Building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation are at the heart of SDG 9. Transportation is essential for ensuring access to better economic, health, and education opportunities. However, globally, 1 billion people live at least 2 kilometers away from a good road, facing reduced access to jobs, healthcare, and schools. That […]
In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a follow up to, Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About, which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of […]
Enfabrica, a Silicon Valley chip startup working on networking chips for artificial intelligence data centers, said on Tuesday that it has raised $125 million in venture capital, with Nvidia joining as a strategic investor. Founded by executives from Broadcom and Alphabet’s Google, Enfabrica is part of a broader trend of data centers being completely re-designed to create […]
Apple on Tuesday is expected to unveil a new iPhone 15 lineup as questions about market access in China and competition hang over the world’s most valuable listed company. The iPhone made up more than half of Apple’s $394.3 billion in sales last year, but it faces new challenges with selling in China, the Cupertino, California […]
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell on Tuesday as a jump in oil prices deepened worries about persistent price pressures ahead of crucial inflation readings this week, while Oracle slumped on downbeat forecast and results. Oil prices jumped more than 1% on Tuesday, building on a recent rally and stoking worries over sticky inflation in […]
The recent sustained high levels of inflation have increased focus on firm markups and profits. Some broad measures suggest increasing profits, but conflate market and non-market sector dynamics and omit important corporate costs. This column constructs an alternative measure of corporate profits to capture UK firm earnings in excess of all production costs. This measure […]
Walt Disney and Charter Communications said on Monday they have reached a deal that will see the media giant’s programming including ESPN return to the Spectrum cable service just hours ahead of the start of NFL “Monday Night Football.” News of the potential deal eased some fears that the traditional cable TV bundle, long a profit-engine for […]
Villagers wept for their lost relatives in the rubble of their homes on Monday as the death toll from Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades rose to almost 2,700 and rescuers raced against time to find survivors. Search teams from Spain, Britain and Qatar were joining Moroccan rescue efforts after a 6.8 magnitude […]
Global inflation has once again taken centre stage for households and policymakers, stressing peoples’ finances, undermining their savings patterns, and threatening long-term financial security. This column examines how much financial literacy, including knowledge of inflation, drives people’s financial decision-making. Simple measures which have been used around the world confirm strikingly low levels of financial literacy, […]
The Covid-19 pandemic transformed consumer behaviour. This column describes how the METI Big Data Project, initiated prior to the pandemic, became a vital tool for tracking daily sales trends and consumption behaviour in Japan. Data from about 6,000 stores reveal stark shifts in products’ popularity, such as a surge in demand for masks and a […]
