A Few White Papers
you are currently viewing::Low-tech Longevity Investments Could Unlock $6 Trillion by 2040June 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. 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.
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.
IMF-Understanding Global Imbalances
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.
