Economics Perspective

A massive 160-country study by Amory Gethin and Emmanuel Saez finds no evidence that longer working hours mean higher prosperity. 59% of adults 15+ work 43 hours/week, men do two-thirds of world work hours vs women’s one-third, and policy decisions on education, retirement, labor law drive work patterns more than income or market forces. Keynes’ 15-hour prediction remains unmet.

The World Bank’s May 2026 report describes a food and nutrition security system at a breaking point. Urea prices jumped 46% month-on-month due to Strait of Hormuz disruptions, agricultural price indices rose 8%, and fertilizer prices are forecast up 31% in 2026. Wheat is up 19% year-on-year and maize 23% above January 2020.

As leaders meet at Summer Davos in Dalian, 5 numbers define China’s economy: Record solar exports in one month, India imports up 100% and Africa 5x, BYD leads EVs over Tesla despite EU tariffs with 30% more sales, 14% export growth vs 0.2% April retail sales since 2022, and GDP target 5-6% vs IMF 4.4% forecast for 2026.

Coral reefs provide $2.7 trillion in ecosystem services yearly yet face collapse by 2050. After MV Wakashio’s 1,000-tonne oil spill destroyed Mauritius reefs, Dr. Nadeem Nazurally’s ecoMode Society used microfragmentation to restore 25,500 corals. With fishers and women farmers, 86,000 sqm became a conservation area, protecting fisheries and tourism livelihoods SIDS depend on.

Agrivoltaics lets farmers earn income from both crop production and selling solar electricity, providing economic stabilization for rural communities. This dual-use approach creates jobs for skilled and unskilled laborers while addressing food and energy demands in developing nations where land and resources are scarce.

The world food market is in crisis after the total closure of the Strait of Hormuz in late February pushed food commodity prices to April 2026 levels not seen since January 2024. The World Bank reported food prices increased 5% in two months from the conflict’s onset, driven by rising energy, fertilizer, and transport costs. Grains rose 5% in Q1 2026, oils and meals surged 10% with soybean oil up 16% quarterly, and food inflation hit 98% in Iran.

The global economy shows resilience in 2025, with growth forecasts at 2.7%. Key drivers include job creation, tech innovation, infrastructure development, and a focus on sustainable, inclusive growth amidst demographic shifts. In most countries, interest rates started to fall due to the previous tightening of the interest rates that had shut international capital markets' accessibility.

IMF recommends temporary, targeted cash transfers to low-income households instead of broad energy subsidies and price controls. Rising energy and food prices reduce consumer purchasing power and induce inflation. Key principles: let domestic energy prices reflect world markets, provide income transfers, give businesses liquidity not long-term subsidies. Broad subsidies distort markets, raise government debt, and benefit wealthy households more.

The International Monetary Fund warned in a pointed new policy paper that tariffs and industrial subsidies are largely ineffective and damaging to economic welfare, as global trade progress since the 2008 financial crisis has reversed. The IMF says rebalancing requires coordinating domestic macroeconomic reform, not trade barriers, with widening imbalances driven by persistently large deficits in national saving in the United States and China’s ongoing real estate slowdown.

Global Findex 2025 data shows women's financial account ownership in low- and middle-income countries rose to 73% in 2024, up from 66% in 2021. Digital payment usage grew from 50% to 58% and formal savings from 22% to 36%, yet over 700 million women remain unbanked. High fees, distance, and limited access to credit continue to hinder full financial inclusion and economic independence.

The World Bank scorecard reveals mixed global development trends: 839 million in poverty, 76% financial access, and uneven progress in electricity & displacement, highlighting structural weaknesses & need for targeted action. The financial inclusion of women in South Asia is one of the most dramatic, as the number of female account owners increased from 27% to 83%. Aesthetically, the gender gap that used to prevail in the chart has been significantly reduced, which signifies a change in structures and not marginal improvement.This revolution has serious economic consequences. The financial access increases savings behavior, promotes the development of micro-enterprises, increases resilience to shocks, and enhances the bargaining power of women in households.

