Clark Center Forum

Today is a big day for Fed Watchers, with Fed  Chair Jerome Powell set to make his keynote address at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium. At the time of writing, some hours before Powell takes to the podium, Bloomberg has gone as far as to carry a live countdown building up to […] 

Over the last decade a growing proportion of stock trading has been concentrated into the later stages of the day. As a story on Bloomberg, which caught the attention of many investors and market participants, put it in April – US stocks trade for 390 minutes a day, but only the last 10 minutes seem […] 

In this Finance survey: Stock markets around the world have seen an increasing concentration of trades in or near the closing auction. In the US, for example, about a third of all S&P 500 stock trades are now executed in the final ten minutes of the session, up from 27% in 2021 (a) The increased concentration of trading in the final minutes of the trading day has a measurably detrimental effect on market quality; (b) Strict indexing implemented with trading at the close to avoid tracking error creates a measurable performance drag that could be avoided with more flexible passive strategies 

It’s been a long week for global financial markets. It at least has certainly felt that way.  Monday saw the largest daily fall in the value of Japanese equities since 1987, with the Topix index plunging by 12% followed by a rough day for European and North American exchanges and, for much of the day, […] 

Winston Churchill once remarked that “if you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions”. Sadly for policymakers, economists offering up multiple opinions and caveating even themselves has never been a uniquely British trait. Harry Truman became so sick […] 

Investment trends (or, if one is being unkind, ‘fads’) come and go. For much of the last two years artificial intelligence has been firmly in the spotlight. Before that the pandemic sparked a wave of interest in biosciences. In the late 2010s, the big trend seemed to be Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But whilst media […] 

This US survey examines: (a) Capping annual rent increases by corporate landlords at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would make middle-income Americans substantially better off over the next ten years; (b) Capping annual rent increases at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would substantially reduce the amount of available apartments for rent over the next ten years; (c) Capping annual rent increases at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would substantially reduce US income inequality over the next ten years 

This Finance survey examines (a) Public companies that pursue social and environmental initiatives bear no measurable costs (in terms of lower profits) relative to similar companies that do not pursue such initiatives; (b) Public companies that pursue social and environmental initiatives benefit from a measurably lower cost of capital than similar companies that do not pursue such initiatives; (c) There are substantial social benefits when managers of public companies make choices that account for the impact of their decisions on customers, employees, and community members beyond the effects on shareholders 

It sometimes surprises those who do not follow fiscal policy closely just how much of the process is often based on a series of polite fictions that those involved sometimes pretend to believe. The best example comes from the United Kingdom and concerns Fuel Duty, the duty charged on motor vehicle fuels.  In theory, and […] 

This US survey examines (a) All else equal, making permanent the 2017 tax cuts that were set to expire at the end of 2025 would substantially increase federal deficits and the federal debt over the coming decade; (b) All else equal, making permanent the 2017 tax cuts that were set to expire at the end of 2025 would measurably increase the rate of US economic growth over the coming decade, (c) In the US, given Congressional budget scoring rules, temporary tax cuts generate sufficient pressure for extension as to be effectively permanent