A scrapbook of research ideas: short notes on questions worth studying, many prompted by the rankings and trends on this site. Each note is a Markdown file with its status, tags and the keywords it follows. Read them as Markdown, JSON or an Atom feed.
Housing supply, land use regulation and upzoning appear on 48 recent papers in the economics journals. Cities from Auckland to Minneapolis and states from California to Oregon have loosened zoning in the last decade. How many extra homes did the reforms produce, where, and did rents respond?
Capital reallocation is a fast-rising keyword in the economics journals. After a decade of near-zero rates, interest rates rose almost everywhere, and Japan ended negative rates in 2024. Did higher rates finally clear out zombie firms and move capital to productive ones?
Papers in the last 30 days — zombie firms: 1 · capital reallocation: 3
The VIX and market liquidity are rising keywords in the finance journals, while options that expire on the day they trade have become a large share of US index options volume. Yet none of the 192 recent option and VIX papers carries a zero-day or 0DTE keyword. Do same-day options make intraday markets calmer or more fragile?
Papers in the last 30 days — VIX: 3 · retail investors: 6
Youth employment and unemployment appear on 25 recent papers, mostly in economics, while China's youth unemployment rate reached record highs and the statistic itself was revised. What are graduates doing instead, how do families absorb the cost, and does the mismatch come from degrees or from the jobs?
Papers in the last 30 days — youth employment: 1
Women entrepreneurs appear on 32 recent papers in the management and economics journals, and 14 of 43 such papers carry a funding, finance or credit keyword. Women-led startups still receive a small share of venture capital, and women-owned small firms pay more for loans in several studies. Is the gap demand, supply, or the way applications are read?
Papers in the last 30 days — women entrepreneurs: 2 · access to finance: 4
Forest fires, wildfire risk and smoke appear on 48 recent papers, split among economics, AI and operations research, and evacuation planning on 4. Fires now reach cities, and evacuations have failed with deadly results. Do evacuation models fit how people actually leave, and where should the roads, shelters and warnings be?
Annual reports, 10-K filings, narrative disclosure and readability appear on 99 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, but only 9 of them carry a generative-AI, language-model or AI-generated keyword. If language models now draft the management discussion, do the text measures researchers rely on still mean anything?
Papers in the last 30 days — narrative disclosure: 2 · readability: 1
Income redistribution, welfare losses and social welfare are rising keywords in the economics journals, and carbon taxes and emissions trading are large topics. Yet only 34 of 422 recent carbon-pricing papers carry a distributional or household keyword. As carbon prices reach heating and transport fuels, who bears the cost, and does returning the revenue make it fair?
Papers in the last 30 days — carbon tax: 5 · distributional effects: 2
Whistleblowing appears on 16 recent papers across the tracked journals, mostly on whether employees speak up. Reward programmes at the SEC and now the EU and other regulators pay tipsters a share of penalties. Do rewards bring forward the discovery of fraud, and do they change what happens inside firms?
Papers in the last 30 days — corporate fraud: 2
Initial public offerings appear on 48 recent papers, but only 7 of 91 IPO papers carry a listing-venue, cross-listing, Hong Kong, STAR Market or delisting keyword. Chinese firms have moved from New York to Hong Kong and Shanghai's STAR Market, and some have delisted from the US. Does the venue change who invests, how firms are valued and how they behave?
Papers in the last 30 days — initial public offerings: 3
Supply chain concentration and supply chain relationships are among the fastest-growing keywords across the tracked journals. Finance papers treat a dominant customer as risk; management papers treat it as dependence, through resource dependence theory. The two rarely meet. Does depending on one big customer make suppliers more innovative or more fragile?
Papers in the last 30 days — supply chain concentration: 2 · resource dependence theory: 4
Green innovation is one of the largest topics in the finance and economics journals, much of it counting the green patents of Chinese firms. Only 10 of 641 recent papers on it carry a patent-quality, citation or novelty keyword. Is the boom in green patents a boom in green technology?
Papers in the last 30 days — green innovation: 24 · green patents: 2
Wealth and inheritance taxes appear on 19 recent papers in the economics journals, with 8 in the last quarter against about 4 per quarter before. Several countries are debating or reintroducing taxes on large fortunes. What did the earlier wealth taxes collect, how much wealth left, and what do the new designs change?
Pseudo-labeling, label noise and weakly supervised learning appear on nearly 500 recent papers, almost all in AI journals, and only 7 of them concern financial, legal or business documents. Banks and auditors have millions of unlabelled contracts, invoices and filings and few labelled ones. Can weak supervision from rules and models replace hand labelling, and what errors does it introduce?
Papers in the last 30 days — weakly supervised learning: 10 · label noise: 4
Warehouse automation, operations and order picking appear on 63 recent papers in the operations research and AI journals, but only 10 of them carry a labour, worker, human, injury or wage keyword. Warehouses are where robots meet the most people. Do robots raise pace and injuries for the remaining workers, and do wages follow productivity?
Papers in the last 30 days — warehouse automation: 1
Earnings calls are a staple of finance and accounting research, read almost always as transcripts. In the AI journals, multimodal fusion is one of the biggest topics. Do voice and video carry information about firms that the words miss?
Papers in the last 30 days — earnings conference calls: 5 · earnings call transcripts: 1
Demand response, distributed energy resources, virtual power plants and peer-to-peer energy trading appear on 94 recent papers, mostly in economics and AI, and the topic is fading, with 17 in the last quarter against about 23 per quarter before. Aggregators now bid household batteries and heat pumps into power markets. How much flexibility do households really deliver, and what do they get for it?
Papers in the last 30 days — virtual power plants: 2 · demand response: 5
Virtual influencers, avatars and virtual humans appear on 33 recent papers in the management and AI journals, with 9 in the last quarter against about 7 per quarter before. Brands now run computer-generated personalities with millions of followers. Do they sell, do followers care that no one is there, and what should disclosure rules require?
Venture capital is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the finance journals, and startups are a big topic in management and economics, but only 18 of these papers touch artificial intelligence. As more venture money goes to AI companies, are other startups crowded out, or does AI lower the cost of starting up?
Papers in the last 30 days — venture capital: 3 · startups: 8
Vaccine distribution, allocation, uptake and hesitancy appear on 55 recent papers, and 18 of them, mostly in operations research, carry a supply-chain or allocation keyword. The COVID-19 roll-out produced data on who got vaccinated when, and at what cost. What did the allocation models get right, and what would they change for next time?
Papers in the last 30 days — vaccine allocation: 1 · vaccine hesitancy: 1
Urban air mobility, eVTOL aircraft and vertiports appear on 24 recent papers in the operations research and AI journals, with 10 in the last quarter against about 4 per quarter before. The first commercial air taxi services are being certified. Where do the routing and scheduling models get their demand numbers, and would anyone pay the fares the models assume?
Papers in the last 30 days — urban air mobility: 1
University spin-offs and university entrepreneurship are among the fastest-growing keywords in the management journals, while AI research shifts from universities to companies. Only 2 of 37 recent papers on academic entrepreneurship mention AI. Do universities still turn AI research into startups, or does industry absorb the talent first?
Papers in the last 30 days — university spin-offs: 1 · technology commercialization: 1
Treasury yields and bonds appear on 39 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, but only 2 of them carry a liquidity, dealer, hedge-fund or market-functioning keyword. Hedge funds' leveraged basis trades and dealers' balance sheet limits have been blamed for Treasury market stress. How fragile is the market now, and would central clearing help?
Papers in the last 30 days — market liquidity: 3
Transfer learning, domain adaptation and domain generalization appear on nearly 700 recent papers, almost all in AI journals, and only 10 of them concern credit, lending, banking or markets. Lenders entering new countries, and credit bureaus in countries with little data, want to reuse models trained elsewhere. How much transfers, and what breaks?
Papers in the last 30 days — transfer learning: 8 · domain adaptation: 14
Clinical decision support appears on 94 recent papers and medical image segmentation on 188, among more than 1,300 medical AI papers in the AI journals, but only 65 of all medical papers carry a cost, reimbursement, deployment or workflow keyword, and cost-effectiveness appears on 27 papers in the whole archive. Which medical AI tools pay for themselves, and for whom?
Papers in the last 30 days — clinical decision support: 3 · cost-effectiveness: 1
Low-resource languages are a fast-growing topic in the AI journals, and the digital divide is rising in economics. Language models work worse in languages with little training text, which are spoken mostly in poorer countries. Does that slow AI adoption, and its economic gains, where those languages are spoken?
Papers in the last 30 days — low-resource languages: 1 · digital divide: 7
Working hours appear on 41 recent papers in the economics journals and working time reduction on 4, but the four-day week, now being trialled by hundreds of firms and by some governments, appears under no keyword of its own. Do firms that cut hours without cutting pay keep output, and who gains the hours?
Papers in the last 30 days — working hours: 3
Inference latency and resource-constrained deployment are among the fastest-growing keywords in the AI journals, yet only 15 of 226 such papers carry an energy, carbon or green-AI keyword. How much computing do the methods in AI journals cost to train and run, and would reporting it change which methods win?
Papers in the last 30 days — inference latency: 4 · resource-constrained deployment: 2
Tariffs and the trade war appear on 184 recent papers, mostly in the economics journals, but only 47 carry a price, pass-through, incidence or inflation keyword, and "tariff pass-through" on 3. The 2025 tariff rounds were larger and broader than those of 2018. Did foreign exporters cut prices this time, or did consumers pay again?
Papers in the last 30 days — tariffs: 3 · trade war: 2
Tabular data appears on 53 recent papers and tabular classification on 13, almost all in AI journals, and 16 tabular papers involve pretrained or language models. Most business data is tables: loans, transactions, patients, sales. Do pretrained tabular models beat gradient boosting on real business tables, and when?
Papers in the last 30 days — tabular data: 4 · tabular data classification: 1
Diffusion models are among the largest topics in the AI journals, and synthetic data generation is growing with them. Yet only 6 of 119 recent synthetic-data papers carry a finance keyword. Could synthetic transaction and loan data let banks share data for research without exposing customers, and how close is it to the real thing?
Papers in the last 30 days — synthetic data generation: 3 · diffusion models: 18
Green credit and green loans appear on 58 recent papers, most of them about China's green credit policy, while sustainability-linked loans, whose interest rate moves with the borrower's ESG targets, appear on only 3. Are the targets ambitious, are they met, and does the rate step actually change behaviour?
Papers in the last 30 days — green credit: 3
Dynamic pricing appears on 51 recent papers and price discrimination on 28, mostly in operations research and economics; 29 of 91 such papers touch consumer welfare, but price fairness appears on 3. Retailers and venues have faced backlash over surge prices, and some have retreated. Where is the line that consumers will not accept, and what does it cost firms to cross it?
Papers in the last 30 days — dynamic pricing: 2 · price fairness: 1
Supply chain finance appears on 101 recent papers, mostly in the finance and operations research journals, but only 32 of them carry a risk, default, disclosure, accounting or fintech keyword, and reverse factoring on one. Since the Greensill collapse, firms must disclose these programmes. Who bears the risk, and does disclosure change pricing?