Emissions from drained peatlands rose slightly in Southeast Asia, though uncertainties remain in data estimates. Feeding a projected global population of nearly 10 billion by 2050 without sharply increasing emissions presents a critical challenge. Due to staple crops being the building blocks of food security, cultural identity, and livelihoods, replacing these crops is not an option that either makes sense or is desirable. Changes in agricultural practices will be the viable means of advancing. For instance, with rice, mitigation of methane emissions can occur through alternating the permitting of wet and dry periods instead of flooding. Crop residue management (composting or using straw as animal feed) can also contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by not burning or incinerating waste products resulting from rice productivity.

The percentage of people living in extreme poverty in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa increased dramatically from 33 percent in 2013 to 53 percent as of 2023. The percentage of the world’s total poor who reside in urban areas of Africa has more than doubled since 2013, despite urban areas of Africa comprising a small proportion of the global population. There has been a significant change in terms of who makes up the population that falls below the poverty line today. More than half (or 46%) of those living in extreme poverty today are less than 15 years of age. This means over 50% of all people living in extreme poverty are children. Despite overall decreases in poverty rates for all age groups, there has been less of a decrease when it comes to youth (age 15 to 24) than with adults (over age 25).

According to IMF analysis, the stock and bond returns have been trending in the same way, mainly on acute selloffs, since early 2020. Rather than bonds covering the losses of equity, the two asset classes have sometimes declined in tandem, eliminating the diversification advantages. It seems that the shift started towards the end of 2019 and accelerated with the supply shocks prompted by the pandemic, which created global inflation. Statistics provided by the IMF indicate the presence of a structural break. In the pre-pandemic past, the correlation between equities and government bonds rolled negatively in the majority of cases. In 2020, the trend of the correlations was positive and often had a positive value.

Over two-thirds of the nations had a score of below 50, meaning they were facing serious corruption issues in huge portions of the world. Nordic and highly institutionalized democracies still dominate at the top of the index. Denmark was ranked first with a score of 89, and this has followed a long track of good performance in governance. Other advanced nations are Finland, Singapore, and New Zealand, which are known to have a good reputation in terms of good institutions and open administration. On the other extreme, the least scored are conflict-affected and politically unstable states. There were the lowest scores in such countries as Somalia and South Sudan, where institutions are weak, and the crises of governance continue.

Global electricity consumption is entering a period of sustained and accelerated expansion, marking what many describe as the “Age of Electricity.” Between 2026 and 2030, worldwide electricity demand is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 3.6%, significantly faster than in the previous decade. This surge is driven by rising industrial production, rapid adoption of electric vehicles, expanding use of air conditioning, and the proliferation of data centers supporting digitalization and artificial intelligence. After increasing by 4.4% in 2024 and 3% in 2025, annual demand growth over the next five years is expected to be roughly 50% higher than the average recorded over the past decade.

The report Global Economic Prospects, January 2026, indicated that the global economic growth is expected to reach a stable level of 2.6 percent in 2026, but it will increase to 2.7 percent in 2027. Although these numbers indicate a gradual upward trend in recovery, they also highlight a dispiriting truth that the benefits of such recovery are not being evenly distributed between regions and income groups. The report also highlights that the world economy has been able to escape deep economic downturns despite the dislocation in global trade and inconsistent investment climates. The global economy is growing, as the projections show that 2026 and 2027 will experience growth, although at a lower rate compared to the trends that were experienced before the pandemic.

