Europe is no longer just enduring hotter summers; it is absorbing a structural economic blow. With authorities reporting over 13,000 lives lost to severe thermal extremes this season, the crisis has escalated far beyond a public health emergency. As persistent 2026 heatwaves lock the continent in a loop of compressed labour capacity, strained energy grids, and collapsing corporate investment, extreme heat has evolved from a seasonal inconvenience into a multi-hundred-billion-euro drag on potential growth. Beneath the surface of record temperatures lies a complex macroeconomic transmission channel that is quietly reshaping inflation, public debt, and the long-term trajectory of European capital.

Since mid-2025, a growing number of organizations that aggressively automated human work with artificial intelligence have begun reassessing those decisions. High-profile cases, including Ford Motor Company, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), IBM, and Klarna, demonstrate a common pattern: AI systems proved highly effective at handling routine, high-volume work but struggled with tasks requiring contextual judgment, tacit expertise, ethical reasoning, and complex customer interaction. Rather than abandoning AI, these organizations have reintroduced or redesigned human roles to complement automated systems.   This paper argues that these developments should not be interpreted as evidence that AI has failed, nor that widespread automation is reversing. Aggregate labor market data points in the opposite direction: AI continues to drive significant workforce reductions across many industries. Instead, the evidence suggests that many early adopters overestimated the extent to which entire jobs, not individual tasks, could be safely automated. The result has been a period of organizational recalibration in which firms are redefining the boundary between machine efficiency and human judgment.   Drawing on these company case studies together with a broader empirical base spanning Orgvue, Forrester, Robert Half, Careerminds, Gartner, and McKinsey, this paper develops a framework of task-conditional complementarity. Under this framework, AI increasingly performs standardized, repetitive, and predictable components of work, while humans concentrate on specialized oversight, exception handling, and continuous system optimization.   The paper also examines important boundary conditions. Not every organization has experienced this recalibration. Firms such as Amazon, Salesforce, and Shopify have not publicly demonstrated comparable reversals, suggesting that industry characteristics, workflow design, organizational maturity, and the pace of AI adoption may all influence automation outcomes. Similarly, Duolingo and JPMorgan illustrate alternative organizational responses, including policy correction and internal redeployment, that differ from direct rehiring.   The central conclusion is that the future of work is unlikely to be defined by either wholesale human replacement or resistance to AI adoption. Instead, competitive advantage will increasingly depend on accurately distinguishing which tasks can be automated, which require sustained human expertise, and how organizations redesign work to combine both effectively. The firms most likely to succeed will be those that treat AI implementation as an exercise in organizational redesign rather than simply a strategy for reducing headcount.

Beyond short-term wartime dynamics, the global defence sector is undergoing a significant and far-reaching transformation. The recent increase in military spending, initially framed as a cyclical response to regional conflicts, is increasingly recognized as part of a broader structural repricing of security across global markets. This has also prompted a reassessment of defence firms’ role, shifting their perception from cyclical industrial contractors primarily tied to procurement cycles toward strategic assets embedded within the dynamics of geopolitical fragmentation and sovereign competition.   Consequently, this shift has contributed to the erosion of the post-Cold War peace dividend model, which underpinned global economic integration for more than three decades. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, advanced economies largely embraced the assumption that economic interdependence would mitigate conflict risk, thereby justifying sustained declines in defence expenditure. This assumption underpinned an efficiency-oriented model of globalization, optimized around lean inventories, cost minimization, and geographically dispersed supply chains, while assigning comparatively limited importance to redundancy and strategic industrial depth.   However, by 2026, this model had demonstrated its material vulnerabilities. Security considerations were no longer treated as external to economic policy, but rather embedded within it, as states sought to integrate defence production, industrial capacity, and supply-chain control into a broader framework of national resilience.

