News Archive

At the Munich Security Conference 2024 the ifo Institute together with EconPol Europe host a Breakfast Debate which will address current geopolitical challenges and the main aspects of this new geoeconomic reality with a lineup of top leaders from politics, industry, and academia.

Even after the coronavirus pandemic, German manufacturing is continuing to restructure its supply chains in order to reduce the risk of production losses. Companies are focused primarily on diversification. 58 percent have broadened their supply chains and found new suppliers in the past year. One in three companies is also planning to expand its supplier base further. Last year, 45 percent of manufacturing companies also made increased use of warehousing.

Out of the more than 40 countries that have expressed interest in joining the BRICS bloc, the leaders of the five founding members announced in August 2023 that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates would join the BRICS in January 2024. The BRICS+ countries now represent around 45 percent of the world’s population and around a third of global GDP. Originally the BRICS were founded as an economic alternative to the Western bloc led by the USA and the EU.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has revealed the need to reassess Europe’s security. Currently, the European Union is a politically fragmented and divided union of member states, economically underperforming, with a defense capability that is insufficient without the support of the USA. This article of EconPol Forum argues that the European Union should develop towards a stronger decentralized federation, but by restoring the principle of subsidiarity.

The allocation of EU funding is accompanied by an increase in nighttime lights in the communities that receive it. For this article, the researchers were the first to merge satellite data with a funding database that listed individual projects as a way to measure the small-scale effects of EU regional funding at the community level. Their observations revealed that a 1 percent increase in funding during the 2007–2013 EU funding period was associated with 0.007 percent more lights at night in the receiving communities.