Predictable policies and long-term commitments can help restore consumer confidence

Last updated: October 27, 2026 | 05:06

Families spend according to the income they expect over years, not this month’s pay slip. Shutterstock

By Damyana Bakardzhieva, Special to Gulf News

This year Stockholm awarded the economics Nobel prize to Robert Hall of Stanford and Michael Woodford of Columbia for the “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.” The phrase sounds a long way from the tankers loading at Fujairah. It is not.

Their shared insight is that economies are steered less by what policymakers do today than by what households and firms expect them to do tomorrow. Families spend according to the income they expect over years, not this month’s pay slip. Firms set prices with an eye on where costs and policy are heading. Get those expectations right, and a shock passes.…