By Heather Allen. March 8th – International Women’s Day – gives us a good reason to reflect on progress on the variety of women’s issues that are hindering equality. Being safe and secure is a basic human value, yet personal security is still a major issue everywhere. More...

By Aida Caldera Sanchez and Giuseppe Nicoletti. Countries are subject to economic shocks originating from long-term trends such as demography and short-term events such as financial crises, but healthy economies should be resilient to both. It is important to understand the factors that shape a country’s economic resilience, defined broadly as a country ability to contain long and short-term vulnerabilities as well as its capacity to resist and recover quickly when shocks occur. More...

By Shardul Agrawala and Rob Dellink. The consequences of degradation of environmental quality as well as the consequences of environmental policies are typically unevenly distributed. In general, poorer countries and lower income households are more severely affected by environmental degradation and at the same time have less capacity to adapt. More...

By Christian Kastrop. In a majority of OECD countries, growth over the past three decades has been associated with growing disparities in household income. This suggests that some of the forces driving GDP have also fuelled inequalities. More...

By Johannes Jütting. In January, the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland saw members of the global elite extolling the virtues of the so-called “4th industrial revolution”. The catch-all term, also known as “Industry 4.0,” ties together a wide range of cutting-edge digital technologies – such as 3-D printing, machine intelligence, the internet of things, cloud computing, and big data – into a vision of a future world of work. In this brave new world, smart factories will operate by automation with machines exchanging data seamlessly. The consequences for the work force in both developing and developed countries will be huge. More...

By Andreas Schleicher. Jobs, wealth and individual well-being depend on nothing more than on what people know and what they can do with what they know. There is no shortcut to equipping people with the right skills and to providing them with opportunities to use these skills effectively. More...

By Stephen P. Groff. Despite great strides in reducing the number of people in abject poverty, Asia and the Pacific remains home to more than half of the world’s extreme poor. With the global and regional economic outlook uncertain, the key challenge facing Asia is to sustain the growth needed to create jobs and reduce poverty. More...

By Noe van Hulst. With oil prices unexpectedly dropping to $30 and their lowest level in dollar terms since 2003, many people are asking what the impact will be on the global economy and on energy markets. It used to be conventional wisdom that a falling oil price puts more money in the pockets of consumers and industry, thus boosting spending and global economic growth. More...

By Alistair Nolan and Dirk Pilat. The production of goods and services has been transformed in many ways over recent years. First, production increasingly takes place across borders, in global value chains. Second, production is increasingly knowledge-based and involves a mix of goods and services, a phenomenon also known as the “servitisation of manufacturing”. Third and closely related, a growing part of production, in particular in the services sector, is affected by digitalisation and can sometimes be delivered through digital means. And finally, a new wave of technological change is now fundamentally altering the nature of production, heralding what has been referred to as a next production revolution. More...

By Markus Schuller. Professional managers of other people’s money, like regional banks, private banks, wealth managers, investment companies, (multi-) family offices, etc. are confronted for the first time in decades with a situation that forces them to do one of the following. More...