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Global growth prospects have clouded this year. Global growth has eased to around 3%, well below its long-run average. This largely reflects further weakness in emerging market economies (EMEs). Deep recessions have emerged in Brazil and Russia, whilst the ongoing slowdown in China and the associated weakness of commodity prices has hit activity in key trading partners and commodity exporting economies, and increased financial market uncertainty. More...

Economic growth (GDP) always gets a lot of attention, but when it comes to determining how people are doing it’s interesting to look at other indicators that focus more on the actual material conditions of households. This blog looks into how households in Italy are doing by looking at a number of alternative indicators. More...

By Ryan Parmenter. Besides the sound of whistling steam, what comes into your head when you hear the term “industrial revolution”? Some might think of new innovative technologies and processes, or even economic growth. Others might think of environmental degradation. Just type “industrial revolution” into Google Images and you’ll quickly see both of these perspectives. More...

By Suzi Tart. How have CO₂ and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions changed since 1990? Three different visuals tell three very different stories (Click on them to see full size). Which perspective offers the most clarity. More...

By Jeremy Simon. In the United States we treat education like it is a sport. And thanks to the PISA, an international test administered to 15 year olds around the world which produces a ranking of countries’ achievement in math, science, and reading every three years, we know who is winning. But winning isn’t all that is important in education. For that we need to consider how education is more like running a marathon and less like the Super Bowl. More...

By Elisa Lanzi. You may have seen recent Back to the Future festivities marking 21 October 2015 as the date Marty and Doc travel to the future in the famous second film with Michael J. Fox. If only we had a similar time machine allowing us to travel to 2045 to see what the climate has in store to better decide what policies to adopt today. Alas, no time machine has been invented yet but, in the absence of such a cool device, we can rely on climate and economic models that attempt to shed light on how climate change may affect the future of our societies. The new OECD report The Economic Consequences of Climate Change, does this using a global multi-sector, multi-region modelling approach. More...

By Roel Nieuwenkamp. A recent study involving a survey of over 1000 CEOs found that 93% of them believe that sustainability will be important for the future success of their business. These views may be based on strong evidence from studies that have contributed to strengthening the link between company performance and “doing the right thing”. More...

By Patrick Love. The OECD has just published How’s Life? 2015: Measuring Well-being. It includes statistics on material well-being (such as income, jobs and housing) and the broader quality of people’s lives (such as their health, education, work-life balance, environment, social connections, civic engagement, subjective well-being and safety), with a special focus on child well-being, and also has a chapter on how volunteering affects well-being. More...

By Brian Keeley. Views vary on how much of a difference the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) actually made to the world. But on one thing people seem more or less united: They were a great communications tool. They took the abstract concept of “development” and turned it into a series of mostly concrete goals – fewer poor people, more kids in school, healthier mothers and babies, and so on. More...