Papers in the last 30 days — supply chain finance: 6
Child labour, forced labour, modern slavery and human rights due diligence appear on 41 recent papers, with 13 in the last quarter against about 9 per quarter before, and 12 of them carry a supply-chain or supplier keyword. Germany's supply chain law, the EU directive and import bans on forced-labour goods now require firms to check suppliers. Do the checks find anything, and do suppliers change?
Customer retention and churn appear on 33 recent papers and subscription pricing and models on 10, across the AI, operations research and finance journals. Subscriptions now cover software, cars, media and razors, and regulators are forcing easy cancellation. How much of subscription revenue depends on people not cancelling, and what happens when they can?
Papers in the last 30 days — customer retention: 1
Student loans and student debt appear on only 12 recent papers, none of them in the last quarter, even though US repayments restarted in 2023 after a three-year pause and delinquencies then jumped. Did the pause change borrowers' finances for good, and what happened when payments resumed?
Foreign investors and capital market liberalization are growing keywords in the finance journals, with 13 papers in July–September 2026 against about 7 per quarter before. More than ten years after Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect opened, has foreign ownership changed how Chinese stocks are priced, and what happened when foreign money left?
Papers in the last 30 days — foreign investors: 1
Mamba and other selective state-space models are among the most frequent new architectures in the AI journals, built for long sequences. Limit order books produce exactly such sequences. Yet only 4 of 329 recent Mamba and state-space papers carry a finance keyword, all of them in AI journals. Can these models forecast short-term price moves better, and is the gain tradable after costs?
Papers in the last 30 days — Mamba: 10 · limit order book: 1
Stablecoins and monetary policy transmission are both among the fastest-growing keywords, but the papers that join them sit only in finance journals. Now that issuers hold large amounts of Treasury bills, does policy pass through stablecoins into crypto credit, and do stablecoin flows move bill yields?
Papers in the last 30 days — stablecoins: 4 · monetary policy transmission: 10
Sports betting, sports analytics, football and tournament design appear on 120 recent papers across the AI, economics, finance and operations research journals. Leagues sell schedules to broadcasters, players are traded on expected value, and betting markets price every match. Do the optimized schedules and ratings survive the money, and do betting markets correct the analytics?
Papers in the last 30 days — sports scheduling: 1 · sports betting: 1
Sports betting, gambling and lotteries appear on 42 recent papers in the finance and economics journals. Since 2018, most US states have legalized online sports betting, and app-based betting is spreading elsewhere. What has it done to household finances, bankruptcies and the stock trading of the same people?
Papers in the last 30 days — sports betting: 1 · lotteries: 1
Additive manufacturing and 3D printing appear on 31 recent papers, split among operations research, AI and management, and spare parts management on 2. Printing parts on demand could replace warehouses of slow-moving inventory. Which parts are worth printing, where should the printers be, and do certification rules allow it?
Papers in the last 30 days — 3D printing: 1
Sovereign default and sovereign debt crises appear on 42 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, but only one of them carries a creditor, China or Common Framework keyword. Recent restructurings in Zambia, Ghana and Sri Lanka involved China as a major lender. Do defaults take longer and resolve differently when the creditors are new?
Papers in the last 30 days — sovereign default: 3 · sovereign debt crisis: 2
Social media appears on 402 recent papers across the tracked journals, mostly as text data in AI and management research; only 18 carry a mental-health, adolescent, well-being or children keyword. Several countries are banning social media for under-16s. What does the evidence actually show, and what will the bans reveal?
Papers in the last 30 days — social media use: 1
Social enterprises, social entrepreneurship and hybrid organizations appear on 41 recent papers, mostly in management, and the topic is fading, with 7 papers in the last quarter against about 10 per quarter before. Grant funding and impact investment have shrunk. Which social enterprises survive without them, and do certified B Corporations behave differently from the rest?
Papers in the last 30 days — social enterprises: 1 · social entrepreneurship: 2
Business growth is a rising keyword across the tracked journals, and small and medium-sized enterprises are a large topic, but only 19 of 431 recent SME papers carry a platform, e-commerce or algorithm keyword. Millions of small firms now depend on marketplace search rankings. What happens to them when the algorithm changes?
Papers in the last 30 days — small and medium-sized enterprises: 15 · e-commerce platforms: 3
Knowledge distillation, model compression and small language models appear on more than 700 recent papers in AI journals, and only 12 of them concern finance, banking, legal or business tasks. Banks cannot send customer data to the largest models, and regulators want models they can inspect. How small can a model be and still do financial work, and what is lost in the shrinking?
Papers in the last 30 days — knowledge distillation: 23 · small language models: 1
Alcohol consumption, tobacco control and excise taxes appear on 46 recent papers in the economics journals, with 17 in the last quarter against about 9 per quarter before. Sugar taxes have spread to more than 100 jurisdictions and alcohol taxes are being rewritten. Do the taxes change health, and who bears them?
Macroprudential policy and financial intermediation are both rising in the finance journals, but papers that follow credit out of the regulated banking system are rare, and none of them is in an economics journal. When regulators tighten on banks, how much lending simply moves to shadow banks and private credit funds?
Papers in the last 30 days — macroprudential policy: 13 · shadow banking: 3
Remanufacturing and closed-loop supply chains are growing in the operations research journals, and the first large wave of electric-vehicle batteries is reaching the end of its first life. Should a used battery go to stationary storage, to remanufacturing or straight to recycling, and who should decide?
Papers in the last 30 days — remanufacturing: 2 · closed-loop supply chain: 2
School choice, market design, stable matching and deferred acceptance appear on 89 recent papers, mostly in economics. Dozens of cities now assign school places with matching algorithms. Do families understand the rules well enough to benefit, and do the assignments change segregation and achievement?
Papers in the last 30 days — school choice: 2 · matching markets: 1
Sanctions appear on 85 recent papers, with 23 in the last quarter against about 20 per quarter before, and 35 of them carry a Russia, enforcement or effectiveness keyword. Trade data show exports from Europe to Central Asia and the Caucasus surging after 2022. How much of the sanctioned trade simply took a detour, and what stops it?
Papers in the last 30 days — economic sanctions: 1 · financial sanctions: 1
Industrial upgrading is a large topic in the finance and economics journals, and China installs more industrial robots than any other country. Yet of 397 recent papers with a robot keyword, only 2 carry an industrial-upgrading keyword. Do robots move Chinese firms up the value chain, or just replace workers in the same tasks?
Papers in the last 30 days — industrial robots: 4 · industrial upgrading: 5
Ride-hailing and ride-sharing appear on 62 recent papers, mostly in operations research, and 11 of them carry an autonomous-vehicle keyword, with robotaxis on 3. Driverless taxis now operate commercially in several cities. What happens to prices, waiting times and drivers' earnings where they compete with human-driven rides?
Papers in the last 30 days — ride-hailing: 1 · robotaxis: 1
Fund families now vote at thousands of shareholder meetings a year, and many follow proxy advisors' recommendations almost automatically. Yet only 9 recent papers in the archive carry a shareholder-voting or proxy-advisor keyword, none of them about funds. Does robo-voting decide close votes, and has pass-through voting changed that?
Robo-advisors appear on 12 recent papers, and the topic is fading: 1 paper in July–September 2026 against about 5 per quarter before. Meanwhile people ask chatbots for financial advice. Does conversational advice change portfolios more than the old questionnaire-based robo-advice did, and for better or worse?
Papers in the last 30 days — robo-advisors: 1 · household portfolio choice: 2
Remote and hybrid work appear on 53 recent papers, and 18 of them carry a productivity, turnover, retention or performance keyword. Large firms have ordered workers back to the office, some for five days a week. Do the mandates raise output, or mostly lose the workers with other options?
Papers in the last 30 days — hybrid work: 1
Research integrity, plagiarism, research misconduct and retractions appear on 28 recent papers across the AI, finance and economics journals. Retractions have reached record numbers, and paper mills sell authorship and citations, with language models making fabrication cheaper. How much of the recent literature in these fields is affected, and can it be detected?
Papers in the last 30 days — research integrity: 1 · research misconduct: 1
Wind power, photovoltaic power and solar irradiance forecasting appear on 52 recent papers, almost all in AI journals, and only 8 of them carry a market, bidding, price, imbalance or trading keyword. Forecasts are judged by error metrics, but wind and solar operators pay for forecast errors in imbalance charges. Which forecast improvements pay, and which do not?
Papers in the last 30 days — photovoltaic power forecasting: 1
Remote and hybrid work appear on 53 recent papers across the economics and management journals, but only 12 of them carry a city, housing, commuting, office or rent keyword. Office vacancies are at record highs in many downtowns. Where did spending, rents and tax bases move, and are the shifts permanent?
Papers in the last 30 days — remote work: 1
Remittances appear on 50 recent papers, mostly in economics, but only 12 of them carry a cost, fee, digital, mobile, fintech or stablecoin keyword. Instant payment systems, mobile money links and stablecoins are cutting the cost of sending money home. Does cheaper sending raise the amount received, and who switches?
Related-party transactions appear on 23 recent papers and tunneling on 17, almost all in finance journals and mostly about Chinese business groups. As rules on these transactions tighten and disclosure moves to machine-readable formats, can tunneling be detected at scale, and did the rules reduce it?
Papers in the last 30 days — related-party transactions: 1
Immigrant entrepreneurs and refugee entrepreneurship appear on 13 recent papers, while immigration as a topic is rising fast in the economics journals. Millions of recent refugees and migrants have started businesses. Do their firms grow, hire natives and survive, and which policies (work permits, credit, recognition of qualifications) make the difference?
Papers in the last 30 days — immigrant entrepreneurs: 3 · immigrant entrepreneurship: 1
Recommender systems appear on 111 recent papers and personalized recommendation on 54, almost all in AI journals; 45 recommendation papers carry a diversity, fairness or popularity-bias keyword, and welfare, consumer surplus and addiction appear in almost none. Recommendation decides what billions of people see and buy. Who gains, and by how much?
Papers in the last 30 days — recommender systems: 8
Document understanding, table question answering and chart understanding appear on 17 recent papers, all in AI journals, with 7 in the last quarter against about 3 per quarter before. Financial information lives in tables, footnotes and charts that models still misread. How accurate are current models on real filings, and which errors would mislead an analyst?
Tax incentives appear on 47 recent papers and R&D investment on 267, but R&D tax incentives on only 5, and 26 of 75 incentive papers touch innovation. Governments spend heavily on R&D tax relief. How much of the reported increase in R&D is real research, and how much is ordinary spending relabeled?
Papers in the last 30 days — R&D tax incentives: 1 · tax incentives: 3
Rail freight, railway operations and intermodal freight transport appear on 55 recent papers, with 14 in the last quarter against about 12 per quarter before. Governments want freight moved from trucks to rail for climate reasons, yet rail's share keeps falling in most of Europe and the US. Which bottlenecks (terminals, reliability, pricing) matter, and what would change shippers' choices?
Papers in the last 30 days — rail freight: 1 · intermodal freight transport: 1
Retrieval-augmented generation appears on 165 recent papers, 171 of 178 such papers in AI journals, and only 12 touch finance, legal, tax, accounting, audit or compliance questions. Banks, tax advisers and auditors are deploying it over filings, rules and contracts. How often does it cite the right source, and what happens when the source changes?
