Market update: New year, new record highs in the US, Russian oil production at 30-year high
3 Jan
by Mihály Tatár
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Why has digital innovation not created business value so far?
10 Dec
by Agnes Horvath
Once computers were large machines operated by technical staff working in specially constructed centers. Today, computers are used by everybody and microprocessors have become ubiquitous, present on desktops, automobiles all through to greeting cards.
Still, as Robert Solow from MIT put it: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”. It seems that the digital revolution does not seem to deliver in terms of increased productivity performances. What we see is that businesses had been making massive capital investments in IT, but at the very same time macro-level productivity growth was stagnant or even declining in most of the advanced countries – a concept economists define as the ‘productivity puzzle’.
Trump and the global cooling
10 Nov
by Agnes Horvath and Ana Kecman
It has been only a week ago that the ratification of the Paris Agreement got into the headlines and environmentalists all over the world could celebrate a clear turning point in global climate policy. While there were countries that put the emission of greenhouse gases on their agenda in the past, without a global response these individual efforts were deemed to fail. Greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere long enough to become well mixed and for this reason the amount that is measured in the atmosphere is roughly the same all over the world, regardless of the source of the emissions. Moreover, the most important achievement of the Paris Agreement was that the two largest polluters of the world, China and the US – who account for more than 40% of total carbon dioxide emissions – also ratified the agreement. Still, the sense of relief may be short-lived.
London calling – how NIMBY attitude might have lead to Brexit
12 Oct
The “city trilemma” may separate the winners and loser of globalization and could also partially explain Brexit voting patterns…
By Csaba Pogonyi and Istvan Zsoldos […]
A new angle on the migrant crisis: Is it time for the EU to fund a new Hong Kong?
11 Sep
If over 10 million migrants started off to Europe we would probably need new and bold solutions. This is one such idea. […]
2015 – the world becomes a better place
31 Dec
We close the year with our usual “wild predictions”. These should not be taken literally, they are more like extreme scenarios (partly tongue-in-cheek) that are unlikely to actually occur, but would have a large impact and they highlight some real-life trends. Black swans, in other words.
Putin and the Chimpanzees
24 Sep
Humans are not natural born killers. They are born to do what works. […]
The Meaning of Life: 42 (degree north?) – Life expectancy in EU regions
8 Aug
The economic crisis may have dented the increase in life expectancy a bit, but it is still the crisis-ridden Mediterranean regions of the EU that fare the best… […]
