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Economics
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.
Pantelis Koutroumpis awarded 2025–2026 RITICS Fellowship
Policy Brief: Universal Job Guarantee Boosts Wellbeing & Eliminates Long-Term Unemployment
An unconditional job guarantee pilot run from 2020-24 in an Austrian town has filled an evidence gap on a welfare policy tool of widespread interest.
Special Issue Captures Vibrant Moment in Complexity Economics
An edition of the Journal of Economic Behavior co-edited by INET Oxford shows how complexity economics can answer the policy questions of the day.
Climate Policy Monitor suggests growth of worldwide climate laws offers resilience to US rollbacks
The explosion of worldwide climate-related policies gives resilience to the climate fight even in the face of the USA’s dramatic change in policies under the Trump administration, findings from Oxford's Climate Policy Monitor show.
Agent Based Modelling Comes of Age
J. Doyne Farmer, Director of Complexity Economics at INET Oxford, believes that creating economic models that can effectively incorporate behavioural realism to make useful predictions may be the most important problem in economics today.
Are mergers necessary for 5G networks?
Research from the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change explores whether mergers in the mobile network industry benefit consumers, or if a new business trend in the sector might be a better approach.
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