Papers in the last 30 days — retrieval-augmented generation: 14
Job satisfaction appears on 39 recent papers in the management and economics journals, employee engagement on 17, work engagement on 9 and quiet quitting on 2. Engagement surveys drive billions in consulting fees. Does measured engagement predict anything that firms can observe, such as output, errors or exits, and did it actually fall?
Quantum computing, quantum machine learning and quantum annealing appear on 115 recent papers, mostly in AI journals, and 33 of them concern optimization. Firms in finance and logistics run quantum pilots. Do the quantum results beat the best classical solvers on the same instances, or only the classical baselines the papers chose?
Papers in the last 30 days — quantum computing: 1 · quantum machine learning: 2
Public procurement appears on 53 recent papers, with 40 procurement papers in the last quarter against about 26 per quarter before, and 33 of 123 carry a corruption, digital, e-procurement or bidding keyword. Open contracting data now cover millions of tenders. Can red flags in the data predict corruption, and do governments act on them?
Papers in the last 30 days — public procurement: 3 · corruption: 3
Public debt, fiscal rules and debt sustainability appear on 215 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, but only 41 of them carry an interest-rate, debt-service or monetary keyword. For a decade, low rates made debt look free. With interest costs now the fastest-growing budget item in several countries, which governments adjust, and how?
Papers in the last 30 days — public debt: 10 · fiscal rules: 3
Prompt injection, jailbreak attacks and LLM security appear on 37 recent papers, all in AI journals. Banks and brokers are deploying agents that read emails, documents and web pages and then act. A hidden instruction in a document can make such an agent move money or leak data. How exposed are deployed financial agents, and which defences hold?
Papers in the last 30 days — prompt injection: 1
Reverse logistics, return policies and product returns appear on 53 recent papers, almost all in operations research, with 15 in the last quarter against about 12 per quarter before. Online return rates are several times those of stores, and retailers are starting to charge for returns. Which policies cut returns without cutting sales, and what happens to the returned goods?
Papers in the last 30 days — return policy: 1 · reverse logistics: 2
Private equity is a small but rising keyword in the finance journals, and only 2 of 22 recent private-equity papers touch health care. Private equity firms now own a large share of nursing homes and physician practices in several countries. Do their cost cuts show up in quality of care, and who pays?
Papers in the last 30 days — private equity: 1
Privacy concerns, GDPR, data protection and consumer privacy appear on 81 recent papers, mostly about what consumers feel. Few study what the rules did to the firms that advertise. When tracking became harder, large platforms kept their data and small advertisers lost theirs. Did privacy rules raise concentration?
Papers in the last 30 days — GDPR: 1 · privacy concerns: 1
Cybersecurity risks and cyberattacks appear on 226 recent papers, mostly in AI journals, and 56 of them carry a risk-management, insurance, investment or cost keyword, with cyber insurance on 9. Insurers struggle to price a risk that is correlated across firms and shaped by the insured's own choices. What do losses look like, and does insurance change security?
Papers in the last 30 days — cybersecurity investment: 1
Live-streaming e-commerce and price competition are among the fastest-growing keywords in operations research, and influencer marketing is rising in management. OR papers model live commerce as a pricing game, management papers as persuasion. Who captures the margin: the platform, the streamer or the brand?
Papers in the last 30 days — live streaming e-commerce: 3 · influencer marketing: 2
Precision and smart agriculture, plant disease detection and agricultural technology adoption appear on 148 recent papers, split between AI and economics; 47 of them carry an adoption, farmer, cost or income keyword. AI papers detect disease on leaves; economics papers study adoption of older technologies. Do the new tools reach farms, and do they raise income?
Papers in the last 30 days — precision agriculture: 1 · smart agriculture: 1
Populism appears on 26 recent papers, mostly in the economics journals, with 7 in the last quarter against about 5 per quarter before. Only 2 of them carry a trade, globalization, tariff or automation keyword, although the "China shock" is the best-known economic explanation of populist votes. Do the newer shocks (inflation, immigration, AI) now matter more?
Papers in the last 30 days — populism: 2 · right-wing populism: 1
Environmental degradation is one of the fastest-rising keywords in the economics journals, and the Belt and Road Initiative is a large topic in finance and economics. But the pollution haven hypothesis appears on only 14 recent papers. Did Chinese investment abroad move dirty production to countries with weaker rules?
Papers in the last 30 days — Belt and Road Initiative: 1
Political connections are a large topic across the finance, economics and management journals, and a rising one in management. Yet only 10 of 106 recent papers on them carry a corruption keyword. More than a decade after China's anti-corruption campaign began, are connections still worth anything, and to whom?
Papers in the last 30 days — political connections: 5 · anti-corruption campaign: 1
Policing, law enforcement and crime appear on 63 recent papers, with 18 in the last quarter against about 15 per quarter before, but only 12 carry a technology, surveillance, camera or algorithm keyword, and "predictive policing" on 3. Cameras, licence plate readers and risk scores are spreading fast. Do they cut crime, and at what cost to whom?
Papers in the last 30 days — policing: 1 · crime: 4
Industrial policy and place-based policy are both rising in the economics journals, and governments now subsidize chip plants in specific towns, from Arizona to Kumamoto. Yet only 4 of 127 recent papers on such policies mention semiconductors. Do these plants create lasting local clusters, or expensive islands?
Papers in the last 30 days — industrial policy: 5 · place-based policy: 2
The Phillips curve, monetary policy rules and labour market tightness are all rising keywords in the economics journals, after an inflation surge that flat Phillips curves did not predict. Only 7 of 27 recent Phillips-curve papers carry a pandemic, tightness or nonlinearity keyword. Is the curve steep when labour markets are tight, and what does that mean for policy rules?
Papers in the last 30 days — Phillips curve: 2 · labor market tightness: 2
Pension funds appear on only 19 recent papers, and 2 of them touch infrastructure, private equity or illiquid assets, although pension money is the main source of capital for private markets. As defined-contribution plans are allowed to hold private assets, are the returns worth the fees and the lock-up?
Papers in the last 30 days — pension funds: 1
The gender pay gap appears on 55 recent papers, mostly in economics, while pay transparency appears on 2. The EU pay transparency directive takes effect in 2026, and several US states now require salary ranges in job postings. Does transparency narrow the gap, compress pay, or move it into bonuses?
Papers in the last 30 days — gender pay gap: 2
Price impact and fund flows are among the fastest-growing keywords in the finance journals, yet none of the price-impact papers carries a fund-flow or passive-investing keyword. Now that passive funds hold so much of the market, how much do their flows move prices, and are markets as inelastic as some theories claim?
Papers in the last 30 days — price impact: 1 · fund flows: 1
Reinsurance, catastrophe bonds and parametric insurance appear on only 25 recent papers in the finance and operations research journals, although catastrophe bond issuance has reached records and parametric covers are spreading to poorer countries. Do payouts arrive when they are needed, and who bears the basis risk?
Tourism appears on 130 recent papers across the finance, economics and management journals, but only 11 of them carry an overtourism, housing, short-term-rental, resident or tax keyword. Cities from Barcelona to Kyoto are capping short-term rentals and taxing visitors. Do the measures lower rents, and what do they cost in jobs?
Papers in the last 30 days — tourism: 2 · overtourism: 2
Operating room scheduling and planning appear on 16 recent papers in the operations research journals, among 52 surgery-related papers, most of which are AI work on surgical images. Hospitals rarely implement the optimized schedules. What stops them, and do the schedules survive surgeons' preferences and emergencies?
Papers in the last 30 days — operating room scheduling: 1
Open-source software appears on 13 recent papers and open-source language models on 6, while named open-weight models such as DeepSeek, Llama and Qwen appear on dozens of AI papers as tools; 78 of 126 open-source papers involve language models. Firms give away models worth hundreds of millions to train. Who adopts them, and what do the givers get?
Open innovation and crowdsourcing appear on 71 recent papers, mostly in management, but only 3 of them carry an AI keyword. Firms ran idea contests and crowdsourcing platforms to get ideas from outside. If a language model can generate thousands of ideas in an hour, what is the crowd still for, and how do firms tell good ideas from fluent ones?
Papers in the last 30 days — open innovation: 2 · crowdsourcing: 1
Open data, data sharing and open science appear on 121 recent papers, with 36 in the last quarter against about 26 per quarter before, spread across every tracked field. Funders and journals now require data and code, and open government data portals have multiplied. Does the shared data get reused, and do mandates change what researchers study?
Papers in the last 30 days — open data: 3 · data sharing: 2
Oil prices are a rising keyword in the economics journals, and oil-price shocks remain a standard driver in inflation models. But none of the 189 recent oil-price papers carries an electric-vehicle keyword. As electric vehicles spread, is oil's grip on inflation weakening, and where first?
Papers in the last 30 days — oil price shocks: 3 · oil prices: 2
Nuclear energy appears on 26 recent papers and small modular reactors on 4, mostly in the economics journals. Technology firms now sign deals to restart closed plants and fund new reactors for data centres, and Japan has restarted reactors idle since 2011. What do these deals cost, who bears the risk, and does public acceptance follow?
Papers in the last 30 days — nuclear energy: 2 · nuclear energy policy: 1
High-frequency data, big data and alternative data appear on 236 recent papers across the finance, AI and economics journals, but only 10 of them carry a card-transaction, mobility, search, satellite or electricity keyword, and nowcasting appears on 9. Banks, card networks and job boards hold daily measures of the economy. Which of them nowcast GDP, inflation and employment best, and could statistical offices use them?
Papers in the last 30 days — high-frequency data: 3 · Google Trends: 1
Continuous-time models built on the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation are rising in the finance journals, while neural operators and physics-informed networks that solve such equations are growing in AI. All five recent papers that pair the two are in AI journals. Can these solvers make richer portfolio and asset-pricing models usable?
Papers in the last 30 days — Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation: 1 · physics-informed neural networks: 7
Rooftop solar, prosumers and net metering appear on 50 recent papers, mostly in economics, and the topic is fading, with 7 papers in the last quarter against about 14 per quarter before. California and other markets have cut the payment for exported power. Did installations collapse, and did batteries take their place?
Papers in the last 30 days — rooftop solar: 1 · net metering: 1
Energy markets are one of the rising keywords in the finance and economics journals, and wholesale power prices now often turn negative when solar output peaks. Batteries profit from that spread, but they also erase it. How much is storage worth as it scales, and who should pay for it?
Papers in the last 30 days — electricity prices: 1 · battery energy storage: 1
Narcissism, CEO characteristics and CEO personality appear on 42 recent papers, mostly in the management and accounting journals, with measures built from signatures, photos and pronoun counts. Language models can now score personality from thousands of hours of speech. Do the old measures and the new ones agree, and does personality predict decisions out of sample?
"Chinese listed companies" is the third most frequent keyword across the tracked journals over the past year, and most of these papers draw on the same few databases. Yet none of the 1,392 recent papers with such a keyword carries a replication, multiple-testing or publication-bias keyword. How many of their findings would survive a correction for everyone testing on the same data?
Papers in the last 30 days — Chinese listed companies: 56 · publication bias: 2
Supply chain transparency, traceability and visibility appear on 83 recent papers, and the topic is fading, with 16 in the last quarter against about 19 per quarter before. Most disruptions and most forced-labour and emissions problems sit beyond the first tier of suppliers, where firms rarely look. How far can visibility be built, and does it pay?
