Trends under the Macroscope

 It is clear that humanity uses too many resources. In 2022, the ‘overshoot day’ was July 28, which means that to regenerate what humanity consumes today, we would need the equivalent of “1.75 Earths” in terms of area. As a result, the concept of circular economy, which was first pushed by environmental activists, is spreading more and more widely in society and in particular among political authorities: for example, the European Commission presented in 2022 two new packages of specific proposals, particularly with regard to packaging waste and on the generalization of the design of sustainable products.  

 A true reference, the World Energy Outlook of the International Energy Agency (IEA) provides an overview of global energy markets. The current context makes this edition particularly interesting, the
IEA qualifying the current crisis as the "first global energy crisis" that the world has known.  

Issues related to cybersecurity become more critical in the current context. The European Commission has just unveiled its Cyber Resilience Act. 

The United Nations has just published its World population prospects 2022 report, which is really a reference document and gives us the opportunity to take stock of the major demographic trends. 

 The United States adopted the Inflation Reduction Act this summer, a major climate and energy bill. Democrats are touting it as the law with the largest climate investments in the country's history. This law includes many distinct spending items and it is important to
analyze it in detail to appreciate the extent of progress.  

The oceans play a very big role in the global economy, given that more than 90% of global trade is transported by sea. Recent works have shown that tightening of environmental regulation of cargo ships can lead to spectacular gains in terms of public health.  In the years to come, additional efforts will be made to drastically reduce the sector's greenhouse gas emissions, very likely with the implementation of new technologies, such as the use of hydrogen.  

It is now well established that global warming increases the probability of violent flooding episodes. A recent study focusing on 9,500 cities in 175 countries measured the local economic impact of floods and shows that adaptation measures greatly mitigate this negative impact. The subject of adaptation and resilience to climate disasters will arise more and more and should take an increasingly important place in public policies.  

Everybody has the intuition that because of remote work, a certain number of people
have left the big cities to go live in smaller cities and that this has propelled housing prices out of the big cities. A recent study shows that this phenomenon may explain more than half of the increase of house prices over the past two years.  

Greenhouse gases emissions continue to rise but what do we really know about the distribution of emissions? A recent study shows that a small share of the world population is responsible for the bulk of emissions but the geographical breakdown is not necessarily obvious.   

Many countries or continents have made commitments to achieve net zero GHG emissions in 2050, 2060 or 2070. But what do we really know about the consequences it would have on the labor market? What will be the magnitude of the coming labor reallocation?  

More than 80% of trade in goods in volume is carried out by cargo. Maritime transport is therefore central for global trade but it encountered significant difficulties over the past 2 years (port congestion, longer travel times)… and this has disrupted supply chains and exacerbated inflationary pressures. The economic consequences are much more important than one might think at first sight.   

Energy prices have risen very sharply recently, and even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We hear more and more about greenflation, fossilflation, climateflation, etc. We try to clarify these terms and see what they correspond to in practice, in order to get an idea of ​​the reaction of central banks. 

As plastic waste invades the planet (12 million metric tons are leaking into the oceans each year), 175 countries agreed at the beginning of March 2022 to initiate a round of negotiations in order to put in place a binding agreement to limit the proliferation of
plastics and micro-plastics before the end of 2024.  

It has been largely documented that the share of transactions carried out online has sharply risen during the covid crisis. Recent research has shown that this surge had largely been transitory, except for some sectors for which digitization has been boosted persistently by the pandemic.   

In recent years, the acquisitions of GAFAM have regularly been in the news and got the
attention of political authorities. But they are clearly not the only ones to have been active in terms of M&A in the tech sector and the topic appears more complex than what some press articles suggest.   

Robotization and automation have sharply accelerated in recent years and academic works now link this to population ageing, associated to a shrinking of the middle-aged labour force. At a time where labour shortages are in the news, robotization and automation will be central themes in the years to come.  

It is increasingly clear that climate change is disrupting the economy but also inflation, which will make the central banks’ tasks even more complicated. Climate change is becoming central in the economic analysis.  

Several private institutions report a double digit increase in rents in the US, which
penalizes more the poorest households and is very likely to bring inflation to even more elevated levels in the coming months. This would prompt the Fed to tighten its monetary policy.