The economic architecture of the Islamic Republic of Iran is defined by a persistent paradox. While decades of international sanctions have systematically reduced its formal integration into global energy markets, the state remains structurally tethered to a remarkably narrow set of export channels. At the absolute centre of this system lies Kharg Island, a strategic node that handles the overwhelming majority of the nation’s crude oil exports. To date, Western policy has focused on regulatory friction, using sanctions to increase transaction costs and discount prices. However, a transition from regulatory friction to kinetic disruption, specifically a scenario where the U.S. or allied strikes disable Kharg Island, would represent a fundamental phase shift.   Such an event would not merely be a temporary supply disruption; it would constitute a systemic rupture in Iran’s primary revenue-generation mechanism. It necessitates the consideration of a critical counterfactual: what occurs when oil ceases to function as the core economic pillar of the state, not through gradual policy shifts, but through an abrupt, physical termination of export capacity? The resulting post-oil environment would trigger a reconfiguration of the Iranian state, moving it from a centralized rentier model to a decentralized, network-based economy of scarcity.

One of the most structurally fragile economies in the Middle East serves as the backdrop to Iran’s current military confrontation. Extensive international sanctions have, for more than a decade, restricted Iran’s access to global financial markets, constrained its energy exports, and limited foreign investment. Gradually, the Iranian economy came to evolve as a sanctions-adaptation economy, surviving persistent external pressure through informal trade networks, shadow energy exports, and alternative financial channels instead of collapsing outright.   Yet unlike sanctions, which create gradual economic constraints, war introduces a fundamentally different kind of shock by disrupting logistics networks, causing unprecedented damage to national infrastructure and compelling the state to reallocate its resources toward defense spending amid military escalation. Such shocks, for an already fragile economy operating at the limits of macroeconomic stability, can generate disproportionate consequences. The current conflict therefore brings into focus a central economic question: can Iran’s sanctions-adapted economy withstand the pressures of war, or will military escalation reveal structural weaknesses previously concealed by the sanction’s system?

While global attention remains focused on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly twenty million barrels of crude oil pass each day, less attention is given to the potentially more significant developments occurring within Iran’s borders. As of March 2026, the military strikes carried out by the United States and Israel generated what can be described as a caloric chokepoint effect, which cannot be offset by any level of kinetic military capabilities. According to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the country’s principal vulnerability in the 21st century lies in its deep-water grain elevators, rather that its military power.   While Iran’s food supply system is logistically fragile and assumes that the country’s southern ports will always remain accessible and fully operational, however, the withdrawal of war-risk insurance and the stalling of shipping through Bandar Abbas have invalidated this assumption. Therefore, describing the current situation merely as a trade disruption is inaccurate, as it effectively represents a biological countdown. As operational feed stocks decline to a fourteen-day supply, the resulting protein shortage poses a significant risk of domestic instability—an effect that conventional military strikes are unlikely to match.

During the past decade, artificial intelligence (AI) has shifted from being an academic curiosity, becoming a driving force for reshaping economies worldwide. What once felt like speculative capabilities including machines generating code and automating complex workflows as well as optimizing global logistics and producing creative content, now became deployable tools on a larger scale across industries. AI’s rapid adoption raises several key questions among policymakers, economists and business leaders, most notably whether AI can contribute to the growth of national economic growth, and under what conditions do these gains materialize?   Macroeconomic models and strong empirical evidence suggest a positive outcome, however with notable limitations. AI, as a general-purpose technology, has more to offer than just efficiency improvements, it also functions as a key driver of innovation, productivity enhancement and transformation tool of economic structures. AI visibility and adoption have grown substantially, especially with the emergence of generative AI technologies such as exemplified ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot. This growth establishes AI as a valuable source of information and data, benefiting both firms and the border national economy, provided that this widespread adoption is backed and supported by a strong infrastructure and an adequate human capital, prepared to complement these technologies.