Papers in the last 30 days — supply chain transparency: 2 · traceability: 2
Humanitarian logistics is an active topic in operations research, and climate shocks a rising one in economics. Aid agencies now release money and move supplies when a forecast crosses a threshold, before a flood or drought hits. Only 11 of 103 recent humanitarian-logistics papers carry a forecast, early-warning or climate keyword. When does acting early pay off?
Papers in the last 30 days — humanitarian logistics: 1 · emergency logistics: 1
"Moderating effect" and "mediating effect" are among the most frequent keywords in finance and management papers, and mediation models rank high on the equation ranking. How robust are these interaction and mediation results, and what would good practice look like?
Papers in the last 30 days — moderating effect: 17 · mediating effect: 7
Synthetic data generation appears on 77 recent papers and synthetic data on 18, almost all in AI journals, while model collapse, the degradation of models trained on their predecessors' output, appears on 3. The web is filling with generated text and images that will train the next models. How fast does quality decay, and what does that do to the value of human data?
Financial inclusion is a large topic in the finance journals, and climate shocks a growing one in economics, but only 14 of 367 recent inclusion and payments papers carry a climate or disaster keyword. When droughts and floods hit, does mobile money bring help fast enough to keep households from selling assets or taking children out of school?
Papers in the last 30 days — mobile money: 1 · financial inclusion: 9
Mixture-of-experts models are among the fastest-growing topics in the AI journals, and regime-switching models have a long history in finance and economics. A gate that picks experts works much like a regime switch, yet no finance or economics paper in the archive carries the keyword. Can it forecast better across market regimes?
Papers in the last 30 days — mixture of experts: 11 · regime switching: 4
Non-state-owned enterprises are a rising keyword in the economics journals, and state ownership is one of the most common comparisons in research on Chinese firms. Yet "mixed ownership reform" appears on only 9 recent papers. When private investors buy into state firms, do governance and performance change, or only the shareholder list?
Papers in the last 30 days — state-owned enterprises: 19 · non-state-owned enterprises: 7
The minimum wage appears on 34 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, but only 2 of 44 minimum-wage papers carry an automation, robot or technology keyword. Self-checkouts, kiosks and warehouse robots are cheapest where wages are highest. Do minimum wage increases speed up automation, and over what horizon?
Papers in the last 30 days — minimum wage: 1 · labor demand: 3
Bike sharing, electric scooters and shared micromobility appear on 19 recent papers, mostly in operations research, and the topic is fading, with 2 papers in the last quarter against about 6 per quarter before. Several operators have failed and cities have banned scooters. Which systems survived, and did they replace car trips or walking?
Microfinance and microcredit appear on 35 recent papers, and only 2 of them carry a regulation, digital, fintech or competition keyword. App-based lenders now compete with microfinance institutions in Africa and Asia, and several countries have capped rates. Do borrowers end up with cheaper credit, or more of it?
Papers in the last 30 days — microfinance: 1 · microfinance institutions: 1
Virtual reality, the metaverse, augmented reality and immersive technologies appear on 123 recent papers, but the topic is fading, with 21 papers in the last quarter against about 33 per quarter before; 23 of the papers concern retail or consumers. Which immersive applications survived the hype cycle, and what do their users actually buy?
Mergers and acquisitions appear on 228 recent papers, but only 31 of them carry a merger-control, competition-policy or enforcement keyword. Merger enforcement tightened in the US and Europe after 2021 and loosened again in places since. Did the threat of review stop deals, reshape them, or simply delay them?
Papers in the last 30 days — mergers and acquisitions: 10 · competition policy: 2
CEO and managerial overconfidence appear on 98 recent papers, mostly measured from option-exercise behaviour or press coverage, as in the 2000s. Only 6 of them carry a text, language or speech keyword, and 4 of those are in AI journals. Can a language model score overconfidence from earnings calls, and does it predict the same decisions?
Digital transformation is among the most frequent keywords in the finance and management journals, much of it about Chinese listed firms, and studies often score it by counting digital terms in annual reports. Do those scores track what firms actually invest and hire?
Papers in the last 30 days — digital transformation: 30 · enterprise digital transformation: 6
Marriage, the marriage market, sex ratios at birth and bride prices appear on 59 recent papers, almost all in the economics journals. In China and India, decades of skewed sex ratios have left millions of men unable to marry. What does that do to saving, crime, migration and the price of a wedding?
Papers in the last 30 days — marriage market: 1 · bride price: 1
Market power, price setting and markups appear on 186 recent papers, but only 8 of them carry an inflation keyword. The claim that firms used the inflation surge to raise margins ("greedflation") shaped policy debates. Did markups rise, in which sectors, and did they fall back?
Papers in the last 30 days — markups: 4 · market power: 4
Market manipulation, stock market manipulation, price manipulation and pump-and-dump schemes appear on about 20 recent papers, split between the AI and finance journals. Spoofing, wash trading and coordinated pumps now happen in milliseconds and across venues, including crypto. Can detectors trained on known cases find new ones, and what do regulators miss?
Port operations, maritime logistics, container shipping and port congestion appear on dozens of recent papers in the operations research journals, while ship emissions and maritime decarbonization appear on 9 and 8. Shipping now pays for carbon in Europe and faces a global fuel standard. Do slower ships and new fuels cut emissions, or shift them to ports and queues?
Papers in the last 30 days — container shipping: 3 · ship emissions: 1
Management earnings forecasts appear on 11 recent papers in the accounting and finance journals. Firms withdrew guidance in the pandemic and again around the 2025 tariff shocks. What do investors and analysts do when guidance disappears, and does the practice recover?
Papers in the last 30 days — management earnings forecasts: 2
Elderly care, long-term care insurance and informal care appear on 75 recent papers, with 22 in the last quarter against about 17 per quarter before, and 24 carry a labour, worker or immigration keyword. Ageing countries need millions more care workers. Does paying more bring them, does immigration fill the gap, and what do robots change?
Papers in the last 30 days — elderly care: 4 · informal care: 2
"Long-term effects" is a rising keyword in the economics journals, and COVID-19 is still one of the most frequent keywords overall. Yet only 22 of 778 recent pandemic papers carry a schooling or human-capital keyword. Five years on, do the students who lost the most school time show it in exams, graduation and early careers?
Papers in the last 30 days — school closures: 2 · long-term effects: 3
Soft information and relationship lending appear on 26 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, but only 5 of them carry an algorithm, machine-learning, fintech or automation keyword. As banks automate small-business lending, what is lost when the loan officer's judgment goes, and can models learn it?
Papers in the last 30 days — soft information: 1
Price competition is rising steeply in the operations research journals and AI governance leads the AI journals, while collusion remains a small topic that is rarely tied to algorithms. When sellers let language-model agents set prices, do prices drift up without any agreement?
Papers in the last 30 days — collusion: 3 · price competition: 5
Confidence calibration and uncertainty calibration appear on 54 recent papers, mostly in AI journals, and 35 calibration papers involve language or vision-language models, with 94 calibration-related papers in the last quarter against about 57 per quarter before. When a model answers a financial or legal question, its stated confidence rarely matches its accuracy. Can calibration be fixed, and do users read it?
Papers in the last 30 days — uncertainty calibration: 1
Economic, climate, trade and monetary policy uncertainty indices appear on 423 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, almost all built from counts of newspaper words. Only 5 of them use language models, embeddings or text mining beyond word counts. Would an index that reads the articles agree with the word counts, and would it predict better?
Papers in the last 30 days — economic policy uncertainty: 5 · text mining: 1
Evaluation metrics appear on 56 recent papers and LLM-as-a-judge on 16, all in AI journals, with 25 evaluation papers in the last quarter in line with earlier quarters. Models now grade other models' answers, and firms use them to score customer conversations and reports. How reliable and how biased are the model judges, and how far do the biases propagate?
Papers in the last 30 days — evaluation metrics: 4 · LLM evaluation: 2
Agent-based modelling is rising in the operations research journals, and firms are starting to let AI agents place orders. The bullwhip effect, where small swings in demand grow larger up the supply chain, appears on only 9 recent papers, and just one of them carries an agent or AI keyword. Do AI ordering agents dampen the bullwhip, or amplify it when they all react to the same signals?
Papers in the last 30 days — bullwhip effect: 2 · agent-based modeling: 1
Benders decomposition, column generation, branch-and-cut and related methods appear on 240 recent papers, almost all in the operations research journals, and the topic is fading, with 42 papers in the last quarter against about 64 per quarter before. Only 16 of them use learning. Can learned cut selection, column pricing and branching make these methods faster on real problems?
Papers in the last 30 days — Benders decomposition: 4
Survey experiments are a staple of economics, and some researchers now simulate respondents with language models ("silicon samples"). Only 6 of 179 recent survey papers carry a language-model keyword, 5 of them in AI journals. Where do simulated answers match real people, and where would they mislead economic research?
Papers in the last 30 days — survey experiment: 1 · large language models: 89
Matheuristics and local search are among the fastest-growing keywords in the operations research journals, and recent systems let language models write and evolve heuristic code. Only 2 of the 252 heuristics papers in OR journals carry a language-model keyword. Can generated heuristics beat hand-designed ones on standard routing and scheduling instances?
Papers in the last 30 days — matheuristic: 2 · local search: 1
Knowledge transfer, sharing and management appear on 259 recent papers across the management and AI journals, but only 48 of them carry an AI or digital keyword, and knowledge hiding on 3. Firms are building assistants trained on employees' documents and chats. Do employees share less when sharing feeds a machine?
Knowledge graphs appear on 141 recent papers and neuro-symbolic AI on 14, almost all in AI journals; only 34 of 481 such papers concern accounting, tax, legal, regulatory, financial or audit uses. Compliance is a domain of explicit rules and entities, which language models alone handle badly. Do graphs and symbolic rules make them reliable enough for audits and tax?
Papers in the last 30 days — knowledge graphs: 8 · neuro-symbolic AI: 2
Japan appears on 184 recent papers, with 56 in the last quarter against about 41 per quarter before, but only 21 of them carry a wage, inflation or deflation keyword. Japan's annual wage rounds have produced the largest raises in decades, and the Bank of Japan has ended negative rates. Is the wage-price cycle real, and does it reach small firms?
Papers in the last 30 days — Japan: 3 · wage growth: 1
The technology acceptance model is one of the fastest-growing keywords across the tracked journals, and a quarter of recent TAM and UTAUT papers now study AI. But the model was built for workplace software decades ago. Do perceived usefulness and ease of use predict who actually uses generative AI, and what do they miss?
Papers in the last 30 days — technology acceptance model: 4 · UTAUT: 1
Sustainable investment is rising across the tracked journals, and biodiversity risk has become a finance keyword. Yet few of these papers carry a keyword about returns, bonds or the cost of capital. Do markets price firms' exposure to nature loss, and has nature-related disclosure changed that?
Papers in the last 30 days — biodiversity risk: 3 · sustainable investment: 2
Financial fraud appears on 48 recent papers, but most study fraud by firms or fraud detection in transactions; only 6 carry a social-media, crypto, elderly or victim keyword, and "fraud victimization" on 5. Investment scams run through social platforms now cost households billions. Who falls for them, and what stops them?
