Abstract: How have profits behaved in the current period of sustained inflation? In part, the answer depends on how ‘profits’ are defined. Some broad measures suggest increasing profits, but conflate market and non-market sector dynamics and omit important corporate costs. This paper constructs an alternative measure of corporate profits to capture UK firm earnings in excess of all production costs. This measure has been declining since the start of 2022, consistent with evidence from historical energy shocks. This decline has not been uniform across firms, however: firms with higher market power have been better able to protect their margins; others have experienced large declines.

Abstract: We introduce a new measure of own-price inflation uncertainty using firm-level data from a large and representative survey of UK businesses. Inflation uncertainty increased significantly from the start of 2021 and reached a peak in the second half of 2022, even as a similar measure of sales uncertainty declined. We also find large cross-sectional differences in inflation uncertainty, with uncertainty particularly elevated for smaller firms and those in the goods sector. Finally, we show that firms which are more uncertain about their own price expectations experience higher forecast errors 12 months later. These findings suggest that studying inflation uncertainty at the firm level may be an important new dimension to understanding firm performance.

Abstract: Persecution, pogroms, and genocide have plagued humanity for centuries, costing millions of lives and haunting survivors. Economists and economic historians have recently made new contributions to the understanding of these phenomena. We provide a novel conceptual framework which highlights the inter-relationship between the intensity of persecution and migration patterns across dozens of historical episodes. Using this framework as a lens, we survey the growing literature on the causes and consequences of persecution, pogroms, and genocide. Finally, we discuss gaps in the literature and take several tentative steps towards explaining the differences in survival rates of European Jews in the 20th century.

Abstract: This paper analyses the response of UK firms to monthly CPI inflation releases using high-frequency data from a large business survey. Firms’ inflation perceptions and expectations respond within hours of new inflation data releases. Firm expectations are most responsive when inflation coverage in the media is elevated, suggesting a key role for the media in focusing attention on data releases. Furthermore, firms respond to changes in inflation data, but not to surprises relative to professional forecasts. This highlights a distinction between “Wall Street”, where financial markets respond to inflation surprises, and “Main Street”, where firms respond to media inflation headlines.

Macro data suggests a convex relationship between inflation and economic slack, but identifying causality is challenging. Using micro data from large panel surveys of UK and US firms we show that the response of prices to demand shocks is also convex at the firm level. We obtain similar results using three different empirical exercises examining: the impact of COVID demand shocks, the response to sales shocks, and hypothetical shocks from a survey question. This convexity is strongest in firms and industries with higher inflation, disappears in horizons beyond two years, and is also present in response to cost shocks. We rationalize these findings in a menu cost model with positive trend inflation and decreasing returns at the firm level, which replicates firm and aggregate Phillips curve convexity. The non-linearity emerges from trend inflation pushing firms closer to their price increase thresholds.

We analyse the importance of climate-related investment using a large economy-wide survey of UK firms. Over half of firms expect climate change to have a positive impact on their investment in the medium term, with around a quarter expecting a large impact of over 10%. Around two thirds of these investments are expected to be in addition to normal capital expenditure, with some firms investing less elsewhere. Climate investments are expected mainly in switching to green energy sources and improving energy efficiency, and firms expect to finance these mainly using internal cash reserves. Climate investment will be driven by larger firms as well as those in more energy‑intensive sectors. Although firms are expecting to invest more resources in adapting to climate change, under reasonable assumptions, these investments are still not sufficient to meet the estimated targets implied by the UK Net Zero Pathway.

Abstract: This paper documents that surprise election outcomes - measured as deviations between realised vote shares and expected vote shares based on a newly constructed dataset of opinion polls and party and candidate vote shares close to election day - are causing non-negligible short-term contractions in economic activity. We find that, on average, a percentage point higher surprise is associated with a 0.37 percentage point lower year-on-year growth rate one year after the election. These effects are only present in countries with strong democracies and seem to operate mainly through increased economic policy uncertainty and lower investment growth over a window of up to eight quarters after an election. In addition, surprise performances of left-wing political parties and in elections with transitions to left-wing governments are associated with the largest effects on the economy.

Abstract: We explore the effect of oil import price shocks on political outcomes using a worldwide dataset on elections of chief executives. Oil import price shocks cause a reduction in the odds of reelection of incumbents, an increase in media chatter about fuel prices, and an increase in non-violent protests. These results are present in democracies but absent in autocracies. To explain the dichotomy, we show that the pass-through from international to domestic fuel prices is limited in autocracies with adverse consequences on levels of debt and international reserves. The results point to the interdependence of goods markets and politics.

In the 2024 Autumn Budget, the UK Government announced increases to employer National insurance contributions (NICs). These changes came into effect on 6 April 2025. In this post, we use the Decision Maker Panel survey to study how UK firms expect to respond to these changes and to analyse the effects on firm expectations. Firms expect to adjust in multiple ways, including by lowering profit margins, wages, and employment, as well as by increasing own prices. The changes in employer NICs are already being reflected in firm expectations about future employment, prices, and wages, with the largest effects so far on employment expectations.