World Bank Group forecasts indicate the agricultural price index is projected to drop about two percent by 2026. This lower price forecast balances projected supply increases versus projected demand increases, with the net effect of the expected overall risks to the global commodity markets on average likely to be offsetting. Prices for food and agricultural raw materials are expected to remain stable across most commodities as anticipated production increases will be comparable to increases in consumption. In contrast, beverage prices, particularly coffee and cocoa, are expected to decline approximately seven percent, primarily as a result of expanded production levels. Although overall price movements appear under control, the forecast will remain vulnerable to weather variability, broader macroeconomic conditions and trends, trade-related policy issues, and input cost changes.

The survey's results offer readers a first view of AI usage globally for developing economies with limited uptake (e.g., a few early adopters piloting), while most businesses have no actual engagement with AI systems. The intensity of AI usage across firms that implement AI varies immensely. Less than 25% of the companies polled rely only on AI for outreach and external operations, and less than 25% utilize it entirely for core functions. Conversely, approximately 25% use AI internally and externally, demonstrating a greater degree of integration and utilization of AI across multiple areas of business. Companies that embed AI into multiple activities will have a much greater chance of realizing cumulative productivity improvements and greater business value than those that use AI in isolation or for very narrow purposes alone.

New analysis in the World Bank Global Economic Prospects (GEP) 2026 report shows that frontier markets present huge potential and a huge threat to the global economy. With almost 1.8 billion inhabitants, approximately a fifth of the global population, the frontier markets at present contribute approximately 5 percent of the global gross domestic product. Although this is a small percentage, their population impact is still growing fast. The report points out that frontier markets have a number of structural advantages. Most of these economies are well endowed with natural resources such as minerals needed in the global energy transition. They usually have relatively better institutions, healthier populations, and better-educated workforces compared to the other developing economies.

The relevance of the metal in the times of cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, and central bank digital currencies might seem confusing. But recent events, such as the phenomenal increase in prices in 2025, prove that the attractiveness of gold is not a phenomenon of the past, but a factor that is being conditioned by timeless economic and psychological laws. This outstanding journey is captured in the chart known as A Century of Gold. The past century has shown the close relation of gold prices to inflation, financial crises, and significant changes in policy. The most notable is the steep increase in 2025, as the highest annual growth in decades, in support of the persistence of gold as a haven of uncertainty.

The world metals market is also experiencing a structural shift that is prompted by the rapid pace towards clean energy, electrification, and digital infrastructure. Although the traditional sources of metal are especially construction and real estate, have been weakened in many major economies, especially China, newer sources of growth are the emerging ones. This is changing the structure and resilience of metal demand across the world as renewable energy systems, electricity grids, electric cars, and data centers are being invested in. This trend can be best seen through the fact that the outlook on copper and aluminum, two metals that are the core of electrification and decarbonization, is strengthening.

A critical factor during these trends is the slowdown in the structural transformation of economies around the globe. The transfer of workers from low-productivity sectors to higher-productivity and formal employment opportunities has weakened over the last twenty years, leading to a lack of growth in productivity and wage employment opportunities for workers, particularly in developing countries. Worker populations in developed countries continue to decrease due to a combination of a lack of available jobs for these workers (as workers age) and a lower rate of job creation within developed countries than in prior (younger) generations of employees.

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update, January 2026, produced by the International Monetary Fund, offers a very careful projection of the economy. Global growth has been quite resilient despite increased geopolitical uncertainty, changing trade policies, and structural issues in the key economies. Such stability is supported, however, by a small range of drivers, especially the investment related to technology, such that the picture is susceptible to shocks. International Expansion Prospective: Stability with Bolstered Weakness. The IMF predicts that world economic growth will continue to be stable at 3.3 and 3.2 percent in 2026 and 2027, respectively, which is in close relation to the expected global economic growth in 2025.

Governments are also becoming increasingly involved in helping certain companies and industries to achieve domestic goals like productivity increase, supply chain sustainability, strategic independence, and job security. According to the statistics of the Global Trade Alert (GTA), summarized in the World Economic Outlook (WEO) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there is an increase in new interventions in industrial policies, which starts to grow significantly after 2018 and has reached its apogee around the pandemic. There has been a significant increase in the number of measures of industrial policies in the world.