Papers in the last 30 days — financial fraud: 1 · investor protection: 2
Interest rate risk appears on just 11 recent papers in the finance journals, only one of them in July–September 2026, although unrealized losses on bank bond holdings triggered the 2023 bank failures. Which banks still carry large unrealized losses, and does supervision now see them?
Insurance appears on more than 400 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, but only 52 of them carry a climate or disaster keyword, and property insurance barely appears. As insurers withdraw from wildfire- and hurricane-prone regions, who holds the risk, and what happens to house prices and mortgages?
Papers in the last 30 days — natural disasters: 5
Insider trading appears on 40 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, and 17 of 45 carry a regulation or enforcement keyword, but "trading plan" appears on one. Since 2023, US executives' pre-scheduled trading plans must have cooling-off periods and be disclosed. Did the plans stop being a cover for informed trades?
Papers in the last 30 days — insider trading: 2
Intergenerational mobility and transmission appear on 142 recent papers, mostly in economics, and 33 of them carry a wealth, inheritance, housing or parental keyword. As house prices and inheritances grow relative to wages, does where you end up depend more on what your parents own than on what you earn?
Papers in the last 30 days — intergenerational mobility: 2 · intergenerational wealth transfer: 1
Aerial imagery is rising steeply in the AI journals, and economists already use night-time lights to measure growth. Yet none of the papers on the informal economy uses either. Can image models measure informal activity that surveys miss?
Papers in the last 30 days — informal economy: 2 · nighttime lights: 1
Industry 4.0, Industry 5.0 and smart manufacturing appear on 121 recent papers, but only 26 of them carry a small-firm, adoption, barrier or maturity keyword. Large manufacturers have automated and connected their plants; most small ones have not. What holds them back, and which support programmes have moved the needle?
Papers in the last 30 days — Industry 4.0: 2 · Industry 5.0: 1
Agricultural and index insurance appear on 20 recent papers, split between the finance and economics journals. Weather index insurance was meant to protect smallholders cheaply, but take-up stayed low and basis risk high. With satellite data and mobile payments, is it finally working, and where?
Papers in the last 30 days — agricultural insurance: 1
Immigration and migrant workers appear on 141 recent papers, mostly in economics, with 42 in July–September 2026 against about 30 per quarter before. Only 18 carry a housing, rent or house-price keyword. Housing costs are now the loudest argument in immigration politics. How much of rent growth do arrivals explain, and how much is a lack of building?
Papers in the last 30 days — immigration: 2 · housing market: 3
Human-AI collaboration is rising in the management and AI journals, while audit quality remains a core accounting topic. Few papers connect them. When auditors work with AI tools, does audit quality improve, and who answers for the judgments the tools shape?
Papers in the last 30 days — audit quality: 3 · human-AI collaboration: 8
Household registration and hukou reform appear on 22 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, and rural-urban migration on 15. Chinese cities have loosened residence rules, and many smaller cities now grant local registration freely. Do migrants settle when they can, and do cities gain workers or welfare costs?
Papers in the last 30 days — household registration: 1 · rural-urban migration: 1
Difference-in-differences is the most-mentioned method on the equation ranking, and treatment effect heterogeneity is one of the fastest-rising keywords in economics. A first check finds that about three in ten recent DiD papers with searchable full text name a heterogeneity-robust estimator. How many staggered-adoption findings would survive one?
Fertility is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the economics journals, as birth rates hit record lows in East Asia and elsewhere. Housing prices are a large topic too, but only 5 of 94 recent fertility papers carry a housing keyword. How much of the fertility decline do housing costs explain, and do housing policies raise births?
Papers in the last 30 days — fertility: 3 · housing prices: 4
Household debt and borrowing appear on 53 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, but only 9 of them carry an interest-rate, tightening, variable-rate or refinancing keyword. The 2022–2024 rate rises hit households with floating-rate mortgages hard in some countries and barely at all in others. Where did consumption fall, and did defaults follow?
Papers in the last 30 days — household debt: 1 · household borrowing: 1
Heat pumps appear on 12 recent papers, energy retrofits on 7 and building energy efficiency on 10, almost all in the economics journals. Heating is the hardest part of home decarbonization, and subsidies have had uneven results. Who installs, do the energy savings match the models, and why do many households not switch?
Papers in the last 30 days — building energy efficiency: 2
Extreme heat and heat waves appear on 47 recent papers, and temperature keywords on 208, but only 29 of those carry a productivity, labour, worker or firm keyword. As summers get hotter, how much output is lost on hot days, in which industries, and does adaptation close the gap?
Papers in the last 30 days — extreme heat: 1 · heat waves: 1
Greenwashing is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the finance journals, yet few papers measure it against emissions. Scored as the gap between what firms say about climate and what their emissions do, does greenwashing fool ESG raters, lenders or investors?
Papers in the last 30 days — greenwashing: 4 · ESG ratings: 9
Green hydrogen appears on 32 recent papers and hydrogen policy on 11, mostly in the economics journals, while projects are being cancelled as costs stay high. Which uses of hydrogen survive at realistic prices, and what do the subsidies buy?
Papers in the last 30 days — green hydrogen: 4 · hydrogen policy: 1
Financial contagion and systemic risk are rising in the finance and economics journals, and graph neural networks are among the largest topics in the AI journals. The two have met in only five papers. Can a graph model learn the channels of contagion that network models fix in advance?
Papers in the last 30 days — financial contagion: 12 · systemic risk: 12
Goodwill appears on 14 recent papers across the tracked journals, with 2 in the last quarter. After a decade of acquisitions at high prices, goodwill on corporate balance sheets is enormous, and standard setters have again debated bringing back amortization. When do firms impair, and does the market believe them?
Obesity appears on 15 recent papers in the economics journals and GLP-1 receptor agonists on 2. Tens of millions of people now take drugs that cut appetite. What happens to food demand, health spending, labour supply and the firms that sell what people stop buying?
Papers in the last 30 days — obesity: 1
Tax avoidance and profit shifting are steady topics across the finance, accounting and economics journals, but the 15% global minimum tax, in force in many countries since 2024, barely appears; only 3 of 103 recent papers carry a minimum-tax keyword. Does it end profit shifting, or move it to other margins?
Papers in the last 30 days — tax avoidance: 2
The gig and platform economy appears on 44 recent papers in the management, economics and AI journals, but only 2 of them carry a social-insurance, pension, health-insurance, labour-protection or classification keyword. Courts and laws in Europe, the UK and parts of the US are reclassifying platform workers. What happens to their earnings and hours when protections arrive?
Papers in the last 30 days — platform work: 1
Geopolitical risk is one of the most frequent keywords in the finance and economics journals, and supply chain resilience is a major topic in operations research, but the two rarely meet in OR journals. Customs data can show whether trade re-routes through third countries when geopolitical risk rises, and at what cost.
Papers in the last 30 days — geopolitical risk: 17 · supply chain resilience: 13
Accounting education is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the accounting journals, and a quarter of those papers now involve generative AI. Does an AI tutor help students learn accounting, or only finish the homework?
Papers in the last 30 days — accounting education: 2 · generative AI: 10
Employment is rising as a keyword in the economics journals, and generative AI is growing there fast. Yet of nearly 1,200 recent papers on employment, wages and labour markets, only 14 carry a generative-AI keyword. Is AI taking the tasks that junior workers used to learn on, and what happens to their careers?
Papers in the last 30 days — young workers: 1 · employment effects: 3
Foundation models are rising fast in the AI journals, and time-series versions now forecast series they were never trained on. Economists forecast inflation and growth with surveys and small models. Do the new models beat the Survey of Professional Forecasters in real time?
Papers in the last 30 days — foundation models: 6 · inflation forecasting: 1
Foreign aid, humanitarian aid and aid effectiveness appear on 69 recent papers, mostly in the economics journals, with no rise despite the largest aid cuts in decades in 2025. The cuts are a natural experiment that the earlier aid-effectiveness debate never had. Which programmes' loss shows up first in health, schooling and conflict?
Papers in the last 30 days — foreign aid: 3 · aid effectiveness: 1
Food waste reduction, perishable goods and perishable inventory appear on 69 recent papers, mostly in operations research, with the food waste problem studied separately in economics. Dynamic discounts, better forecasts and date labels all promise less waste. Which of them works at scale, and who captures the savings?
Food security, food prices and food inflation appear on 105 recent papers, mostly in economics, but only 6 of them carry a conflict, unrest, protest or violence keyword. Food price spikes preceded unrest in 2008 and 2011. With prices high again and aid budgets cut, where is the risk greatest, and does early warning work?
Papers in the last 30 days — food security: 2
Online food delivery, delivery apps and on-demand delivery appear on 34 recent papers, mostly in operations research, and the topic is fading, with 5 papers in the last quarter against about 10 per quarter before. Platforms have consolidated, raised fees and face new labour rules. How do the dispatch models interact with courier pay, and who pays for faster delivery?
Climate risk is one of the most frequent keywords in the finance journals, yet only 5 of 82 recent mortgage papers carry a flood, climate-risk or disaster keyword. Do lenders price flood risk into mortgages, and do they pass the riskiest loans to government-backed buyers?
Papers in the last 30 days — mortgage lending: 1 · flood risk: 1
Government spending, borrowing costs and the euro area are all rising keywords in the finance journals. When governments borrow more, domestic banks often buy the bonds. Does that crowd out bank lending to firms, and which firms lose the most?
Papers in the last 30 days — government spending: 6 · euro area: 5
Contrastive learning is one of the largest topics in the AI journals, yet only 6 of 749 recent contrastive-learning papers carry a finance or firm keyword. Finance research still defines peer firms mostly by industry codes. Would firm embeddings learned contrastively from filings, returns and supply chains give better peers for valuation, benchmarking and pay?
Papers in the last 30 days — contrastive learning: 27 · peer firms: 1
Retail investors are a large topic in the finance journals, but only 8 of 139 recent papers on them carry a social-media keyword, and "finfluencers" appears on just 2. Do the trades that follow a finance influencer's post earn anything, and who profits from the audience?
Papers in the last 30 days — social media: 6
Investor sentiment and sentiment analysis appear on 490 recent papers across the AI and finance journals, but only 22 of them carry a multilingual, cross-lingual or non-English language keyword, and financial sentiment analysis on 6. Most of the world's markets are discussed in languages the standard tools were not built for. How well do the tools work there, and do they move markets?
Papers in the last 30 days — financial sentiment analysis: 1 · sentiment analysis: 5
Misinformation, fake news detection and rumor detection appear on 185 recent papers, 140 of them in AI journals, and only 10 carry a market, stock, investor or finance keyword. Fake earnings leaks, forged press releases and coordinated rumours now move prices within minutes. How much do they move, who profits, and can detection work at trading speed?
Papers in the last 30 days — misinformation: 2 · fake news detection: 6
Financial literacy is one of the largest household finance topics, on 146 recent papers, but only 7 of 161 literacy papers carry a crypto, gambling or speculation keyword. Does knowing more about finance keep people out of speculative crypto trading, or make them more confident speculators?
Papers in the last 30 days — financial literacy: 4 · cryptocurrency: 6
Fertilizer use and prices appear on 30 recent papers, almost all in the economics journals. The 2022 fertilizer price spike after Russia's invasion of Ukraine was one of the largest on record. How much did farmers cut application, what did it do to yields and food prices a year later, and did it speed up the shift to precision farming?
