Fiscal dominance refers to situations in which monetary policy is constrained by the public sector's budget constraint. Large shifts in the dynamics of sovereign debts, surpluses, and central banks’ balance sheets since the great financial crisis have created the perception of a heightened risk of such fiscal dominance in major jurisdictions. This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on fiscal dominance. We offer a simple theory in which fiscal dominance arises as the outcome of strategic interactions between the government and the central bank.

Abstract We study how stickiness in business relationships influences the trade impact of aggregate uncertainty. To begin, we construct a product-level index of relationship stickiness using firm-to-firm relationship duration data. We then demonstrate how relationship stickiness shapes trade dynamics in response to uncertainty shocks. We find that episodes of uncertainty lead to a decline in the overall establishment of new business relationships, with the impact varying depending on the level of stickiness. In markets characterized by high stickiness, uncertainty shocks primarily impede investments in new firm-to-firm relationships. In contrast, for nonsticky products, the adjustment to uncertainty shocks mainly manifests as the disruption of existing relationships.

Abstract In France, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was marked by intense cooperation between hospitals and a high level of job satisfaction, both of which declined in subsequent waves. How can these dynamics be explained? This paper demonstrates that the collective mobilisation cannot be accounted for solely by an injection of financial resources and the strength of a shared professional ethos; it claims instead that relations of cooperation must be understood as relations of power. Drawing on a qualitative study in 14 French hospitals (139 interviews), it shows that the initial wave created conditions and mechanisms that greatly enabled cooperation, but which then waned with ensuing waves. The paper argues that cooperation is related to three types of relationships that had improved during the first wave: those between healthcare professionals, between healthcare staff and top hospital management, between healthcare professionals, patients and their families. It identifies the mechanisms behind these relationships, respectively: the suspension of competition between doctors and departments, the greater autonomy given to healthcare professionals in management decision-making, and the absence of patients’ families, which enabled caregivers to reassert their professional authority. Conditions conducive to cooperation were no longer present during subsequent waves, making cooperation more difficult.

The Great Fear of 1789, a wave of panic and unrest in rural France fuelled by the spreading of rumours, was an important moment at the onset of the French Revolution, marking the collapse of feudalism and the rise of the new regime1. The Great Fear provides a vivid example of the role the spreading of rumours has in driving political changes that might be relevant today2,3. Here, we collect existing historical records related to the Great Fear and use epidemiology tools and models4 to reconstruct the network of its transmission from town to town. In this way, we quantify the spatiotemporal spread of the rumours and compute key epidemiological parameters, such as the basic reproduction number. Exploiting information on the structure of the road network in eighteenth century France5, we estimate the most probable diffusion paths of the Great Fear and quantify the distribution of spreading velocities. By endowing the nodes in our reconstructed network with indicators related to the institutional, demographic and socio-economic conditions of the time6, including literacy, population size, political participation, wheat prices7,8, income and ownership laws9, and the unequal distribution of land ownership, we compute factors associated with spread of the Great Fear. Our analysis sheds light on unresolved historiographic issues on the significance of the Great Fear for the French Revolution, providing a quantitative answer to the unresolved debate between the role of emotions and rationality in explaining its diffusion.

Political movements are often bound together by mobilizing narratives about social threat. In devoted activists, this triggers moral motivations to protect the narrative from criticism and nuance. Speech repression phenomena include public shaming on social media, the "deplatforming" and "canceling" of controversial speakers, and the intimidation of dissidents. Speech repression phenomena are most puzzling when the narratives activists try to protect are simplistic and inaccurate, which is often the case in politics. Here, I argue that speech repression derives from at least three main sociocognitive motivations. First, hypersensitive dispositions to detect threat, from hostile outgroups in particular. Second, motivations to try to keep people committed to moral causes and mobilized against dangerous groups by controlling information flows and beliefs. Third, motivations to signal personal devotion to causes and ingroups to gain status. Members of most political groups engage in speech repression, even those ostensibly committed to freedom. Political activists and leaders only need to believe that speech restriction will bring about desired effects to engage in it. While speech repression can derive from sincere convictions, insincere self-censorship and sanctioning are widespread.