The United States dollar (USD) prominence as the main global reserve currency can be attributed to the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, which created a new international monetary order and directly linked major world currencies to the USD, which was itself pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. The USD quickly emerged as the primary medium of exchange for most commodity trades and international financial transactions as a result of this agreement, which concentrated trust and liquidity around the currency. In 1971, the Nixon Shock occurred when the United States (U.S.) ended direct USD–gold convertibility, weakening the USD. However, the scope and depth of U.S. financial markets and the petrodollar system - which mandated that oil exports be invoiced and paid in USD- made it incontrovertible, giving the U.S. “the exorbitant privilege”, as economist Valéry Giscard d’Estaing described it, of having substantial control over global monetary policy while financing trade and budget deficits.   It’s crucial to weigh this against factors that continue to uphold the USD’s hegemony though. The unmatched stability liquidity and depth of U.S. financial markets continue to attract global investors worldwide, preserving the USD’s position as the favored reserve asset. Since international trade, finance, and investment infrastructures are still heavily USD-centric, it is also challenging for alternative currencies to quickly replace the USD due to the vast global network effect that has been developed over decades. Moreover, the USD’s status as a “safe-haven” asset persists, particularly during periods of global uncertainty, sustaining demand.   Yet, this hegemonic status is now challenged structurally in ways increasingly understood as de-dollarization- that is, the deliberate reduction of the share of the USD in global trade invoicing, reserve holdings, and payment systems. Debates on the durability of U.S. monetary leadership have been ongoing for decades, but a number of forces have turned de-dollarization from an abstract concept into a global trend since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. That crisis exposed systemic vulnerabilities within USD-dependent financial networks, underscoring how U.S. monetary policy and financial shocks can transmit worldwide in destabilizing ways—especially across Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs).   This postwar order is increasingly under structural pressure from geopolitical fragmentation, rising U.S. debt, sanctions overreach, and the emergence of alternative payment systems. These pressures could lead to two different scenarios for the U.S. economy in a post-dollar world: a sudden collapse due to financial instability and inflation, or a gradual decline with persistently higher borrowing costs and the steady erosion of fiscal and geopolitical leverage. The latter is more likely but still represents a structural shift that redefines the balance of global economic power.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) labour market is at a pivotal crossroads. The high ratio of expatriate workers, which accounts for almost 78% of the total workforce in this region as of Q2 2024, according to a recent statement from GCC Assistant Secretary General for Economic and Development Affairs, underscores its heavy reliance on foreign labour. While this dependence has greatly fuelled rapid economic growth, it now imposes significant challenges to the ambitious diversification agendas. Across the region, and in an attempt at reducing reliance on foreign labour, governments throughout the GCC are intensifying the adaptation and implementation of nationalization strategies to rebalance the labour market in favour of nationals.   This situation offers a mix of opportunities and risks—on one hand, the potential for more inclusive and sustainable growth, and on the other, the risk that reforms misaligned with market realities could undermine competitiveness. Hence, amid this tension, the challenge of nationalization becomes increasingly urgent.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is intending to establish a new trade bloc, a strategic and interconnected initiative aimed at achieving multiple goals on both the national and the international level. This trade block should not be interpreted in isolation, rather as part of the UAE’s wider economic and geopolitical strategy, which reflects the changing and evolving dynamics of the global trade landscape.     In a fragmented globalization era, where competition and integration attempt significantly increase between the regional trade networks and the multilateral systems, the UAE is poised to maintain its influence and relevance by positioning itself at the forefront of the global landscape. This approach will benefit the UAE on different levels, including advancing domestic priorities while simultaneously enhancing its leverage within the evolving global economic power. Nevertheless, the bloc’s success is not completely guaranteed, as it will need to navigate significant regulatory, infrastructural, and political barriers to translate its potentiality into tangible outcomes.

In a fast-paced world driven by technological advances, the global landscape is being reshaped by the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technology that is playing a vital role in bringing in major economic shifts, unleashing a new era of GDP growth. One of the most active regions concerning AI integration is the Middle East, a region not only observing or keeping up, rather revolutionizing this integration as governments across the region harness the power of AI to reshape their policies, implement national strategies, attract smarter investments while powerfully reconstructing their futures. Such adaptation has already borne fruit, as different economies in the region became more agile and dynamic, systems evolved to operate more efficiently and smarter, resulting in providing better services to their respective populations.   Despite the rapid progress and fast growth of AI in the Middle East, the region still faces a set of challenges, including the lack of properly trained individuals and the constant need of innovative solutions and new ways to narrow this gap. On the other hand, the region lacks legislative framework to regulate the use of AI in a fair and ethical manner. While a growing need for sustainable infrastructure development underlines the fact that more work is still required, overcoming these obstacles and challenges will lead to unlock the region’s full potential, overcome competition and become a major player in the AI world globally.