Papers in the last 30 days — fertilizer use: 1
Federated learning, which trains one model across organizations without pooling their data, is a large topic in the AI journals, yet only 7 of 398 recent papers on it carry a finance, banking, fraud or money-laundering keyword. Money launderers spread transactions across banks precisely because no single bank sees the whole pattern. Can banks catch them together without sharing customer data?
Papers in the last 30 days — federated learning: 23 · anti-money laundering: 1
Online reviews appear on 54 recent papers, and 17 of 73 review papers carry a fake, manipulation or detection keyword. Fake reviews were once cheap but detectable; language models make them cheap and fluent. Can platforms still tell, how much of the review stock is now synthetic, and do consumers still trust ratings?
Papers in the last 30 days — online reviews: 4
Fairness and algorithmic bias are growing in the AI journals, and credit scoring is one of the areas where AI rules are strictest. Yet only 19 of 473 recent fairness and bias papers carry a credit or lending keyword. What would an audit that lenders and regulators can both use look like, and what does fairness cost in default risk?
Papers in the last 30 days — algorithmic fairness: 2 · credit scoring: 2
The equity-efficiency trade-off and fair division appear on 49 recent papers across the economics, operations research and AI journals. Routing, scheduling and allocation models increasingly add fairness constraints, for drivers, patients or regions. How much efficiency do the constraints cost in practice, and do the beneficiaries see them as fair?
Papers in the last 30 days — fair division: 2 · equity-efficiency trade-off: 1
The cross-section of stock returns, momentum and asset pricing anomalies appear on 210 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, but only 14 of them carry a crowding, capacity, decay, replication or out-of-sample keyword. As quantitative funds trade the same signals, do anomaly returns shrink, and can crowding be measured in time?
Papers in the last 30 days — momentum: 1 · factor models: 1
Semiconductor manufacturing appears on 14 recent papers and wafer fabrication on 3, split between the AI and operations research journals, while chip plants worth tens of billions are being built with public money. Fab scheduling is among the hardest in industry. Do the published methods reach the plants, and how much yield and throughput do they add?
Papers in the last 30 days — semiconductor manufacturing: 1 · wafer fabrication: 1
In the operations research journals, 1,178 recent papers carry an optimization keyword, and 36 of them carry an explanation or interpretability keyword, while interpretability appears on 379 papers in the archive, almost all about machine learning. Planners reject optimized schedules they cannot understand. What counts as an explanation of a solution, and do explanations raise adoption?
Papers in the last 30 days — decision support system: 3 · interpretability: 17
Loan loss provisions appear on 23 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, IFRS 9 on 5 and CECL on 3. The expected-loss rules were designed after 2008 to make banks provision earlier. The 2022–2024 rate shock and the pandemic were their first real tests. Did provisions move earlier, or just more?
Papers in the last 30 days — loan loss provisions: 3 · CECL: 1
Class imbalance is one of the largest topics in the AI journals, and fraud detection is where it matters most for finance. But only 10 of 174 recent fraud papers carry a cost, profit or loss keyword; most report accuracy or F1 scores. Would ranking fraud models by the money they save change which ones win?
Papers in the last 30 days — fraud detection: 3 · class imbalance: 22
Deforestation appears on 28 recent papers and the EU Deforestation Regulation on 4, with 10 deforestation papers in the last quarter against about 8 per quarter before. The rule requires proof that coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil and other goods were not grown on deforested land. Will it change where forests fall, or only where goods are sold?
Papers in the last 30 days — deforestation: 3 · EU Deforestation Regulation: 1
ESG investing appears on 56 recent papers in the finance journals, but only 3 of 81 papers on responsible investing carry a backlash, political or polarization keyword. Several US states now restrict ESG in public funds, and some asset managers have stopped using the label. Did fund flows, fees and holdings change?
Papers in the last 30 days — ESG investing: 8 · political polarization: 3
Profit sharing and employee ownership appear on 24 recent papers spread thinly across the tracked journals. As founders of the baby-boom generation retire, employee buyouts and ownership trusts are one way to pass on firms. Do employee-owned firms survive longer, pay better, and invest differently?
Papers in the last 30 days — profit sharing: 2
Electric trucks are entering freight fleets, and routing them is a growing problem in operations research. But most models assume a charger is free when the truck arrives; only 5 of 66 recent papers on electric-vehicle routing and charging carry a queue, waiting or congestion keyword. How much do charging queues change routes, fleet size and costs?
Industrial and infrastructure inspection appear on 139 recent papers, almost all in AI journals about detecting defects in images, and 25 of them involve drones or robots. Ageing bridges, pipelines and power lines need inspecting more often than inspectors can manage. How much do drone inspections cost and miss compared with people, and do they change maintenance decisions?
Papers in the last 30 days — industrial inspection: 3
The US dollar, invoicing currency and de-dollarization appear on 67 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, and the yuan's use in trade settlement has risen since 2022. Yet only 23 of those papers connect the dollar to trade invoicing or the renminbi. Is de-dollarization happening in the currency of contracts, or only in the headlines?
Papers in the last 30 days — US dollar: 1
Supplier selection is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the operations research journals, and much of it relies on multi-criteria methods such as AHP, TOPSIS and the best-worst method. These methods can rank the same options differently. How often would a paper's conclusion change with the method, and what should a robustness check look like?
Papers in the last 30 days — supplier selection: 6 · TOPSIS: 1
Digital twins appear on 87 recent papers, 64 of them in AI journals and 22 in operations research, almost all about building them. Digital twin adoption appears on 2 papers. Firms are buying twins of plants, ports and cities. Which of them changed a decision, and what did they cost relative to what they saved?
Papers in the last 30 days — digital twin: 2
Explainable AI is one of the largest topics in the AI journals and is spreading into management, finance and economics. Explanation fidelity (whether an explanation reflects what the model really does) is a fast-rising but still small keyword. When SHAP, LIME and attention maps disagree about the same prediction, which should a loan officer or a doctor believe?
Papers in the last 30 days — explainable AI: 26 · explanation fidelity: 1
Information transparency and corporate disclosure are rising in the accounting journals, and language models now read filings for investors. Yet few disclosure papers mention language models or XBRL. Is disclosure written for machines changing what transparency means?
Papers in the last 30 days — information transparency: 7 · corporate disclosure: 14
Servitization and digital servitization appear on 50 recent papers, mostly in management, with 15 in the last quarter against about 12 per quarter before. Manufacturers now sell uptime, outcomes and subscriptions instead of machines. Do the service contracts earn more than the products did, and what happens to the data the machines generate?
E-government appears on 28 recent papers and digital identity on 4, while India's identity, payment and data-sharing systems have become a model that dozens of countries are copying. What have the systems changed for welfare delivery, tax collection and the firms built on top of them, and who is left out?
Papers in the last 30 days — e-government: 3
Property rights appear on 42 recent papers and land tenure and land rights on 13, mostly in economics. Countries are digitizing land registries and using satellite imagery to map parcels. Does a digital title change credit, investment and disputes more than a paper one, and who loses when the map is wrong?
Papers in the last 30 days — land tenure: 2 · land rights: 1
Earnings management is a mainstay of the finance and accounting journals, still measured mostly with accrual regressions such as the modified Jones model. Only 4 of 156 recent papers on it carry a machine-learning or text keyword. Do learned models, including language models reading the filings, flag manipulation that accrual models miss?
Papers in the last 30 days — earnings management: 6 · accrual-based earnings management: 1
Population decline, shrinking cities and the aging society appear on 26 recent papers, but only 4 of them also concern Japan, the country furthest into the decline. Which local policies (consolidation of services, migration incentives, remote work) keep regions viable, and what does orderly decline cost compared with resisting it?
Papers in the last 30 days — Japan: 3
Demand and sales forecasting appear on 66 recent papers in the operations research and AI journals, but only 9 of them carry a language-model, foundation-model or text keyword. Retailers now feed product descriptions, reviews, weather and news into forecasting systems. Does text improve forecasts for new products, where history is missing, and does it help where history is long?
Papers in the last 30 days — demand forecasting: 6
Unethical behavior and moral disengagement are rising in the management journals, and AI tools now act on people's behalf. Recent experiments suggest people cheat more when a machine does the act for them. Does that happen at work, with sales targets, expense claims or performance reports?
Papers in the last 30 days — unethical behavior: 1 · moral disengagement: 2
Diversity, equity and inclusion, inclusive leadership and affirmative action appear on 44 recent papers, with 17 in the last quarter against about 8 per quarter before, but only 5 carry a political, backlash or legal keyword. Firms in the US have cut or renamed diversity programmes after court rulings and political pressure. What changed in hiring and pay, and what only changed in name?
Papers in the last 30 days — diversity management: 1 · workplace diversity: 1
Decentralized finance is a growing topic in the finance journals, but only 11 of 54 recent papers on it carry a liquidation, leverage, collateral or stablecoin keyword. Lending protocols liquidate collateral automatically when prices fall. Do these liquidations feed on themselves, and could they reach traditional markets?
Papers in the last 30 days — decentralized finance: 4 · cryptocurrency: 6
Deepfake detection appears on 45 recent papers and AI-generated image detection on 13, almost all in AI journals, with 23 papers in the last quarter against about 21 per quarter before. Detectors score well on the datasets they were built with and fail on the next generator. How well do they work on real fraud, elections and markets, and who should run them?
Papers in the last 30 days — deepfake detection: 1
Reinforcement learning appears on more than 700 recent papers, and 41 of them apply it to portfolios, trading or hedging, almost all in AI and operations research journals. The results are rarely reproduced and rarely compared with simple rules after costs. Which of the reported gains survive replication on new data?
Papers in the last 30 days — deep reinforcement learning: 14 · portfolio optimization: 12
Data leakage appears on 16 recent papers and memorization on 3, almost all in AI journals, while thousands of papers report results on public benchmarks that language models may have seen in training. How much of reported progress is contamination, and can finance and economics benchmarks be protected?
Papers in the last 30 days — data leakage: 2
Data centres appear on just 16 recent papers across the tracked journals, though the count is rising, and electricity demand on 17. AI training and inference are driving the first sustained growth in electricity demand in rich countries for decades. Who pays for the new capacity, and do data centres crowd out electrification elsewhere?
Cybersecurity appears on 159 recent papers, most of them in AI journals about detection; only 22 carry a disclosure, reporting or investor keyword, and "cybersecurity disclosure" on 6. Since 2023, US firms must report material cyber incidents within four business days. What do they report, and what do markets learn?
Papers in the last 30 days — data breaches: 1 · cybersecurity risks: 3
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive appears on 9 recent papers and double materiality on 3, while sustainability reporting as a whole appears on 57. The first reports under the directive were published in 2025, and the rules were then scaled back. What did the first wave disclose, and what did the rollback remove?
Papers in the last 30 days — sustainability reporting: 4
Crowdshipping and crowdsourced delivery appear on 10 recent papers in the operations research journals, with 4 in the last quarter against about 2 per quarter before. The models route parcels through ordinary travellers who happen to be going the same way. Do enough people accept such tasks, and at what pay, for the routes to work?
