Economics
Technological advances, rapid demographic change and a warming climate are among the many major challenges facing us. A clearer understanding of what this means for our economies can help governments and business make better decisions on a range of issues, from encouraging innovation, tackling inequality, to responding to climate change.
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Can reorganising old ideas help us invent faster?
When we think about innovation, we usually picture something new: a new machine, a new medicine, a new energy technology, or a new digital tool. Progress is often imagined as a stream of fresh ideas entering the world.
The age of cascading crises: Why the world keeps being surprised
From the Gulf to Ukraine to the Sahel, today’s conflicts are not isolated events but cascading shocks in a hyper-connected world, yet our institutions remain built to react to yesterday’s wars.
Strait of Hormuz disruption exposes the UK’s fertiliser vulnerability
When geopolitical shocks hit households, we tend to notice energy prices first. But another shock often follows quickly: fertiliser price spikes that raise farm costs, then food prices.
From ideas to implementation: addressing global challenges at Skoll World Forum week
For many organisations working across development and global policy, the challenge is no longer identifying what works, it is how to deliver it at scale, in complex systems, under real-world constraints.
Africa’s offshore ties to Asia are growing, but their consequences remain largely unexamined
New research from the University of Oxford finds that African offshore finance is increasingly routed through Asian financial centres, a shift that risks creating blind spots for regulators, researchers and policymakers. The study is the first to connect flows through Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong as part of a single reconfiguration of offshore finance.
Global move towards plant-based diets could reshape farming jobs and reduce labour costs worldwide, Oxford study finds
A global shift towards healthier, more sustainable eating patterns could reshape agricultural employment across the world, according to new research from the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI).
Policymakers underestimate public support for climate action, Oxford research finds
New research by University of Oxford researchers from the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Saïd Business School and Smith School of Enterprise and Environment finds that policymakers, politicians and other policy officials greatly underestimate the public’s willingness to contribute to climate action.
Long Read: Robot-Proof
To dismiss the threat of automation is to get the history wrong
When it comes to debates around the future of work, there’s a distinct dichotomy. We’ve all heard tell of nightmarish scenarios where huge swathes of workers will be rendered redundant by ‘the march of the machines’. But there are also those who point to the past, to periods of hugely disruptive technological change – revolution, even – which societies have managed to survive, and dismiss the notion of a jobs apocalypse.
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