Direct evidence on the effects of financial sanctions remains limited. This column uses correspondent banking data to study how sanctions affect access to global payment networks. The dollar and euro networks offer the most efficient connections to banks in other countries. Furthermore, financial sanctions imposed during 2021-2026 reduced targeted banks’ access to major-currency networks, making it harder for sanctioned institutions to make or receive payments. Non-sanctioned banks in heavily sanctioned countries also lost connectivity to these networks but reoriented towards alternatives, particularly the Chinese yuan. More generally, shifts away from the dollar and towards the yuan remain minimal.
Center for Economic Policy Research
What matters more for sovereign credit ratings – today’s debt or tomorrow’s deficits? This column explores how ratings weigh the two and finds that ratings place much more emphasis on current debt than on projected fiscal deficits. Compared with the implications of a simple model, ratings differ in three important ways: they overweight debt relative to forecast deficits, they understate the effects of the interest rate-growth differential, and they are heavily influenced by other country-specific factors. Countries with the same debt and deficit forecasts can receive extremely different ratings, implying widely different levels of debt needed to reach a given rating.
Center for Economic Policy Research
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned a Houthi missile attack on Riyadh’s main airport that Saudi authorities say killed 12 people and wounded more than 300.
UN News
Jeremy Strong in “The Social Reckoning,” Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network” and the real Meta executive are all playing parts. But only one has changed his approach.
New York Times Business
Beirut wurde einst als Paris des Nahen Ostens verklärt und später zum Sinnbild eines nicht enden wollenden Bürgerkriegs. Mounir Zahran legt verschiedene Zeitschichten dieser Stadt frei - eine Spurensuche zwischen Wiederaufbau und neuem Grauen.Von Mounir Zahran
Deutschlandfunk
MIT Statistics and Data Science Center Director Alexander (Sasha) Rakhlin shares important considerations for departments and institutions.
MIT
Seit Monaten tobt ein Kampf um lukrative Strecken im Fernverkehr. Jetzt hat ein Gericht der Deutschen Bahn einen Sieg beschert – und Italo hat das Nachsehen.
FAZ