Critical minerals rose from almost nothing to one of the fastest-growing keywords across the tracked journals this year. Export controls on gallium, germanium, graphite and some rare earths since 2023 are natural experiments. Do they raise costs for clean-energy producers, speed up substitution and new supply, or both?
Papers in the last 30 days — critical minerals: 2 · rare earth elements: 3
Luxury brands, luxury consumption and counterfeit goods appear on 32 recent papers, mostly in management, with 5 in the last quarter against about 8 per quarter before. High-quality counterfeits and a booming resale market have blurred what authenticity means. Do counterfeits erode brand value, and does authentication technology restore it?
Papers in the last 30 days — counterfeit goods: 1
Corporate venture capital is a small but rising keyword, with 7 papers in July–September 2026 against about 3 per quarter before. Large technology firms now invest in AI startups that also buy their cloud and chips. Is this venture investing, customer financing, or a way to buy talent without a merger?
Papers in the last 30 days — open innovation: 2
Stakeholder theory appears on 88 recent papers in the management and finance journals, but corporate purpose on 4 and stakeholder capitalism on 2. Hundreds of large firms signed statements putting stakeholders before shareholders in 2019. Several years on, did the signatories treat workers, suppliers and communities differently?
Papers in the last 30 days — stakeholder theory: 6
Corporate misconduct, reputational risk and corporate scandals appear on 90 recent papers across the management, finance and accounting journals, mostly one firm at a time. Firms share directors, auditors, suppliers and bankers. Does misconduct travel along those links, and can network position predict who is next?
Papers in the last 30 days — reputational risk: 2
Lobbying, corporate political activity and campaign contributions appear on 49 recent papers, mostly about tax, trade and environmental policy, while AI regulation appears on 53 papers as a question of design. The EU AI Act and dozens of US state bills attracted record lobbying by technology firms. What did the money change in the texts?
Papers in the last 30 days — corporate political activity: 1
Corporate bonds appear on 54 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, but only 7 of them carry an ETF, fund or liquidity keyword. Exchange-traded funds now hold a large share of corporate bonds and trade far more than the bonds themselves. Do they add liquidity, or hide the lack of it until a stress?
Papers in the last 30 days — corporate bonds: 3 · exchange-traded funds: 2
Copyright protection, data ownership, content creators and the creative industries appear on 96 recent papers across the AI, management and economics journals, and 37 of them involve generative AI. Courts are deciding whether training on copyrighted work is fair use, and licensing deals are being signed. What are creators losing or gaining, and what would a licensing market look like?
Papers in the last 30 days — copyright protection: 1 · data ownership: 1
Coopetition, cooperation between competitors, appears on 31 recent papers split between the management and operations research journals, with 7 in the last quarter, in line with earlier quarters. AI firms compete fiercely while sharing open models, benchmarks and safety research, and renting computing from each other. When does sharing help a rival more than oneself?
Papers in the last 30 days — coopetition: 2
Supply chain coordination is growing in the operations research journals, along with emissions trading and carbon pricing. For most firms, the Scope 3 emissions of their supply chains dwarf their own, yet "Scope 3 emissions" appears on only 9 recent papers. Which contracts get suppliers to decarbonize, and who pays?
Papers in the last 30 days — supply chain coordination: 8 · Scope 3 emissions: 1
Congestion pricing, low emission zones and road tolls appear on just 10 recent papers, with one in the last quarter. New York's congestion charge began in January 2025, the first in the US, after years of delay. What did it do to traffic, transit, business and air quality, and who paid?
Distribution shift, concept drift and non-stationary time series appear on 371 recent papers, almost all in AI journals, and only 27 of them concern credit, fraud, banking or markets. Credit and fraud models decay as borrowers, fraudsters and the economy change. How fast, how should it be detected, and when should a model be retrained rather than recalibrated?
Papers in the last 30 days — concept drift: 6 · distribution shift: 8
Code generation, program synthesis, vulnerability detection and software development appear on 75 recent papers, mostly in AI journals, and 35 of them touch productivity, quality or security. Coding assistants are the most widely adopted generative AI tool at work. What happened to developer output, code quality and the junior developer's job?
A "just transition" is now a common theme in the economics journals, and many coal plants and mines have announced closure dates. Closures known years in advance are a rare chance to see whether workers and towns can prepare. What happens to coal workers' earnings, and to the towns around them?
Papers in the last 30 days — coal-fired power plants: 1
Stress testing appears on 40 recent papers in the finance journals, and climate stress testing on 12. Central banks in Europe and Asia have run climate scenarios on their banks. Did banks that fared badly in the scenarios cut lending to exposed borrowers, or only write longer reports?
Papers in the last 30 days — stress testing: 2
Migration keywords appear on 283 recent papers, with 85 in the last quarter against about 61 per quarter before, but only 20 of them carry a climate, weather, drought, flood or disaster keyword, and "climate-induced migration" on 3. Do people move because of climate shocks, how far, and does the move help?
Papers in the last 30 days — internal migration: 2
Climate risk disclosure appears on 19 recent papers, carbon disclosure on 10 and TCFD on 7; only 14 of 53 climate-disclosure papers carry a mandate, rule or regulation keyword. The US SEC rule was stayed, California's law survived, and the ISSB standards are being adopted by dozens of countries. Which regime changes what firms report, and what investors do with it?
Papers in the last 30 days — climate risk disclosure: 1
Urban logistics, urban freight transport and urban delivery appear on 46 recent papers, almost all in operations research, and the topic is fading, with 8 in the last quarter against about 13 per quarter before. Cities are restricting vans and funding cargo bikes and micro-hubs. Which combinations cut kilometres and cost, and do couriers and retailers adopt them without mandates?
The textile and apparel industries, fashion retail and fast fashion appear on dozens of recent papers across the AI, management and operations research journals, and 18 of them carry a circular, recycling, waste or resale keyword. The EU will require separate textile collection and producer responsibility. Can collection, sorting and recycling be made to pay, and does resale cut new production?
Papers in the last 30 days — fast fashion: 1 · apparel industry: 1
Retirement, retirement age and delayed retirement appear on 94 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, and 38 of them touch China, pension reform or labour supply. China's statutory retirement age began rising in 2025, from some of the lowest ages in the world. Who works longer, who cares for grandchildren less, and what happens to youth hiring?
Papers in the last 30 days — delayed retirement: 1 · retirement: 1
Local government finance is rising in the economics journals, and local government debt is a large topic in finance as China's property slump cut land revenue. In late 2024 China launched a large swap of local governments' hidden debt. Did it get suppliers paid and credit flowing, or just move risk to banks?
Papers in the last 30 days — local government debt: 3 · land finance: 1
Customer satisfaction and customer engagement are among the fastest-growing keywords in the management journals, and firms keep replacing service agents with chatbots. The EU AI Act requires telling people when they are talking to an AI. Does disclosure lower satisfaction, and can good service recovery make up for it?
Papers in the last 30 days — chatbots: 4 · customer satisfaction: 4
Executive compensation appears on 114 recent papers, yet only 14 of 144 pay papers carry a disclosure, pay-ratio, say-on-pay or transparency keyword. Firms in the US and UK now publish the ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay. Did it change CEO pay, worker pay or neither?
Papers in the last 30 days — executive compensation: 7
Gold and safe-haven assets appear on 172 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, almost all about gold as a hedge for investors. Only 5 carry a central-bank, reserve or sanctions keyword. Central banks have been the largest buyers of gold since 2022. Is it insurance against sanctions, and does it move the price?
Papers in the last 30 days — gold: 2 · safe-haven assets: 3
Central bank communication is one of the rising keywords across the tracked journals, but few of those papers look at households. Language models can now rewrite a policy statement for any reader. Would households who receive such messages update their inflation expectations?
Papers in the last 30 days — central bank communication: 9 · forward guidance: 1
Central bank digital currencies appear on 56 recent papers in the finance and economics journals, but only 14 of them carry a deposit, bank-lending, bank-run or financial-stability keyword. Pilots now run in China, Europe and elsewhere. If people can hold central bank money directly, how much would leave banks, and when?
Papers in the last 30 days — central bank digital currency: 6 · bank deposits: 1
Carbon leakage appears on 28 recent papers and the EU's carbon border adjustment on a handful, with the topic fading (5 papers in the last quarter against about 8 per quarter before) just as the mechanism starts charging in 2026. Which exporters pay, do they clean up or divert trade, and does leakage actually fall?
Papers in the last 30 days — CBAM: 2
Double machine learning, causal forests, conditional average treatment effects and policy learning appear on 50 recent papers, split between the AI and economics journals, with 14 in the last quarter against about 11 per quarter before. The methods promise to find who benefits most from a programme. Do the targeting rules they produce hold up in new samples, and are they fair?
Papers in the last 30 days — double machine learning: 2
Cash transfers appear on 43 recent papers in the economics journals, but only 4 of them carry a price, inflation, multiplier or spillover keyword. If a programme gives cash to a large share of a village, shopkeepers may raise prices and non-recipients may gain or lose. How large are these effects, and when do they reverse the programme's purpose?
Papers in the last 30 days — cash transfers: 1 · conditional cash transfers: 1
Carbon credits and offsetting appear on 22 recent papers, with 9 in the last quarter against about 4 per quarter before, but only 3 carry a quality, additionality, integrity or greenwashing keyword. After investigations found that many forest credits avoided no emissions, the market shrank and new integrity labels appeared. Do buyers now pay for quality?
Edge and cloud computing appear on 151 recent papers, with 43 in the last quarter against about 34 per quarter before, and 46 of them carry an energy, carbon or green keyword, mostly about device energy. Carbon-aware scheduling, which moves computing jobs to times and places where the grid is clean, appears on one paper. How much carbon could it save, and who would pay for the delay?
Papers in the last 30 days — cloud computing: 1 · edge computing: 4
International capital flows appear on 96 recent papers, and 24 of them carry a Federal Reserve, global financial cycle or spillover keyword. The 2022–2023 tightening was the fastest in forty years, yet the sudden stops predicted for emerging markets mostly did not happen. What was different, and will it last?
Papers in the last 30 days — international capital flows: 3 · capital flows: 3
Customer service and call centres appear on 25 recent papers, and 10 of them carry a chatbot, automation or language-model keyword. Firms now route calls through voice agents that handle part of each conversation and hand the rest to people. How should queues, staffing and handovers be designed when the first responder is a model?
Papers in the last 30 days — customer service: 2
Distributionally robust optimization is one of the fastest-growing methods in operations research, and uncertainty estimation is rising in the AI journals, yet only two papers in the archive touch both. Can calibrated uncertainty from machine learning decide how much robustness an optimization model buys?
Papers in the last 30 days — distributionally robust optimization: 8 · conformal prediction: 2
Share repurchases appear on 28 recent papers in the finance journals, and only one of all 35 buyback papers carries a tax keyword. The US has taxed buybacks at 1% since 2023, and a higher rate has been proposed. Did the tax move payouts to dividends, and did it change investment?
Papers in the last 30 days — share repurchases: 1
"Buy now, pay later" appears on just 8 recent papers across the tracked journals, although it has become one of the fastest-growing forms of consumer credit and is now being brought into credit reporting. Who uses it, does it crowd out or add to other borrowing, and does it lead to missed payments elsewhere?
