White Papers
World Economic Forum-Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026
June 23, 2026--The top 10 emerging technologies of 2026 are:
1. Everything-to-grid energy
Everything-to-grid energy transforms buildings, vehicles and devices from passive electricity consumers into active grid resources, storing and returning power in real-time. New battery chemistries, smarter coordination software and updated compensation models are making this possible at scale.
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.
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Source: weforum.org
Low-tech Longevity Investments Could Unlock $6 Trillion by 2040
June 23, 2026-Low-tech, low-cost strategies could prevent 400 million falls at home, 8.5 million new type 2 diabetes cases and 2.4 million dementia cases by 2040, while unlocking $5.8 trillion in healthcare savings and $645 billion in productivity gains. Yet much of that opportunity remains unrealized because governments and businesses manage health, finances and labour participation separately, a new World Economic Forum report finds.
The Longevity Dividend: The Business Case for Linking Health and Wealth, developed with Marsh, analysed prevention strategies in 21 countries to show how three low-cost measures – access to hearing aids, simple home safety improvements and physical activity programmes – could unlock massive savings by 2040.
Hidden economic costs
Poor health strains healthcare systems and personal finances, impacting financial resilience and creating wider economic costs. Women who spend just one year caregiving, for instance, face a 24% reduction in retirement savings due to time away from the workforce combined with the gender pay gap. Yet institutions often address these challenges separately, despite their growing economic consequences.
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Source: World Economic Forum
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.
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.
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Source: bruegel.org
2026 Mid-Year Global Forecast Report-Shocks, Signals and What Comes Next
July 20, 2026--Six months ago, the prevailing view for 2026 was that the global economy would simply muddle through. We largely agreed, while noting that the margin for error looked unusually thin. So far, that assessment has held, although it has been tested repeatedly.
This report is not a new set of forecasts. It is a scorecard. The Global Forecast Series began the year with more than 2,000 predictions. We now have six months of evidence against which to measure them.
In the process, three signals have emerged as increasingly important indicators of where risk is accumulating: rising geopolitical disorder, the growing collision between climate and compute, and AI's accelerating impact on the real economy
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Source: inigo /capitalist.com
The Regenerative Blue Economy: Pathways to Prosperity
June 8, 2026-Marine ecosystems continue to degrade under pressure from warming seas, rising tides, pollution and overuse, undermining the long-term well-being of the communities and economies that depend on them. This report examines how to shift from the status quo- which perpetuates this decline -towards a regenerative blue economy.
Roughly 40% of the world's population lives within 100 km of the coast. That narrow band - just 5% of inhabited land - generates 30-50% of global GDP and concentrates ports, energy infrastructure, aquaculture, desalination and tourism. This is where most of the regenerative blue economy will be built. The report analyses how the interaction of four systemic levers-integrated ocean governance, innovative and equitable finance, investment in human capacity, and advances in technology and AI-can help transform these ocean-based industries.
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Source: World Economic Forum
Deepening Divides: The Cost of a More Fragmented Financial System
June 4, 2026-The period spanning 2025 and early 2026 marked a turning point for the global trade and financial systems as states deployed economic statecraft on a scale not seen in the modern era, accelerating and deepening fragmentation.
This insight report offers new quantitative analysis that measures the economic drag of current trade and financial policies as well as the potential cost of an increasingly plausible worst-case scenario.
These developments are putting mounting pressure on the foundational principles that underpin global finance-such as the interoperability of payment systems and the independence of fiscal and monetary policy-and are raising new concerns around norms like the integrity of public data. These global trends present concrete risks and opportunities for emerging markets and developing economies, which are explored in detail in a case study on major African economies.
Deepening Divides: The Cost of a More Fragmented Financial System renews the private sector's call to preserve the core elements of the global financial system that enable economic growth and long-term prosperity.
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Source: World Economic Forum
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.
Inflationary pressures are becoming more evident, with input costs and output prices rising across advanced economies and EMDEs, driven by higher shipping, energy, and other commodity costs.
Special Focus: The Effects of Geopolitical Oil Supply Shocks
Over the past four decades, the volatility of oil prices during periods of rising geopolitical risk was nearly twice that during periods when perceptions of geopolitical risk were stable.
Geopolitical oil supply shocks increase oil prices by about twice as much as estimates covering all types of oil supply shocks. Geopolitical oil shocks also exhibit strong spillovers to other commodity prices.
Oil inventories, after an initial drop, typically surpass their pre-shock level in the medium-term after a geopolitical oil supply shock-a notable difference compared with other types of supply shocks.
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Source: worldbank.org
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.
The Women's Health Innovation Radar insight report provides a comprehensive view of innovation across the full science-to-patient journey.
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Source: WEF (World Economic Forum)
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.
The first-best solution is well known: coordinated adjustment among major economies. The United States would raise national saving through fiscal consolidation; China would rebalance toward consumption; and Europe would increase investment. This policy mix would reduce current account imbalances at their source and lower the risk of destabilising spillovers. But such coordination is unlikely. The relevant question is how the global economy adjusts in its absence - and what this implies for the rest of the world.
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Source: Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
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.
Firms with greater U.S. trade exposure and higher uncertainty sensitivity experienced the sharpest valuation declines following the initial tariff announcement on April 2- but also the strongest rebounds after the announced pause and subsequent trade agreements.
Both channels are economically meaningful and of similar magnitude- and jointly account for a substantial share of the market response. Together- they represent about 20 percent of the stock-price decline among tradable firms after April 2 and about 10 percent of the rebound after trade agreements. Overall- the findings show that trade policy affects firms not only through expected tariff costs- but also by reshaping policy predictability in ways that affect firms' investment incentives.
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Source: imf.org
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