Stack battles: the US-China artificial-intelligence rivalry is moving beyond chips alone
you are currently viewing::Stack battles: the US-China artificial-intelligence rivalry is moving beyond chips aloneJune 22, 2026--China is challenging US leadership in both AI hardware and software, with Europe unlikely to catch up Yet the early evidence suggests that the software gap, like the hardware gap, is no longer fixed or unbridgeable. The signs of Chinese catch-up are real: an open-sourced toolkit with a state-backed contributor pipeline, falling switching costs through PyTorch compatibility, flagship open-weight models running on Ascend and a protected domestic market large enough to sustain the ecosystem through its immature phase. None of these existed in meaningful form two years ago. Source: bruegel.org |
May 18, 2026-Advancing women's health requires not only scientific progress but an innovation ecosystem capable of translating discovery into evidence, technologies and scalable solutions that improve outcomes for women globally. Yet, despite growing attention, the landscape remains fragmented, and many high-impact conditions continue to receive insufficient targeted innovation.
April 10, 2026-Summary
This paper investigates how the 2025 U.S. trade-policy shocks propagated to global equity valuations. Country-level studies have documented the aggregate costs of tariffs and uncertainty- but firm-level evidence on their joint role after the 2025 shocks remains limited. Filling this gap- we use a firm-level event-study design to disentangle a trade-exposure channel from a sensitivity-to-uncertainty channel.
April 10, 2026-Summary
Payment stablecoins are privately issued digital money with the potential to enhance payment efficiency- foster innovation- and improve financial inclusion. At the same time- they are vulnerable to runs and associated welfare losses. One way to lower run risk is to require stablecoin issuers to hold safe assets. But doing so may lower issuers' profitability and thus their incentive to provide stablecoins- hampering payment innovation and product variety.
April 6, 2026-Summary
Against the backdrop of persistent and recently widening global imbalances, the paper presents a structured framework for understanding how domestic policies can influence current account positions by altering domestic saving and investment decisions. Staff analysis finds that traditional macroeconomic policies remain the dominant drivers of imbalances, but certain types of industrial policies could also play a role.