Blogs and Opinions
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Trade is not a weapon. Let’s not use it as one
Monday 18th of February 2019
At the Munich Security Conference last week, I moderated a panel discussion with an intriguing headline: can we make [economic] competitors like the US, Europe and China trade again?
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It’s down to cities to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2030
Tuesday 12th of February 2019
The science on climate change, and the scale of action needed to address it, are crystal-clear. People are rising in cities around the globe in direct consequence. We urge local leaders to respond to their concerned citizens, especially since newly released tools are available to support local decision-makers – tools to help cities align with 1.5°C maximum global warming.
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Are current levels of leveraged finance unsustainable?
Monday 11th of February 2019
Some movies feel like a replay. Can we do anything to prevent a sad ending to the current boom-bust cycle, which resembles earlier financial crises? The deal-making engine driving M&As, fuelled by high valuations and cheap leveraged finance, is running at full power.
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Our global system has spun out of control. Here’s how to rebalance it
Tuesday 5th of February 2019
The global system we are part of seems to be spinning out of control. Headlines around the world tell us something is amiss in many societies. I believe many of the developments we see today in individual countries and societies are part of an interconnected network of cause and effect. The entire global system is under stress. We must ensure it rebalances.
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5 maps that reveal the world’s remaining wildernesses
Monday 4th of February 2019
There aren’t many corners of the world left untouched by humanity. Recent research has highlighted that just 23% of the planet’s land surface(excluding Antarctica) and 13% of the ocean can now be classified as wilderness, representing nearly a 10% decline over the last 20 years. And more than 70% of what wilderness remains is contained within just five countries.
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António Guterres: Read the UN Secretary-General’s Davos speech in full
Thursday 24th of January 2019
Thank you very much to all of you for being here.
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Anti-vaccine sentiment one of 10 biggest health threats, says WHO
Thursday 24th of January 2019
The global population faces diverse health challenges, ranging from serious virus outbreaks and drug-resistant bacteria, to the increase in non-communicable diseases like obesity and heart disease.While some parts of the world have limited access to vaccines, patients in other regions are reluctant to use them, partly because of the anti-vaccine movement.Another area of huge concern is the toll that pollution and climate change take on health.The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified 10 of the biggest threats to world health in 2019. WHO policymakers have devised a new 5-year strategic plan to address these problems, which aims to improve the lives of up to 3 billion people worldwide.
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We must build resilience to face the future – but will we be fast enough?
Wednesday 23rd of January 2019
The effects of climate change are undeniable. Ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising and according to recent projections, 2018 is likely to go down as the fourth-warmest year on record. At the same time, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is increasing. No doubt you will have read about the devastating consequences of last year’s heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in Europe and California, floods in India, or typhoons in Japan and the Philippines.
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The Sahel is engulfed by violence. Climate change, food insecurity and extremists are largely to blame
Wednesday 23rd of January 2019
For centuries, herdsmen across Africa’s Sahel headed south during the long, hot dry season. Farmers typically welcomed them because their cattle and goats fertilized depleted cropland. While herders and farmers routinely competed over scarce resources, outright violence was restrained through customary arrangements and swift mediation from local leaders. But this symbiosis is crumbling. Instead, thousands of civilians from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria are killed every year in bloody inter-communal violence. Many more are caught up in deadly overlapping conflicts that are spinning out of control.
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How Zimbabwe’s grandmothers are turning the tide on mental health
Wednesday 23rd of January 2019
This is a story of hope. The steady worsening of mental health across the world – and the personal, economic and social damage this is causing – can seem like a problem too big to solve. But it is not, and this is the year when together we must start to turn the tide, starting at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.
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What we need is more (and better) multilateralism, not less
Wednesday 23rd of January 2019
Discontent with globalization is a key factor behind the temptation to advance policy goals through unilateral actions rather than by working together. Notwithstanding the major net positive impact of economic globalization on worldwide prosperity and diversity, recent decades have also witnessed stagnant real incomes and/or lower-quality jobs for many people in advanced economies, with a rising number of people in poverty despite being in work, while the wealthy and powerful capture a larger share of the pie.
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Poverty data never tells the whole story
Tuesday 22nd of January 2019
As global leaders gather at the World Economic Forum to discuss some of the world’s most pressing issues, including inequality and poverty, many will share data to illustrate a phenomenon. However, countries that focus on creating prosperity and not just merely eradicating poverty react differently to data on poverty.
