Beata Javorcik, Alexander Plekhanov, and Aleksandra Peeva. 2026. "Not Wearing Prada: Do Private Sanctions Reinforce Official Sanctions?" CEPR Discussion Paper 21774.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, and Beata Javorcik. 2026. "Not wearing Prada." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Beata Javorcik is Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, on leave from the University of Oxford, where she is Professor of Economics and a Fellow of All Souls College. She is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in the International Trade and Regional Economics programme. Her research spans foreign direct investment, shocks to production networks, trade under sanctions and the evasion of import duties.

   Research cited in this episode

   Official sanctions on Russia. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, 45 economies, including the US, the EU and the UK, imposed sanctions on Russia. They cut selected Russian banks off from the SWIFT payment messaging system, immobilised the reserves of Russia's central bank, limited Russia's earnings from hydrocarbon …

5. S9 Ep57: Merit, masters and China's imperial exam

   2 oktober 2026 · 21 min

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   For more than 1,300 years, China chose its top officials by written exam. Its top officials were chosen meritocratic ally -- or were they? Lees meer

   When the results came out, each successful candidate went to pay his respects to the men who had marked his exam. He called the examiner master, and the bond lasted for life.

   Ruixue Jia (UC San Diego, CEPR) and her co-author Ying Bai followed 24,269 graduates of the Qing dynasty's imperial examination, from 1644 to 1905, to see who reached the top of the imperial state. A high mark in the examination was important, but so did an examiner who later rose to power. Jia tells Tim Phillips how merit and patronage worked together.

   The research behind this episode

   Bai, Ying, and Ruixue Jia. 2026. "Meritocracy and the Networks It Forged: China's Imperial Examination." CEPR Discussion Paper 21814. Prepared for The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

   To cite this episode

   Phillips, Tim, and Ruixue Jia. 2026. "Merit, masters and China's imperial exam." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Ruixue Jia is Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego, where she co-directs the China Data Lab. She is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong, a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in its Political Economy and Economic History programmes, and co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. Her research spans elite formation, the politics of education and science, and the historical roots of China's development. She is co-author, with Hongbin Li and Claire Cousineau, of The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China (Belknap Press, 2025).

   Research cited in this episode

   The imperial examination. China's system for recruiting officials through competitive written exams on the Confucian classics and literary composition. It began around 605 CE, expanded under the Song dynasty around 1000 CE, and was abolished in 1905…

6. S9 Ep56: Decoupling from China after Trump's Trade Wars

   25 september 2026 · 29 min

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   In March 2025, Apple chartered cargo flights to deliver 600 tonnes of iPhones from India to the United States. A year earlier, four in five smartphones that imported to the US came from China. Lees meer

   One of the aims of US trade policy has been to decouple the US economy from China. So is the strategy working? Chad Bown (PIIE, CEPR) tells Tim Phillips how he examined the US import data product by product to see how American importers coped with Trump's second trade war. In consumer electronics, many firms quietly built a second supply chain in tariff-exempt countries before 2025, and switched sourcing away from China almost overnight in 2025. But clothing and footwear did not switch, because alternative source countries like Vietnam faced tariffs almost as high. When the US taxes imports from every country, the decoupling strategy gets lost.

   The research behind this episode:

   Bown, Chad P. 2026. "How Did Trump's 2025 Trade War Affect the Decoupling of US-China Supply Chains?" CEPR Discussion Paper DP21801 (gated). Forthcoming in Asian Economic Policy Review.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, and Chad P. Bown. 2026. "Decoupling from China after Trump's Trade Wars." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Chad P. Bown is the Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Fellow in the International Trade and Regional Economics programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He was chief economist at the US Department of State from January 2024 to January 2025, and senior economist for international trade and investment on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. His research spans trade policy, industrial policy, economic security and supply chains. He co-created the Trade Talks podcast with Soumaya Keynes in 2017, and with Keynes he is co-author of How to Win a Trade War (Simon & Schuster, 2026).

   Research cited in this episode

   The 2018-19 Section 301 tariffs. In Trump's first term the US imposed tariffs…

7. S9 Ep55: Loosening inheritance law

   18 september 2026 · 26 min

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   In most of the world you do not get to choose who inherits your money. Across continental Europe, Latin America, and countries governed by Islamic law, a minimum share of your estate will be reserved for your children, your spouse, and in some places your surviving parents. Write a will that ignores them and the law overrules you. Lees meer

   If you want a head start in life, choose your parents carefully.

   Switzerland changed the rules in January 2023. The compulsory share for children fell by one third and the share reserved for surviving parents disappeared altogether. In this week's VoxTalk, Marius Brülhart (University of Lausanne, CEPR) tells Tim Phillips how he had been following the reform with no way of observing its effects, until a website that helps Swiss people write their wills online offered him its anonymous data. People who were handed more freedom gave less to their children and their parents, and more to spouses and partners. About one third of every liberated franc went to recipients outside the family altogether. Liberalising the law spreads wealth without taxing anyone: politically, though maybe not democratically, attractive.

   The research behind this episode:

   Brulhart, Marius, and Laia Soler. 2026. "Unfree Wills: Inheritance Rules, Bequest Motives, and Wealth Diffusion." CEPR Discussion Paper 21811. The CEPR version is gated.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, and Marius Brulhart. 2026. "Loosening inheritance law." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Marius Brulhart is Professor of Economics at HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research spans public finance, regional and urban economics, and international trade, with a long-running interest in how Swiss taxpayers and testators respond to the rules they are given. He has advised the World Bank, the OECD, the European Commission, and the Swiss government.

