Technological progress, such as robotics and artificial intelligence, is often blamed for the loss of jobs and rising income inequality. It is also linked to increasing inequality in the corporate landscape as superstar firms forge ahead in winner-takes-most markets. Our analysis shows that in...

China is building up its global competitiveness in knowledge-intensive sectors and its ambition to be a global leader in science and innovation by 2050 seems well within reach. China outperforms the European Union in terms of expenditure on research and development as a share of its GDP, and...

The fast development of vaccines is an essential part of the long-term solution to COVID-19, but vaccine development has high costs and carries the risk of high failure rates.There are currently too few promising projects in the clinical trial pipeline to guarantee at least one vaccine soon....

Using new evidence on the digitalisation activities of firms in the European Union and the United States, we document a trend towards digital polarisation based on firms’ use of the latest digital technologies and their plans for future investment in digitalisation. A substantial share of...

The automotive sector is currently at the centre of a global transformation, driven by four key trends: electrification, autonomous driving, sharing and connected cars. While each of these interconnected trends is already visible in daily life, their full deployment is not yet guaranteed, nor is...

The 2022 United States Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a significant and welcome climate law. It also includes trade-distortive subsidies, including local-content requirements prohibited under World Trade Organisation rules - the first time the US has done this and a blow to the international...