Of Interest/ESG News
you are currently viewing::How Animal Spirits Affect the EconomyMarch 3, 2025—Viral narratives could be the missing link between emotions and economic fluctuations
We gauge inflation by comparing shopping baskets with friends and family. We grapple with the consequences of artificial intelligence by channeling our hopes and fears into science fiction. Storytelling is central to how we interpret economic events. We recall economic history through haunting images of anxious crowds waiting to take money out of banks during the Great Depression or dejected office workers carrying cardboard boxes out of Lehman Brothers in 2008. We gauge inflation by comparing shopping baskets with friends and family. We grapple with the consequences of artificial intelligence by channeling our hopes and fears into science fiction. But do stories themselves influence the economy? This idea has a long precedent in economic thought. John Maynard Keynes wrote extensively about how "animal spirits"-nstincts and emotions that influence behavior-prompt people's economic actions, like spending or investing in businesses. He argued that these herd emotional urges lie at the heart of economic booms and busts. Taking this idea one step further, Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale University, has pushed for a more detailed study of economic narratives-the contagious stories that shape how individuals view the economy and make decisions. Shiller hypothesizes that sufficiently popular narratives can go viral and have society-wide impact (Shiller 2020). Source: IMF.org |
Charted: Countries Accumulating the Most AI Patents
April 22, 2025-Key Takeaways
According to the 2025 AI Index Report. China has accumulated 70% of global AI patents
Evidence suggests that the majority of China's AI patents are only applied for and protected within China
State of the Global Climate 2024
April 15, 2025-Key messages
Key climate change indicators again reach record levels
Long-term warming (averaged over decades) remains below 1.5℃
Sea-level rise and ocean warming irreversible for hundreds of years
OECD urges strengthened co-operation to sustain trillion-dollar ocean economy
March 31, 2025—While the ocean economy doubled in real terms, from USD 1.3 trillion in 1995 to USD 2.6 trillion in 2020, co-ordinated policy action is essential to safeguard its long-term prosperity and sustainability, a new OECD report finds. The OECD Ocean Economy to 2050 identifies key priorities for policymakers to secure a resilient and sustainable future ocean economy, balancing economic opportunity with environmental responsibility.
Africa: Fast Fashion Fuelling Global Waste Crisis, UN Chief Warns
March 30, 2025-Fast fashion is accelerating an environmental catastrophe, with the equivalent of one garbage truck's worth of clothing either incinerated or sent to landfill every second, the UN chief warned on Thursday.
Speaking at an event commemorating Sunday's International Day of Zero Waste, Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to curb the textile industry's devastating impact on the planet.
'Renewables are renewing economies', UN chief tells top climate forum
March 26, 2025-2025 marks a milestone: the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement and the deadline for countries to submit their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), designed to keep the global goal alive of limiting temperature rise to 1.5℃C above pre-industrial levels.
How DeepSeek has changed artificial intelligence and what it means for Europe
March 20, 2025--By mid-2024, artificial intelligence large language models (LLMs) were running into diminishing returns to scale in training data and computational capacity. LLM training began to shift away from costly pre-training to cheaper fine-tuning and allowing LLMs to 'reason' for longer before replying to questions.
IMF-Driving Change: Women-Led Economics
March 10, 2025-Summary
The developing world's vibrant research in the face of limited resources offers valuable global insights
For too long, Western institutions have shaped empirical research and policy recommendations. Authors based in developing economies have a far too small footprint in top economics journals.
F&D: Reconnecting Morality with Political Economy
March 5, 2025-Putting moral insight back into economics enhances understanding of political outcomes
For much of the 20th century, the disciplines of moral psychology and economics were seen as distinct-each focused on separate concerns, with little cross-pollination. This wasn't always the case.
If we look back to philosophers such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx, discussions of political economy were deeply intertwined with questions of morality.
Half of world's CO2 emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms, study shows
March 5, 2025-Researchers say data strengthens case for holding firms to account for their contribution to climate crisis
Half of the world's climate-heating carbon emissions come from the fossil fuels produced by just 36 companies, analysis has revealed.
Carbon Majors: 2023 Data Update March 2025
March 5, 2025-Executive Summary
Carbon Majors traces 33.9 GtCO2e of emissions to the 169 active entities in the database in 2023, a 0.7% increase from 2022. The CO2 emissions in the database accounted for 78.4% of global fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2023, with just 36 companies linked to over half of these global emissions.