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5 things for humanitarians to watch out for in 2019
Monday 21st of January 2019
What will this year look like? First, the economic landscape in 2019 will certainly be “wobbly” as detailed in the Economist. Protectionism, populism and anti-immigration continue to be top issues in many countries, along with increasingly turbulent financial markets and high levels of debt. China’s growth rate is predicted to slow down, while the economies of a range of countries including Argentina, Venezuela, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Afghanistan and Italy are seen as fragile. Even the USA could see a recession towards the end of the year. A global economic slowdown is a strong possibility.
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How can businesses thrive in today’s fast-changing world?
Monday 21st of January 2019
It cannot be overstated: we are living in a time of unprecedented change. The interconnectivity of people, businesses and markets has never been as strong and pervasive. Technological advances are transforming the way we live and work. And profound shifts are impacting our societies, resulting in distress and political tensions domestically and internationally.
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These are the biggest risks to the global economy in 2019
Friday 18th of January 2019
“It ain’t what you know that gets you, but what you think you know for sure that just ain’t so,” as the old adage goes. Over the next two years, the biggest risks to the global economy lie exactly in those areas where investors believe recent patterns are unlikely to change. Major risks include a growth recession in China, a rise in global long-term real interest rates, and a crescendo of populist economic policies that undermine the credibility of central bank independence, resulting in higher interest rates on safe, advanced-country government bonds.
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In a world becoming more polarized, Europe must stay united
Friday 18th of January 2019
This year’s edition of the Global Risks Report points out an existential need for a cooperative, multistakeholder approach to common global problems.
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Globalism is dead. Long live globalization
Thursday 17th of January 2019
Though belief in globalism – a top-down conspiracy to impose an international system that trumps national sovereignty – may be dead, globalization is alive and well. An effective and resilient international order, comprising strong nation-states, thus remains essential.
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How should corporate boards respond to climate change?
Thursday 17th of January 2019
Climate change is visibly disrupting business. It is driving unprecedented physical impacts, such as the increased frequency of extreme weather events affecting business infrastructure; it is also harming marine life and food supply chains. At the same time, policy and technology changes that seek to limit warming and reduce the associated physical impacts – when not applied smartly – can also cause disruption to prosperity, jobs and business.
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Why a healthy planet and a healthy economy go hand-in-hand
Wednesday 16th of January 2019
We need to understand the nature and gravity of the collective crisis that now confronts human civilization if we are to answer the questions it poses. If we do not soon halt and reverse our current trajectory of runaway climate change, environmental degradation and widespread biodiversity loss, the global economy will suffer negative consequences on its own.
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Could the fourth wave of globalization help to end epidemics?
Wednesday 16th of January 2019
The pros and cons of globalization have long been a favourite topic of debate among the political classes. Is globalization a beneficial force powering economic growth and allowing new ideas and concepts to spread and improve the lives of billions of people? Or is it something malign – a development that erodes communities while opening a chasm of inequality between the elites and the rest of the world?
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We could be sleepwalking into a new crisis. How should the business world prepare?
Wednesday 16th of January 2019
The World Economic Forum has released its annual Global Risks Report (GRR), which in particular highlights:
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Are we sleepwalking into a new global crisis?
Wednesday 16th of January 2019
Could the world be sleepwalking into a crisis? Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking. Instead, divisions are hardening. Geopolitical and geo-economic tensions have risen among the world’s major powers and now represent the most urgent global risks, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019.
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Globalization 4.0 must provide for the poorest, or it risks causing chaos for everyone
Wednesday 9th of January 2019
Globalization has helped lift millions out of poverty and improved living standards across the world, including in some of the poorest regions and states. But it has also deepened inequalities, as the vast majority of the wealth it has generated rests in the hands of a very select few. There is an inescapable sense that the process disproportionately benefits a globalized elite, whose profits continue to grow, aided by weak regulation, while the wages of the lowest earners in developed economies continue to fall in value.
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Market liquidity, leverage, and regulation ten years after the crisis
Tuesday 8th of January 2019
Banks’ balance sheet leverage has been shrinking, and dealers’ corporate bond holdings have fallen and stagnated (Figure 1). These factors raise potential concerns that dealers have reduced their market making commitment with potentially adverse effects on market liquidity (e.g. CGFS 2014, CGFS 2016).
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State-dependent effects of monetary policy
Tuesday 8th of January 2019
Housing markets play a critical role in the monetary transmission mechanism. Persistent changes in monetary policy rates affect both variable and fixed mortgage rates. Changes in the latter affect aggregate demand by affecting the volume of new mortgages, and the number of existing mortgages that are refinanced.1