The Strait of Hormuz – a narrow, indispensable artery through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil and a third of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows– stands on a cliff. As geopolitical tensions intensify across the Middle East, fuelled by escalating Iran-Israel tensions and the shadow of direct United States (U.S.) involvement, the once-unthinkable threat of its closure looms larger than ever with Iran’s threat to close or block the Strait. In spite of the catastrophic global implications of such an act, the volatile depths of this potential crisis will be explored, unravelling the motives that could push Iran to choke this global lifeline, exposing the monumental security and geopolitical fallout, and revealing the catastrophic economic shockwave that would consume nations far beyond the region.

Global trade tensions, supply chain disruptions, and skyrocketing costs are some of the unprecedented effects caused by U.S. president Donald Trump’s second term aggressive tariff policies. Tariff policies' impact goes beyond being just hypothetical, with real-time predictions and forecasts that more severe effects could follow; the global GDP is expected to slowly grow by only 2.2% in 2025, while the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has warned of a possible global recession, given that growth slips below 2.5%. Not only the UNCTAD but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its outlook for the global economy to 2.8% in 2025 and made a significant revision for the U.S. economy lowering its 2025 growth projection to 1.8% in April from 2.7% in January. Adding to these concerns, the World Trade Organization has already highlighted a sharp deterioration in global trade prospects, with world merchandise trade now expected to decline by 0.2% in 2025, nearly three percentage points lower than previous forecasts.   The current instabilities go beyond the economic aspect; they also affect the U.S.’s international alliances and add additional burdens to households, many of whom are delaying major life decisions. A pressing question amid recession fears arises: What are the impacts on a global scale in the event of a U.S. economic collapse? Given the leading position the U.S. plays as the world’s largest economy and the leading issuer of primary reserve currency, such a downturn would trigger a financial disaster of unparalleled magnitude. Essentially, if the U.S.’s economy falls, the world’s economy falls with it. Imagine waking up a few years from now, pulling out your phone, and seeing the headline: "U.S. Economy in Freefall: Markets Collapsed Overnight." It begins as a distant rumble, as if a story is taking place somewhere else. But then you go to get your morning coffee, and the price has tripled. Your investment app reveals that your life savings have been devastated. Overseas, factories that rely on American consumers come to a standstill, leaving entire villages jobless. The USD, once the cornerstone of global banking, has collapsed, provoking wild currency wars as governments try to preserve their own. Suddenly, that far-off catastrophe isn't so far away; it's emptying your wallet, increasing your grocery cost, and endangering your basic existence. This isn't just a headline; it's a chilling, global economic winter, its icy grip felt in every home, on every continent, for generations. Are we truly prepared for such a cataclysm?

With millions of people displaced, massive destruction, and the destruction of entire businesses, the Syrian Civil War wreaked chaos on the country’s economy since it started in 2011, and whilesome countries have started to discuss deportation policies, many refugees started to return home in the hopes of rebuilding their country after the fall of the Assad regime. While the repatriation of refugees holds the promise of economic revitalisation, the multifaceted challenges of reintegration and rebuilding complicate the picture. Hence, a gradual reintegration policy under certain conditions, including international support especially from countries hosting the refugees is required to foster sustainable recovery.

Despite a 2009 pledge to mobilise $100 billion annually by 2020, this commitment remains largely unmet, hindering adaptation and mitigation efforts. The 2015 Paris Agreement, while aiming to limit global warming, faces implementation challenges due to insufficient pledges and a lack of accountability. Developed countries, bearing historical responsibility for the climate crisis, must assume a leading role in mitigation and provide adequate financial support. Unfulfilled pledges perpetuate a cycle of vulnerability in the Global South, exacerbating the impacts of extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Climate change poses a challenge to sustainable growth in a number of industries and is not just an environmental concern. It is also an economic one. Insufficient investment for climate change exacerbates problems including growing debt in developing countries, decreased agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and volatility in sectors like tourism. These issues, which are linked to global accords like the Paris Agreement, are pressing and need to be addressed.

