Information technology and the digital economy built on it have without a doubt improved our lives in many ways, saving time and sparing drudgery for many. On the surface, the online world represents a break from 20th century capitalism in that it has shaken up vested interests, democratized access to information and given more of a voice to many millions across the globe. More...

Perhaps the main preoccupation of governments the world over is ensuring their economies are up to speed and continue to grow, staying on top of technological change and ideally ahead of the curve in market developments. More...

Modern education in advanced capitalist democracies is intended to be the great leveller for the social classes. Indeed, it could be argued the most egalitarian and democratic countries are those where an individual who works hard enough at school can get ahead regardless of their background. More...

From time immemorial densely populated areas have provided their inhabitants with advantages over smaller, isolated settlements. By bringing people from different walks of life together, cities have been central to the spread of commerce and, perhaps more importantly, ideas. More...

The EU has so far failed to take full advantage of its single market to kickstart a veritable transformation of its productive capacities and become a leader in clean technologies. For example, while European manufacturers are rallying to defend combustion engines – including diesel – India has announced that all new vehicles sold within its borders will be electric by 2030. On top of this, whereas European car makers lead China’s market in vehicles with combustion engines, Chinese auto companies are the best when it comes to electric vehicles. On the other side of the Atlantic, US companies are inventing the autonomous and electric automobile, with Tesla, Google, Uber and others investing massively in new technologies. South Korea and Japan, for their part, have the largest battery production capacity and the best technologies in the field. More...

When it comes to inequality the focus tends to be on widening income disparities, with the astronomical wages and salaries of celebrities, sport stars and the titans of industry regularly cited as proof of the cavernous divide between those at the top of the pyramid and those at the bottom. More...

That the EU is at a crossroads there is no doubt. The UK’s historic decision to quit the Union came as a bitter blow to Brussels, reeling as it was from the debt crises that had rocked Portugal, Ireland, Spain and, most of all, Greece from 2010 to 2015. More...

For a few years now, artificial intelligence has become a subject of debate far beyond the field of digital technology alone, doubtless because there is a sense of the whole scope of its economic and social consequences. Indeed, the laboratory technology has undergone a qualitative leap – with machine learning in particular – that has allowed it to be incorporated in several processes that until recently still required human intervention. Translation, voice recognition, and classifying images and videos are some of the first areas of experimentation and progress. Others will follow, although the technology is fallible and progress remains uncertain. More...

The post-war boom in the West and Japan is an epitome of this process working effectively. From the time the Marshall Plan was launched in 1948 to the oil crisis of 1973, productivity shot up as countries built infrastructure, modernized their economies, educated their masses and increased trade. Not surprisingly, productivity rose by around 5% per year in advanced economies in the 60s and 70s, with Western Europe closing the substantial lag it had had with the US following World War II. More...

The historic Paris Agreement hinges on the average global temperature of our planet increasing no more – and preferably substantially less – than 2° above pre-industrial levels. But to achieve this, the world’s countries are going to have to do far more than they pledged to do in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). More...