A Few White Papers
you are currently viewing::World Economic Forum-Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026June 23, 2026--The top 10 emerging technologies of 2026 are:
The central challenge is whether these distributed assets develop into a shared resilience system or remain fragmented across competing interests. 2. Direct lithium extraction Direct lithium extraction processes brine directly to recover lithium in hours rather than months, without the land and water demands of conventional evaporation ponds. Early industrial operations in Argentina and California are proving the technology works at scale and in challenging environments. The key strategic question is whether new integrated extraction and refining hubs emerge in geographies previously excluded from the lithium supply chain. 3. Passive radiative cooling materials Passive radiative cooling materials emit heat through the atmospheric window into space, allowing surfaces to cool below ambient temperature without consuming any electricity. Embedded into paints, films, roof tiles and fabrics, they are already being written into building codes in California and China. Wider adoption depends on standardised testing, integration into green building rating systems and sustained regulatory momentum in high-heat regions. Source: weforum.org |
Financial Market Infrastructures Evolution in a Tokenized Economy
July 2, 2026-Summary
This paper examines how tokenization and distributed ledger technology may transform Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) by enabling smart contracts to perform a growing share of functions traditionally undertaken by central securities depositories, central counterparties, and trade repositories.
The Global Versus Local Identification of Macroeconomic Damages
June 30, 2026--Key takeaways:
Adrien Bilal and Diego R. Känzig's "The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global Versus Local Temperature" (QJE, 2026) challenges the conventional approach of estimating physical climate risk-induced macroeconomic damages.
The paper argues that global temperature variation may capture a broader macroeconomic climate signal than local temperature variability alone, leading to substantially higher damage estimates than those reported in much of the established literature.
Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity in the Financial Sector
June 30, 2026-Summary
Artificial intelligence is reshaping cyber risk in the financial sector by accelerating the speed, frequency, and breadth of vulnerability discovery and potential exploitation. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in financial institutions and market infrastructures, it can strengthen cyber defense but also heighten systemic risk-particularly through shared digital infrastructure, common service providers, and machine-speed attack-defense dynamics that outpace human response.
Ireland: Selected Issues
June 29, 2026-The Irish economy has remained resilient amid trade and geopolitical tensions, but its favorable outlook faces challenges and uncertainties.
Stack battles: the US-China artificial-intelligence rivalry is moving beyond chips alone
June 22, 2026--China is challenging US leadership in both AI hardware and software, with Europe unlikely to catch up
Despite Chinese progress, the United States remains for now ahead in the race for dominance over the so-called artificial intelligence hardware stack -the resources and equipment, especially semiconductors, needed to run AI models.
Prospects Group Global Monthly-May 2026
May 29, 2026--Overview
Global manufacturing activity gained some momentum in April and May, supported partly by stockpiling, but services activity remained subdued.
The conflict in the Middle East has increased transport costs and delivery times, with supply chain pressures in April reaching their highest levels since the COVID-19 period.
The Women's Health Innovation Radar: Revealing Gaps and Opportunities Across the Science-to-Patient Journey
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.
Paris Report 4: The New Global Imbalances
April 13, 2026--Global imbalances are back in focus. Central banks, international organizations, the G7 and the G20 are debating their causes and remedies. This Paris Report 4-a joint CEPR-Bruegel initiative-aims to provide independent analytical foundations for the debate, particularly for the French G7 presidency. It brings together 17 contributions on global imbalances over the past century, their current configuration among key players (the United States, Europe, and China), and perspectives from lower-income countries.
IMF Working Paper-Trade Policy Shocks and Corporate Valuations-Disentangling Trade and Uncertainty Channels
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.
IMF Working Paper-Making Stablecoins Stable
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.