In absolute terms, the amount of foreign direct investment into EMDEs declined by $435 billion to approximately $435 billion in 2023. In relative terms, the share of foreign direct investment of EMDE of total gross domestic product declined by approximately 2%. This decreasing trend appears to be affecting the majority (approximately 60%) of EMDEs, including the four largest EMDE regions (Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East), and is expected to continue to decline.

The developing countries went into 2025 with a heavy burden on their economies occasioned by a conglomeration of global and local challenges. Significant changes in the international policy, increasing geopolitical tensions, a tightening of international financial resources, and a severe decrease in the official development assistance (ODA) have all played to the disadvantage of export performance, reduced fiscal space, and lowered growth opportunities.In 2024, the level of total external debt in the developing countries grew by 2.6 percent and reached USD 11.7 trillion.

The U.S. Congress to enact proposed plans for healthcare reform, which include lowering costs for medications and health insurance premium rates, establishing greater accountability by large insurance companies, and creating a more transparent pricing system for healthcare services. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025, signed into law by President Trump, is a huge shift in federal school nutrition policy and is part of healthcare reform.

The World Bank forecasts that global economic growth will decrease to 2.7% in 2026, which is lower than the growth rates seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising consumer prices force consumers to tighten their belts and impose on themselves.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honoured the Nobel prize in economic sciences for the Nobel laureate Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt. The award acknowledges their compelling works in elucidating the way innovation becomes the genesis of sustained economic growth.

Debt transparency is essential for the assurance and monitoring of debt sustainability. In recent years, some borrowing countries have obtained full access to markets with credible creditworthiness, only to later reveal hidden debts, leading to deep economic crises. Judgments about debt sustainability can only be made with timely and comprehensive reporting of debts and transactions.

Over the long term, or between 2010 and 2023, tax-to-GDP ratios increased in 22 economies and reduced in 15 others. The Maldives, Niue, Nauru, Japan, Cambodia, and Korea saw some of the largest improvements. Some of the increases can be attributed to tax reforms and recoveries from economic crises in Japan and Korea.

Brazil's Pix was launched in 2020 by the central bank and has just recently reached over 90 percent of the adult population using it regularly for their everyday purchases. India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a single platform connecting banks, fintechs, and tech firms with the oversight of the central bank.

which has generated $600 million in additional investment and $700 million in additional sales. This has been done with Government of Canada funding through the Facility for Resilient Food Systems (FRFS), which supports food safety as well as food loss, waste reduction, and food supply chain efficiencies.

Over the last sixty years, the world has encountered dramatic demographic change. Since 1960, the percentage of people living in rural areas has steadily declined due to the expansion of cities and the overall advance and speed of urbanization globally. In 2008, the majority of the world lived in rural areas while they maintained their lives, but without warning, worldwide populated urban areas dramatically increased their majority share.

The Philippines is in demand for a demographic change that will reopen the priorities of its economy, society, and public policy. The number of old Filipinos is expected to double by the year 2050, which creates pressure on the nation’s health care systems, elderly care services, and pension schemes.

Climate issues such as heat stress, diarrhea, malaria, and hunger can cause 250,000 deaths a year between 2030 and 2050, which challenges an important frame of adaptation. The fee, including only health systems and other areas such as agriculture and hygiene, is expected to reach USD $2 to 4 billion annually by 2030. The countries most at risk will be those that are developing countries, as they will have further weakened health systems.

Investments in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) expanded at an annual rate of 7% from 2000 to 2010; however, the annual rate has declined to less than 4% in the current decade. This weakness is a direct attack on productivity growth and development outcomes. Without stronger investments in infrastructure, clean energy technologies, education, and technology, many economies will increasingly fall behind in their progress of poverty mitigation and income convergence with the developed world.