The stock market dropped significantly on Aug. 5, 2024, following a period of high volatility. Concerning economic indicators from the United States (U.S.) and an unexpected interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan were major factors in this collapse. Major world indexes experienced a severe drop, but they recovered within 24 hours. Even with this rapid recovery, the incident may be a hint that the world economy is about to slow down.

With GDP of more than $1 trillion USD, Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the Middle East. A country well-known for its enormous oil reserves has been making significant steps to alter its position in the global economy. These reforms are part of a bigger plan to diversify the country’s economy and lessen its dependency on oil revenues. Consequently, the evolving economic landscape of Saudi Arabia will be explored, with a focus on its diversification efforts, investment strategies, and the obstacles it must overcome to emerge as a global leading economy.

With solid inflows from the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Europe, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become the top global destination for wealth, attracting businesses, investors, and high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) for the third year in a row. The UAE’s strategic blend of political stability, a welcoming cultural environment, a thriving real estate market, favourable tax regulations, and economic stability accounts for its resurgence as the top destination for affluent individuals in 2024. Strengthening its position as a leading hub for investment and wealth migration, the country’s forward-thinking vision and dedication to innovation and development ensure its sustained appeal to global wealth. The UAE is expected to gain significant economic advantages as more wealthy individuals and their families relocate there, thereby increasing the country’s appeal and influence on a worldwide scale.

Indian legislative elections were held on April 14, 2024, to choose a new parliament to represent the country for the next five years. These elections are considered the largest and longest in the world, given the vast geographical area of India, as voting will be held in seven phases across different states over a period of approximately six weeks. About 969 million voters will participate in these elections to choose 543 members of the lower house of the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha). These elections are of great importance and are among the most expensive in the world, with their cost expected to reach be nearly double what was spent in the 2019 elections.     An opinion poll conducted by the Centre for Research and Studies of Developing Countries indicates that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to win the 2024 Indian parliamentary elections, paving the way for a third term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Lok Sabha elections are being held in a negative atmosphere, with opposition allegations of unequal playing field, as a result of the intervention of federal law enforcement agencies who have attacked several political leaders and froze their bank accounts for six weeks. This means that the elections will have political and economic repercussions if Modi wins a third term, which will in turn impact India’s internal situation.

China, despite being the second-largest economy globally, encounters challenges such as a distressed real estate sector, reduced domestic consumption, and high debt levels. In response to these obstacles, the government is enacting policies aimed at encouraging domestic spending, mitigating the real estate downturn, and cultivating innovation to ensure sustainable development. The way these measures are implemented will not only impact the economic trajectory of China, but also that of the entire world.

The world economy is at a turning point, with a visible tendency to reverse the integration that was seen in the last decades of the 20th century. Growing scepticism about the benefits of globalisation, particularly in developed countries, accompanied the sluggish recovery after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This uncertainty led to a purposeful policy change away from integration known as geoeconomic fragmentation (GEF). A variety of policies impacting capital flows, worker mobility, and trade are included in GEF. GEF policies are motivated by a variety of factors, such as correcting internal economic inequities, economic competition, and national security concerns. Foreign direct investment (FDI), which has been declining recently, particularly in emerging countries, is another indication of how this trend toward GEF has affected FDI and the need for quick action to reverse it.

The global economy has been struggling to recover since the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had significant repercussions worldwide. The European Union (EU) has been particularly affected by the Russia-Ukraine war due to its reliance on Russian energy. Following this conflict, the EU is gradually moving toward recovery, with an anticipated mild growth rate in 2024. However, the ongoing Middle East conflict and concerns about its potential escalation raise doubts about whether the EU can withstand the challenges posed by such an escalation.

