British power company Drax Group on Thursday reported a 5.5% increase in annual profit, in line with forecasts and due to an increase in renewable power generation and an improved performance from its pellet division. Drax, which has converted coal plants to run on biomass, provides around 6% of Britain’s electricity. Earlier this month, the […]
Microsoft will call for President Donald Trump’s team to ease the limits on chips that can be used in data centers for training AI models so they no longer apply to a group of U.S. allies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The proposal, mentioning allies including India, Switzerland and Israel, will be released in […]
Chinese tech giant Tencent on Thursday released a new AI model that it claims can answer queries faster than global hit DeepSeek-R1, in the latest sign the startup’s domestic and overseas success is putting pressure on its larger competitors in China. The Hunyuan Turbo S is able to reply to queries within a second, distinguishing itself […]
“Some in Europe may be frustrated with Brussels. But let’s be clear – if not Brussels, then Moscow. It’s your decision. That’s geopolitics. That’s history.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This is a joint publication with Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Europe needs to be able to defend itself against Russia, with or without the United States. Here, we provide initial […]
The European Union’s Clean Industrial Deal, due to be proposed on 26 February 2025, will be a plan to create a conducive business environment for an industrial transformation that will marry decarbonisation with industrial competitiveness. Where does Europe stand on this transformation currently, however? Based on the Bruegel Clean Tech Tracker (Jugé et al, 2024), we […]
The European Union’s commitment to the fight against climate change is pursued in part through budgetary mainstreaming, which aims to integrate key policy priorities, such as climate, into every stage of the budget process, from design and preparation to implementation and evaluation across all spending programmes. The overarching targets are the allocation of 30 percent […]
Election results in 2024 have been interpreted as European voters turning against climate and environment policies. In the European Parliament elections, for example, the vote share of Green parties fell from 10 percent to 8 percent, and the 2024-2029 Commission has emphasised competitiveness more than transformative climate policies. The rollback of sustainable agriculture measures in […]
Most macroeconomic and growth accounting models assume that male and female workers are perfectly substitutable in the aggregate production function. Whether this assumption is valid is an empirical question that this paper aims to answer by estimating the elasticity of substitution between female and male labour. We apply linear and non-linear techniques to firm-level data, […]
Individuals sometimes make choices that harm their welfare due to incomplete or misleading information. This column presents findings from a large-scale experiment in the US that demonstrates how Americans prefer such situations to be addressed. Many support ‘soft interventions’, such as providing information to guide better decisions, while there is significant resistance to ‘hard interventions’ […]
The literature on the economic origins of political radicalism revolves largely around the ‘China shock’. Yet, trade not only causes shifts in the labour market but can also affect living standards via the expenditure channel. This column shows that the relative consumption loss of the European middle classes, who benefit less than low-income consumers from […]