The (SOFI) report of 2025 says that low-income nations, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, need to become a global movement towards more affordable, healthy diets. Based on the report, even if the global average price of a healthy meal increases to $4.46 per individual per day in 2024, only 48.8 million fewer individuals would still not be in a position to afford it, leaving close to 2.6 billion individuals in poverty.

The International Development Association (IDA), sees more than 90% of its financing go through national budgets and gets each donor dollar to translate into $3 to $4 in tangible results, representing the importance of scale and management.

Youth unemployment remains high across many pats of Asia and the Pacific unemployment rates, 2025. Young people are willing and able to work but do not get jobs; they face many struggles and obstacles in the world.

The world’s factory automation powerhouse in 2023, with a dominant 72% of all newly executed industrial robots worldwide. The market is rising due to the growing need for automation in a variety of industries, as well as the margins caused by increasing labor costs and shortages.

A World of Debt indicated that, by 2024, global public debt was $102 trillion, and developing nations had $31 trillion, nearly one-third of that total, taking on the highest yearly interest of $921 billion ever. The debt growth is stressing budgets, limiting essential public services; progress towards a sustainable future is under threats.

Nutrition investment is one of the most cost-effective development initiatives and comes with significant financial incentives. Obesity and undernutrition are major contributors to the Human Capital Index, which measures human capital.

Crypto is just one factor among many for digital transformations across various industries and products. In order to better mirror the digital economy, the System Of National Accounts(SNA) advises countries to create a set of indicators that encompass fields like AI, cloud computing, digital intermediation platforms, and e-commerce.

The World Bank’s Pink Sheet report, energy prices skyrocketed in June; non-energy commodities showed mixed results; and the energy price index increased by 9.7% in June, propelled by an 11.3% rise in crude oil. The price index excluding energy prices decreased by 1.1%. In June, the agricultural price index experienced a decline of 2.8% Food prices decreased by 1.4%, beverages saw an 8.2% drop, and raw materials stayed relatively stable.

The demographic shift towards aging populations is occurring in certain areas, such as Europe, North America, and Central Asia. In these regions, 18% of individuals belong to the 65 and older age group, while 17% are part of the 0 to14 age group. Youngest demographic in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the age group of 0-14 is 40% and the 65 and above age group is just 3%.

In a global population of 700 million people, which is mentioned as 8.5% are facing severe poverty. In a day, less than $2.15 survived their lives. Towards low growth, COVID-19 setbacks, and increased instability, impasse progress. Approximately 3.5 billion individuals (44% of the world’s population) are classified as poor according to a standard more applicable to upper middle-income countries ($6.85 daily).

A person with good physical, mental, and social health in their life is said to have a healthy lifespan. As the age of global populations rises, there will be a chance to drive a trend towards healthy, social, and economic progress by making investments in human well-being across all stages of life.

“Empowering women is not just a moral imperative; it’s an economic no-brainer. Gender-responsive fiscal policies are a powerful tool for inclusive growth.”- Christine Lagarde, former IMF Managing Director. A significant transformation of the twentieth century was the increased involvement of women in economic and political spheres.

“Trade is not about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.” — C. J. Cherryh, American writer. General merchandise trade involves the transfer of ownership of tangible goods between entities located in different countries.

Housing affordability refers to the extent to which individuals or families can obtain adequate shelter without having to forgo other fundamental necessities such as food, healthcare, and education.

“In an era of a global economy, we can’t survive without foreign investment. Our perspective on foreign investment needs to shift. We should welcome it.” - Andrew Zimbalist. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a long-term investment made by a company or individual from one country to another business in interested countries.

BRICS formed in 2001 with their own members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. These nations are making that very influential union in the world, and that union of nations is a very strong and different category; it makes a difference with other unions in the world.

In 2024, international tourists started visiting Asian countries again, but compared to tourist visits before the pandemic, it indicates it will reach only 88%. It’s still 12 percentage points lower than before the pandemic for tourists visiting Asian countries in 2024.