Dear leaders, negotiators, and decision makers,   This year, "Unite-Act-Deliver" is the slogan of COP28, a pivotal event in the international endeavour to combat climate change. The increasing number of climate disasters in 2023, wherein severe weather phenomena have wreaked devastation on a global scale, shows the urgency of the need to act. The United States, Hong Kong, Greece, Libya, Turkey, Bulgaria, Spain, Taiwan, Pakistan and China were all affected by hurricanes, storms, droughts, and flooding. The floods that struck Libya and Pakistan were particularly devastating, resulting in substantial destruction of infrastructure and loss of life, and increasing sea levels and heat surges that have been felt globally have also occurred.   Furthermore, the adverse effects of climate change on food and water security on a global scale have impeded progress towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, food systems are accountable for one-third of worldwide green gas emissions and have slowed agricultural productivity for the past five years which entails the transformation of food systems to achieve net-zero emissions.

The conflict between Hamas and Israel has been ongoing for the past four weeks, resulting in a devastating loss of life. Over 9,056 Palestinian casualties have been reported, while the Israeli side has suffered approximately 1,728 casualties. In addition to the profound human casualties, the conflict has negatively impacted the Israeli economy and is testing its resilience.

Automation is becoming more common in a lot of different fields all over the world. The rise of automation has been caused by a mix of new technologies, changes in the economic conditions, and changes in society. The healthcare sector was not far from such automation where the market for medical robots has grown a lot in recent years, especially after the COVID-19 Pandemic, and it is likely to grow even more in the coming years. Medical robots help with surgeries, make medical logistics easier, and give doctors and nurses more time to focus on patients. As they become more important, the question is whether medical robots can replace doctors or just help them do their jobs better and keep patients safe.

A global energy crisis of unparalleled scope and complexity is currently roiling the planet. Although the crisis is most acute in Europe, it is having a significant impact on markets, regulations, and economies all over the world. Europe was the region most impacted by the crisis since the Ukraine conflict where Russia’s supplies to Europe were disrupted. The nation took action to mitigate the effects of the crisis as a result of this interruption, one of which was the urge to find new sources of energy. The African continent is rich in energy resources, but the question that remains is whether it will be able to replace Russia in meeting Europe's energy needs.

The current state of the world economy can be linked in large part to global uncertainties, the escalating crisis in Ukraine, the volatility of commodity prices, tight monetary policy, and other factors. Nevertheless, the World Bank said in its most recent analysis on India's development that the country displayed more resilience to global shocks and better than anticipated quarterly growth figures. In recent years, India's economy has become one of the world’s most dynamic and fastest-growing, and it is now largely regarded as an emerging economic power. India's large and rising workforce, its massive domestic market, and a number of economic reforms and laws meant to encourage it are just a few of the factors that have contributed to the country’s economic success. India is now the fifth-largest economy in the world. India’s emergence requires the assessment of the factors and the signs that India is growing to be a significant global power and its implications.

The world is probably facing one of the worst debt crises in decades. The disruption of global supply chains caused by Covid-19, which resulted in shortages of many items and higher prices, caused more pressure on the international balance of payments and led to this high-level debt crisis. The Russia Ukraine conflict added to these inflationary pressures, and the United States (US) Federal Reserve's move to raise interest rates to combat US inflation has driven the dollar's value to its highest level in twenty years. As a result, countries that borrowed money in dollars now have more expensive debt since their currencies are worth less, which drives up the price of their imports even more. Consequently, developing countries turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial support as a result of all these factors in order to deal with their debt crises and economic instability. The IMF in its turn grants loans to countries subject to the adoption of a number of harsh and rigorous economic reforms. Because of its austerity policies and conditionality, the IMF has come criticized and the question of whether the countries in crises actually benefit or suffer harm from the IMF has been raised. To evaluate the success of IMF policies, examples of countries that have benefited from IMF policies need to be examined to answer this question.