Papers in the last 30 days — consumer credit: 1
Board composition is one of the fastest-growing keywords across the tracked journals, and board gender diversity is a large topic in finance, accounting and management. But only 7 of 135 such papers carry a quota, mandate or regulation keyword, just as the EU's quota directive reaches its target date. Do quotas change how boards decide, or only who sits on them?
Papers in the last 30 days — board gender diversity: 3
Tax compliance and enforcement appear on 118 recent papers, and 23 of them carry a digital, big-data or AI keyword, led by China's digitalized tax administration. Tax authorities now match invoices, bank data and platform records automatically. Which taxpayers change behaviour, and does automated enforcement crowd out voluntary compliance?
Papers in the last 30 days — tax enforcement: 1 · tax compliance: 4
Corporate transparency is a rising keyword in the management journals, while beneficial ownership barely appears in the archive. In November 2022 the EU Court of Justice struck down general public access to the registers of companies' beneficial owners. Did the return of anonymity bring back shell companies and opaque property purchases?
Papers in the last 30 days — corporate transparency: 1 · anti-money laundering: 1
The dataset ranking shows CIFAR and MNIST still among the most-mentioned image benchmarks in AI journal papers, while cross-dataset generalization and reproducibility are rising keywords. Do gains on these old benchmarks carry over to harder, shifted data?
Papers in the last 30 days — benchmark dataset: 6 · cross-dataset generalization: 2
Universal basic income appears on 6 recent papers and unconditional cash transfers on 4, although large pilots in the US, Germany, Kenya and elsewhere have reported results in the last two years. What do the pilots agree on, where do they disagree, and what would scale change?
Papers in the last 30 days — universal basic income: 2
Deposit insurance and market discipline are rising topics after bank failures in which deposits left within hours. Yet only 3 recent papers on bank runs or deposits carry a social-media or digital-banking keyword. Does online talk now set the speed of runs, and should deposit insurance and liquidity rules change with it?
Papers in the last 30 days — bank runs: 2 · market discipline: 1
Airline, air traffic and aviation keywords appear on 142 recent papers, and the topic is fading, with 24 papers in the last quarter against about 38 per quarter before. Sustainable aviation fuel mandates began in Europe in 2025, and emissions trading now covers flights. Do the operations models and the climate policies meet, and what do the mandates cost per tonne?
Papers in the last 30 days — airline industry: 1
Autonomous driving and autonomous vehicles appear on 314 recent papers, 270 of them in AI journals about perception and control, and only 29 carry a liability, insurance, regulation, acceptance or ethics keyword, with liability on 2. Driverless cars are now on public roads. When one crashes, who pays, and does the answer shape what gets deployed?
Papers in the last 30 days — autonomous driving: 3 · connected and automated vehicles: 1
The Big 4 auditors appear on 32 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, but only 9 of 38 papers on the audit market carry a concentration, competition or fee keyword. Audit fees have risen sharply, and regulators worry about four firms auditing almost every large company. Does concentration raise fees, lower quality or both?
Papers in the last 30 days — Big 4 auditors: 2
Auction design, first- and second-price auctions and bidding behaviour appear on 114 recent papers, mostly in economics, and the topic is fading, with 16 papers in the last quarter against about 32 per quarter before. Procurement auctions, which buy public goods and services worth trillions, appear on 2 papers. Which formats get governments the best price, and do bidders collude in the rest?
Papers in the last 30 days — auction design: 2
Sustainability reporting appears on 57 recent papers, but assurance of those reports on far fewer: "ESG assurance" on 6, "external assurance" on 3, and the topic is rising. A global assurance standard took effect in 2026. Does assurance make reported emissions more accurate, and who should provide it?
Papers in the last 30 days — sustainability reporting: 4
Annotation cost reduction and reinforcement learning from human feedback appear on 44 recent papers in the AI journals, among 71 papers on annotation and human feedback, but only 8 of them carry a worker, labour, wage, platform or ethics keyword. Millions of people label data and rate model outputs, often through platforms in low-income countries. What are they paid, and how does the pay shape the data?
Analyst attention is rising in the finance journals, and AI tools now summarize filings and earnings calls for anyone. Only 13 of 246 recent papers on analysts carry an AI keyword. Do analysts drop the small firms that machines now summarize, or use the time saved to dig deeper?
Papers in the last 30 days — analyst attention: 1
Emergency medical services, ambulance dispatch and emergency departments appear on 28 recent papers across the operations research, AI and economics journals, with 8 in the last quarter against about 6 per quarter before. Response times are rising in many countries as hospitals block ambulances at the door. Which dispatch and triage changes save lives, and which only move the queue?
Algorithmic management and algorithmic control appear on 21 recent papers, mostly in management, and the topic is fading, with 2 papers in the last quarter against about 6 per quarter before. Yet software now sets schedules, rates and tasks for warehouse, delivery and call-centre workers. What does it do to effort, health and the manager's job?
Papers in the last 30 days — algorithmic control: 1
Recruitment, job matching and hiring discrimination appear on 109 recent papers across the economics, management and AI journals, with 32 in the last quarter against about 25 per quarter before; 32 of them carry a bias, fairness, algorithm or AI keyword. Screening tools now read millions of applications, and New York requires bias audits of them. What do the audits find, and do they change outcomes?
Trust in AI appears on 76 recent papers, algorithm aversion on 10 and algorithm appreciation on 3, across the AI and management journals, with 28 papers in the last quarter against about 25 per quarter before. People once rejected algorithmic advice after seeing it err. Language models that explain themselves fluently may get too much trust instead. Which way does it go, and for whom?
Papers in the last 30 days — algorithm aversion: 1 · trust in AI: 4
Air pollution and PM2.5 appear on 213 recent papers, but only 33 of them carry a cognition, productivity, decision-making, education, mental-health or worker keyword, and "cognitive performance" on 5. Pollution affects brains as well as lungs. How much do bad-air days cost in exam scores, work errors and bad investment decisions?
Papers in the last 30 days — air pollution: 3 · PM2.5: 1
Charitable giving and crowdfunding appear on 168 recent papers, with 44 in the last quarter against about 38 per quarter before, but only 23 of them carry an AI, text, narrative or image keyword. Campaign success depends on the story. If fundraisers now write with language models, do donors give more, and do they give to the right causes?
Papers in the last 30 days — charitable giving: 4 · crowdfunding: 2
Weather forecasting, precipitation forecasting and typhoons appear on 45 recent papers, mostly in AI journals, and only 9 carry an economic, energy, agricultural, insurance or market keyword. Machine learning models now beat the physics-based systems on many measures at a fraction of the cost. Who captures the value, and does it reach the farmers, utilities and insurers who need it?
Papers in the last 30 days — weather forecasting: 1
Artificial intelligence and stock price crash risk are both rising in the finance journals, and "AI washing" has appeared as a keyword. When the AI story in disclosures runs ahead of actual AI investment, does the stock carry more crash risk?
Papers in the last 30 days — AI washing: 1 · stock price crash risk: 6
Purchase intention, purchase decisions and consumer choice appear on 178 recent papers, mostly in management and economics, but only 14 of them carry a generative-AI, conversational-AI or recommendation keyword. Shoppers are starting to let AI assistants search, compare and buy. Who gets recommended, and what happens to brands and prices when a model makes the choice?
Papers in the last 30 days — purchase intention: 2
Patents appear on 377 recent papers, and patent quality on 24, but only 32 of the patent papers carry an AI or software keyword, and "AI patents" on 14. AI patent filings have exploded, especially in China, while much AI progress is published as open code. What do AI patents protect, and do they predict anything?
Papers in the last 30 days — AI patents: 1 · patent quality: 1
AI regulation, trustworthy AI, responsible AI and the EU AI Act appear on 229 recent papers, mostly in AI and management journals, but only 12 of them carry an insurance, liability, compensation or damages keyword, and AI liability on 2. Rules now assign duties; they say little about who pays for harm. Can AI harms be insured, and would insurance discipline deployment?
Papers in the last 30 days — AI regulation: 4 · EU AI Act: 1
Peer review, research productivity and academic writing appear on 56 recent papers across the economics and AI journals, with 17 in the last quarter against about 12 per quarter before, and 17 of them involve language models. Journals report AI-written reviews and AI-written submissions. How much of each is there, and does it change what gets published?
Papers in the last 30 days — peer review: 3 · academic writing: 1
The keyword "AI governance" is growing fastest across the tracked journals, while corporate governance keeps rising in economics and management. Is board-level oversight of AI turning into a research stream of its own?
Papers in the last 30 days — AI governance: 7 · corporate governance: 49
Advertising appears on 15 recent papers, online advertising on 9 and AI-generated advertising on 3, in the management and economics journals, while AI-generated content appears on 33. Brands now generate images, copy and whole campaigns with models. Does disclosure of AI use change how consumers respond, and does generated advertising work?
Papers in the last 30 days — advertising: 1
Outsourcing, offshoring and digital trade appear on 104 recent papers, but only one of them carries an AI, remote-work or online-labour keyword. If language models make call centres, coding and back-office work cheaper to automate than to offshore, the countries that built service exports on cheap labour face a new competitor. Is service offshoring already slowing?
Papers in the last 30 days — digital trade: 2 · outsourcing: 1
Firms spend heavily on data, software and AI models, but much of that spending is expensed and barely shows on balance sheets. Intangible assets are a steady finance topic, yet only one of 57 recent papers on them carries an AI, data or software keyword. How large is the missing AI capital, and does it distort book-based measures?
Papers in the last 30 days — intangible assets: 3 · intangible capital: 2
Transaction costs are back as a growing keyword in the management journals, while agentic AI and language-model agents rise in AI. Coase argued that firms exist because using markets is costly. If AI agents can search, negotiate and monitor contracts cheaply, do firms buy more and make less?
Papers in the last 30 days — transaction cost economics: 3 · agentic AI: 2
Overlapping-generations models are a rising tool in the economics journals, and population aging is a large topic, but few papers connect aging to asset prices. Of 239 recent papers with an aging or demographic keyword, 17 carry a keyword about stocks, interest rates or house prices. As Japan, Korea, China and Europe age, will returns and interest rates fall?
Papers in the last 30 days — population aging: 4 · overlapping generations model: 2
Cryptocurrency and digital assets appear on 476 recent papers, but only 6 of them carry an accounting, fair-value, reporting, disclosure or audit keyword. Since 2025, US firms report crypto holdings at fair value through earnings, and some firms now hold Bitcoin as their main asset. What does fair value accounting do to earnings, and does it change who holds crypto?
Papers in the last 30 days — digital assets: 1
Absorptive capacity tops the list of growing keywords across the tracked journals, while AI adoption keeps rising. Do firms need prior know-how to profit from AI, so that AI widens the gap between leaders and laggards?
Papers in the last 30 days — absorptive capacity: 9 · artificial intelligence: 36
Drone delivery is one of the fastest-rising topics in the operations research journals. Most papers optimise routes; few ask who pays, and how drones compare with vans as delivery density changes.
Papers in the last 30 days — drone delivery: 2 · last-mile delivery: 8
In the finance journals both "artificial intelligence" and "price discovery" gained papers this year, but rarely in the same paper. Do markets with more AI-assisted trading take in news faster, or just louder?
Papers in the last 30 days — artificial intelligence: 36 · price discovery: 7