Enrico Colombatto

  Sovereign wealth funds have gained attention as governments increasingly rely on them to manage public assets. In the past decade, their total assets have doubled, growing from $6.7 trillion in 2014 to $12.7 trillion in 2023. If the combined sovereign wealth funds were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest economy, trailing only the […]

  Most political theories assert that protection against foreign invaders is one of the main functions of the state. However, excluding years when countries were engaged in active warfare, the proportion of global government spending on defense in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) has remained relatively modest. For instance, from the conclusion of the […]

  The Chinese economy is in trouble, and there is little hope for a recovery. Although its annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth has remained just under 5 percent over the past three years, doubts about the meaning of that figure are growing. Growth in fixed investments (machinery and equipment) has slowed considerably, from 9.9 percent […]

  The European Union economy is doing poorly. During the past decade, real gross domestic product (GDP) in the EU has grown modestly (about 17 percent), well below the United States and global average (about 26 percent and 32 percent, respectively). The outlook for the future is bleak. The obvious culprits are low productivity growth […]

  In July, the European Commission published its “European Innovation Scoreboard 2024” (EIS), “a comparative assessment of the Research and Innovation performance of EU Member States, other European, and selected third countries.” At first sight, the main results offer a somewhat comforting picture. The scoreboard, overall, shows that the European Union countries do innovate. In […]