Month: January 2026

Monitoring trade prices in the wake of trade tensions

Marco Garofalo and Thomas Prayer

The US administration raised US import tariffs in April, reigniting trade tensions. This sparked concerns about cheaper exports being diverted to other markets, potentially lowering global prices. Using detailed product-level data, we build a novel timely indicator to consistently track trade prices across countries. Chinese export prices have risen less than global ones since April and remain below March levels. Prices of other Asian exporters, Canada and Mexico have also grown more slowly than global prices, but to a more limited extent, while export prices for Europe grew faster than global patterns. UK import prices mirror those in Europe, whereas US import prices (excluding tariffs) have declined since March 2025. Our results and future updates are publicly available online.

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Generative AI: degenerative for jobs?

Edward Egan

Headlines warn of a looming ‘jobpocalypse’, but the reality is more complex. Rather than simply causing a wave of job losses, the economic literature suggests generative AI could influence the labour market through several – potentially offsetting – channels: productivity gains, job displacement, new job creation, and compositional shifts. The balance between these effects, rather than displacement alone, will shape AI’s aggregate impact on employment. The latest research suggests that overall effects remain limited so far, but there are some early signs of AI’s impact. I find that, since mid-2022, new online vacancies in the most AI-exposed roles have decreased by more than twice as much as the least exposed group. This highlights the need for ongoing monitoring as AI adoption accelerates.

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Retail investors’ participation in the gilt market

Sarah Munson and Callum Ashworth

In recent years, retail investors’ demand for UK government bonds (gilts) has increased, marking a change in the composition of market participants. The growth of retail investors, comprised of individuals managing their own portfolios, has been a global phenomenon (Foxall et al (2025)). But what’s driving this change, and what does it mean for the gilt market’s role in monetary policy and financial stability? In this post we explore how UK-based retail participants’ presence in the gilt market is changing and what that might signal for the future. We find that retail holdings of gilts remain modest, with positions concentrated in a handful of bonds. This has limited impact on aggregate liquidity indicators but can impact liquidity in these specific bonds.

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