   Research cited in this episode

   Protected heirs. Swiss law, …

8. S9 Ep54: Does sacking the manager work?

   11 september 2026 · 18 min

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   Your football team keeps losing. The season is slipping away. One thing can be changed by Friday, and the crowd is already singing about it: sack the manager. Lees meer

   Jan van Ours (Erasmus School of Economics, CEPR, Feyenoord fan) has looked at seven seasons of the Dutch top flight and 31 managers who were sacrificed mid-season. To work out whether any of them deserved it, he uses bookmaker odds and expected goals to distinguish bad play from bad luck.

   The new-manager bounce is real: results improve after a new manager walks in. But also, not real: clubs that don't sack the manager have an upturn too. The message for the boardroom, in football and business, is that not doing anything might often be the best course of action.

   The research behind this episode:

   van Ours, Jan C. 2026. "Dust in the Wind: Causes and Consequences of Managerial Replacements." CEPR Discussion Paper DP21850, Centre for Economic Policy Research. The paper is gated.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, and Jan van Ours. 2026. "Does sacking the manager work?" VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Jan van Ours is Emeritus Professor of Applied Economics at Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a core member of the Erasmus Centre for Applied Sports Economics. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Center for Health Economics, Monash Business School, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research spans unemployment dynamics, labour market policy, health and well-being, and the economics of professional sport, where match data offer a rare chance to watch a labour market in the open.

   Research cited in this episode

   The Eredivisie sample. Seven seasons of the top league of Dutch professional football, from 2018/19 to 2024/25, covering 4,136 match observations and 126 club-seasons. In that period 31 managers were replaced during a season; about 15% had gone by mid-season and 25% by the end of it.

   Points surprise. The cumulative gap, from …

9. S9 Ep53: Lessons from Populism in Latin America

   4 september 2026 · 33 min

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   The new episode of VoxTalks Economics traces the effects of South Americans populism, left and right. Alejandro Werner (Georgetown Americas Institute) is one of the authors of a new paper that traces populist governments across Latin America back to 1970. Lees meer

   He argues that they follow a strikingly similar script: they expand spending, weaken the institutions built to restrain them, and ride the wave until inflation catches up with them. But the most recent generation of leaders -- Chávez and Maduro, the Kirchners, Correa, and Morales -- lasted longer than their predecessors. Why?

   The research behind this episode:

   Magud, Nicolás E., Antonio Spilimbergo, and Alejandro Werner. 2026. "Lessons from Populism in Latin America." Paper presented at the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference, June 2026. Forthcoming in Economic Policy.

   To cite this episode:

   Phillips, Tim, and Alejandro Werner. 2026. "Lessons from Populism in Latin America." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

   About the guest

   Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He spent nine years as director of the International Monetary Fund's Western Hemisphere Department, and earlier held senior posts at Mexico's finance ministry and central bank. His research spans macroeconomic policy, fiscal sustainability, and financial crises across Latin America.

   Research cited in this episode

   The Global Populism Database, built by political scientist Kirk Hawkins and colleagues, codes the rhetoric of presidents and prime ministers on a scale from zero (not populist) to two (highly populist), reading inauguration and campaign speeches for anti establishment language, appeals to "the people," and simple, direct phrasing. Magud, Spilimbergo, and Werner use this index, rather than a leader's policies, to decide who counts as a populist, which keeps their definition independent…

10. S9 Ep52: The Dollar Anchor Is Slipping

    2 september 2026 · 26 min

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    April 2025: Liberation Day. President Trump announces sweeping new tariffs. And then, the dollar did something a safe haven currency is not supposed to do: it fell. Lees meer

    Tarek Hassan (Boston University, CEPR), working with Thomas Mertens, Jingye Wang and Tony Zhang, has been investigating what makes a currency the global anchor. Being the world's biggest economy helps, but what really matters is how far an economy's shocks affect world prices. Tariffs reduce this effect. But are we near a tipping point, when the euro takes over as the global reserve currency? We might be closer than you think and, if a change happens, it might happen more quickly than you think too.

    This is the third of four episodes drawn from papers commissioned for the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues conference, held in Venice on 19 and 20 June 2026 and organised by CEPR, CESifo and Sciences Po.

    The research behind this episode:

    Hassan, Tarek A., Thomas M. Mertens, Jingye Wang, and Tony Zhang. 2026. "Openness, Integration, and the International Monetary Order." Conference draft, presented at the 2nd Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference, Venice, 19 to 20 June 2026. Forthcoming in Economic Policy.

    To cite this episode:

    Phillips, Tim, and Tarek A. Hassan. 2026. "The Dollar Anchor Is Slipping." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).

    About the guest

    Tarek A. Hassan is Professor of Economics at Boston University, a Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research spans international finance, macro-finance, and the political economy of growth, from measuring firm-level political risk with large language models to, in this paper, the size and openness that decide which currency the world treats as safe.

    Research cited in this episode

    Liberation Day and the April 2025 tariffs. On 2 April 2025, the White House announced a sweeping set of import tariffs. Hassan and…

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