This introduction to the second special issue of Evaluation review on external validity and generalizability opens a dialogue between different ways to think about generalizability in program evaluation. It argues that generalizability in impact evaluation fundamentally is about inferring some form of causality at a level broader than the specific circumstances of the initial study or studies from which these inferences are drawn. The question, then, is about how one apprehends causality: in other words, what is being generalized and how? The first special issue mainly relied on a counterfactual conception of causality, embodied by experimental and quasi-experimental methods, that aimed at impact measurement. The articles in this volume, drawing on mixed methods, also mobilize generative and configurational causal inferences to provide further levers of generalizability, focusing on how the impact is produced. The introduction insists on the specific input of qualitative methods in this respect, as theorized by grounded theory.

US conservatives are often seen as distrusting scientists, and liberals as more trusting. This article examines how alignment between an expert's field and individual political ideology affects claims perceptions. US adults (N = 1054) participated in a pre-registered (https://osf.io/9wnm2) online experiment, indicating their trust in five experts and evaluating the accuracy of four claims. Claims were attributed to experts from impact fields (focused on the consequences of industry and policy), production fields (industry-focused), scientists in general, or no source. Results show that liberals trust all experts more than conservatives and generally perceive claims as more accurate. However, the trust gap between liberals and conservatives is smaller for production experts. While no difference was found between the perceived accuracy of claims attributed to production versus impact experts, expert attribution increased some claims' perceived accuracy. These findings reveal some political-ideology preferences and that attributing a claim to an expert can improve its perception.

Low-socioeconomic-status (SES) and immigrant households benefit the most from attending high-quality early childcare, but they often access it the least. This study tests whether cognitive and behavioural barriers contribute to these access gaps in the French context, where disparities in early childcare enrolment are large. Through a multi-arm experiment, we evaluate the effectiveness of informational interventions and personalized support to enhance early childcare application and access in a sample of 1,849 households. Results revealed that the information-only treatment had minimal impact, while adding personalized support to alleviate administrative burdens significantly bridged the SES and migration gaps in early childcare applications. However, despite substantial increases in application rates, we found limited impacts on access rates for low-SES and immigrant households. Our research underscores the need for integrated strategies to promote equal opportunities in early childhood education by identifying key obstacles to early childcare access for these households.

In our age of digital platforms, human attention has become a scarce and highly valuable resource, rivalrous, tradable, and increasingly subject to market dynamics. This article explores the commodification of attention within the framework of the attention economy, arguing that attention should be understood as a common good threatened by over-exploitation. Drawing from philosophical, economic, and legal perspectives, we first conceptualize attention not only as an individual cognitive process but as a collective and infrastructural phenomenon susceptible to enclosure by digital intermediaries. We then identify and analyze negative externalities of the attention economy, particularly those stemming from excessive screen time: diminished individual agency, adverse health outcomes, and societal and political harms, including democratic erosion and inequality. These harms are largely unpriced by market actors and constitute a significant market failure. In response, among a spectrum of public policy tools ranging from informational campaigns to outright restrictions, we propose a Pigouvian tax on attention capture as a promising regulatory instrument to internalize the externalities and, in particular, the social cost of compulsive digital engagement. Such a tax would incentivize structural changes in platform design while preserving user autonomy. By reclaiming attention as a shared resource vital to human agency, health, and democracy, this article contributes a novel economic and policy lens to the debate on digital regulation. Ultimately, this article advocates for a paradigm shift: from treating attention as a private, monetizable asset to protecting it as a collective resource vital for humanity.

ABSTRACT By declaring its ambition to become ‘Europe’s climate bank’ in 2019, the European Investment Bank (EIB) positioned itself at the center of the European Union’s sustainable finance policy regime, seeking to translate climate leadership into renewed institutional legitimacy and strategic relevance. Unlike previous expansions of EIB’s policy remit, which were underpinned by dedicated EU funding or shareholder capital infusions, this significant increase in responsibilities unfolded without commensurate external financial support. While the EIB’s climate commitments could have remained largely symbolic, we identify a substantive reorientation of its business model and financing activities. Beginning in 2021, the Bank has proactively scaled up its climate financing using its own capital base, accompanied by internal reforms and a deliberate shift toward a broader portfolio of climate-aligned, higher-risk activities. We explain this thorough reorientation of the EIB in the wake of its climate pivot as a response to the path-dependent opportunities it offered to generate additional business volume, restore stakeholder legitimacy amid inter-institutional frictions, retain previously accumulated institutional capabilities, and assert leadership in the field of development banking. Focusing on the largest provider of sustainable finance in the EU, our piece sheds light on actor motivations, trade-offs, and compromises that structure this field.