This study analyzes whether investors take risks related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into account when making portfolio decisions. We exploit the new Morningstar's ESG risk indicators-introduced at the end of 2019-to estimate the effect of ESG risk perception on investment fund flows. Our exercise, related to the early phase of the Covid-19 crisis when uncertainty skyrocketed, shows that investors have preferred low-ESG-risk funds, with environmental risks remaining a top concern.

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We analyse the degree of anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area. Using a new estimation technique, we look at the tail co-movement between the moments of shortand long-term distributions of inflation expectations, where those distributions are estimated from daily quotes of inflation derivatives. We find that, since mid-2014, negative tail events impacting short-term inflation expectations have been increasingly channelled to long-term views, igniting both downward revisions in expectations and upward changes in uncertainty; instead, positive short-term tail events have left long-term moments mostly unaffected. This asymmetric behaviour may signal a disanchoring from below of long-term inflation expectations.

More than 12 years after the historical oil price spike, the financialization of commodities and the interaction among different types of commodity investors remain a hot topic. We review the early financialization literature and the main theoretical contributions to understand how market frictions can affect prices and liquidity. We introduce the debate on the de‐financialization and offer insights about the multifaceted role of commercial investors in derivatives markets. Last, we show how other research streams, such as the analysis of the shale industry and of other financial derivatives than futures, might complement the view on the financialization of commodities.

This letter highlights the role of macroeconomic and financial uncertainty in predicting US recessions. In-sample forecasts using probit models indicate that the two variables are the best predictors of recessions at short horizons. Macroeconomic uncertainty has the highest predictive power up to 7 months ahead and becomes the second best predictor -after the yield curve slope -at longer horizons. Using data up to end-2018, out-of-sample forecasts show that uncertainty has significantly contributed to lower the probability of a recession in 2019, which indeed did not occur.