The Unassuming Economist

From the World Economic Forum:

“The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2025 united more than 3,000 global leaders to tackle technological, economic and climate challenges under the theme “Collaboration in the Intelligent Age”.

For me, as Secretary-General of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the gathering served as a powerful opportunity to reinforce the crucial role international standards play in addressing the world’s most pressing challenges.

From advancing the responsible use of technology to driving the energy transition and fostering inclusivity, standards provide the trust and shared frameworks needed to unlock progress.

Davos is more than a meeting of minds – it is a catalyst for collective action on the defining challenges of our time: achieving net zero, adapting to climate impacts, harnessing technology responsibly, and ensuring innovation benefits everyone.

The discussions emphasized that by fostering collaboration across sectors and regions, we can truly transform global challenges into opportunities for sustainable and inclusive growth.”

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From UNDP:

“The European Union (EU) has committed funding of $1 Million to the Africa Facility to Support Inclusive Transitions (AFSIT), a joint initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the African Union Commission (AUC). This funding will advance the development and updating of the Africa Transition Index (ATI) platform, providing African governments with vital data-driven insights to guide their transitions, strengthen governance and promote long-term stability across the continent.

ATI is designed to equip policymakers with the tools they need to make informed decisions that ensure stability and foster sustainable development. By addressing the challenges of governance, AFSIT will support African nations in crafting long-term, inclusive solutions aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.”

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From The Tribune:

“New Delhi [India], January 19 (ANI): Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday shared insights on his participation at World Economic Forum (WEF) 2025.

The Union Minister highlighted that there will be a detailed discussion on issues ranging from inclusive growth, invetments in social phisical and digital infrastructure to democratising technology.

He pointed out the global interest in India’s approach to economic policy, digital transformation, and the Digital India programme.

He stated, “The Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji has put huge focus on inclusive development, and a growth which brings a big transformative change in the lives of the people at the bottom of the pyramid. People who have been left out of development over many decades in the past, whether it is bank accounts, whether it is providing toilets, gas connections, whether it is having tap water connections, getting the basic infrastructure in the or villages done. Infrastructure in the urban areas done. This is something which the world wants to understand.”

“In the World Economic Forum at Davos, there is a lot of interest in understanding our thought process, PM’s economic policy about digital transformation and also the way technology has been democratised by our PM’s Digital India program… There will be detailed discussion in the World Economic Forum about inclusive growth, investment in social, physical and digital infrastructure and democratizing technology,” he added.”

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From a paper by Elena Bárcena-Martín, Natalia Martín-Fuentes, and Salvador Pérez-Moreno:

“This work provides evidence of the heterogeneous effects of the ECB’s monetary policy across income classes. In particular, this investigation focuses on the labor market channel. Based on EU-SILC data, we estimate country-specific structural vector autoregressions (SVAR) models to analyze the impact of the expansionary monetary policy shocks over the 2006–2019 period. The results suggest that monetary easing helped decrease unemployment rates for lower- and middle-income classes, to a larger extent for the former. This differential impact is accounted for a stronger improvement in job finding rates for classes located at the bottom of the income distribution. Conversely, the employment status of the upper class remained largely unaffected. The analysis identifies a positive impact of expansionary monetary policy on real labor income, which seems to have mostly benefitted the upper class. Overall, our results suggest that expansionary monetary policy helped decrease labor income inequality by exerting a stronger positive impact on lower-income households.”

From a paper by Silas Xuereb, Matthew Fisher-Post, François Delorme, and Camille Lajoie:

“In this article, we estimate the distribution of all net national income in Canada from 1982 to 2021. We apply distributional national accounts (DINA) methodology to tabulated data from the Longitudinal Administrative Databank, combined with national accounts and survey data. Our descriptive results contribute to a more thorough understanding of income inequality in Canada over the past 40 years. We find that top income shares published by Statistics Canada tend to be underestimated relative to top income shares calculated using DINA, because DINA account for people who do not file taxes and for undistributed capital income that is retained in corporations. In line with previous research, income inequality in Canada increased significantly from 1982 until the mid-2000s. Although labour income drove initial growth in top shares, toward the end of this period capital income contributed most to growth in top shares. Top shares based on tax data were especially underestimated during this period because retained earnings were at their highest. Since the mid-2000s, top shares have decreased slightly and the income share of the bottom 50 percent has increased, although they have not returned to the levels observed in the early 1980s. During the pandemic, post-tax income inequality fell because of the large temporary transfer programs that were introduced. However, pre-tax income inequality increased in 2020, and even more so in 2021 when record levels of corporate profits were reached.”