Due to a number of circumstances, including Covid-19 supply disruptions, rising oil and food prices, and Russia's conflict in Ukraine, the world is currently suffering from high inflation. Likewise, the United States (US) is currently dealing with excessive inflation brought on by the inability of supply to keep up with demand and the increase of production costs. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, federal measures assisted in restoring employment and household income, but inflationary pressures also emerged. In attempt to combat such inflation the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates several times and the Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which is considered an answer to some of the biggest challenges facing the country and a crucial step toward creating a more resilient and inclusive economy. The following will discuss the impact of the IRA on the US economy and evaluate its effects since its enactment.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute report between 400 million and 800 million people worldwide could be displaced by automation and need to find new occupations by 2030, with 75 million to 375 million of those affected need to move to another new jobs and learn new skills.   Over the last two decades, there has been a surge in interest in automation and digital technologies, as well as their implications for our societies. Several writers have calculated experimentally the impact of automation technologies on employment and people by examining technology adoption at the business or industry level in previous years and related this to labour market outcomes, but their conclusions have been mixed. Some studies find that automation technologies positively impact employment, while others show that they have a negative impact.   Our study examined the impact of automation on UAE in terms of demographics, employment and economic sectors by implementing several scenarios of automation. These scenarios revealed that, in most cases, automation will positively impact UAE in terms of some macroeconomic indicators, and will lead to its economic growth and stability. Finally, we provided some recommendations that will enhance and facilitate the transition to automation in the UAE.

A sovereign wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund comprised of money generated by the government, often derived from a country's surplus reserves. Over the last decade, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have sharply grown; this is particularly the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) SWFs who have invested worldwide with a special focus on developed countries, and whose accumulated assets have dramatically increased in the last ten years due to several factors. Therefore, it is necessary to study the characteristics of GCC SWFs, as well as to assess the factors behind their growing role and their future trends.

China believes that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that Taiwan is part of its territory and routinely threatens to invade it to prevent Taiwan's formal independence. On Saturday 18th of February 2023, China's top diplomat Wang Yi said, at the Munich International Security Conference: "Taiwan has never been an independent country, nor will it be an independent country in the future. This is the status quo of the Taiwan issue”. As greater and more aggressive Chinese military exercises outside Taiwan become the norm, there are rising concerns of a full-blown cross-strait crisis with severe military and far-reaching economic repercussions for the global and Chinese economy. A China-Taiwan conflict will have a worse effect than the Russia-Ukraine war given the economic and industrial power that the two countries possess.

According to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the state of food security and nutrition in the world in 2022, it is estimated that between 702 and 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021, consisting of 278 million people in Africa, 425 million in Asia, and 56.5 million in Latin America and the Caribbean. The number has grown by about 150 million since the outbreak of Covid-19. The Russia-Ukraine War, involving two of the biggest producers in agriculture and staple cereals globally, is disrupting supply chains and further affecting global grain, fertilizer, and energy prices, leading to shortages and fuelling even higher food price inflation. Additionally, food security is a significant challenge in the Arab region, which is facing rising economic, socio-political, and environmental challenges impacting the food security of its growing population.   Hence, our study has examined the factors that affect food security, and our analysis allowed us to determine the top five factors affecting food security: climate change, conflict, overpopulation, inflation, and scarce resources. The study will analyze each factor separately and their effect on food security globally and in many regions, with a focus on the Arab region. Secondly, the study will analyze factors of food insecurity separately and its impact on four significant countries: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.   We found that the factors we examined have mainly negative effects on food security, with the exception of climate change, which will positively affect some regions for the time being, and natural resources, which has some aspects that effect food security positively. Additionally, we found that the factors are interconnected since for example, conflict negatively affects food security, and it could increase food prices, as in the current Russia-Ukraine War. Likewise, the adverse impacts of climate change are expected to raise food prices further and dampen the region’s food demand translating into direct increases in malnutrition levels.   Finally, after reviewing the effects of factors on food security, we elaborated some recommendations in order to deal with the adverse effects.

During the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in 2019, China stunned the international community by confining more than 11 million inhabitants of Wuhan to their homes. Since then, China has maintained the same practises, including them into its Zero-Covid policy. Border controls and lockdowns on the coronavirus have disrupted supply chains and slowed the flow of trade and investment, causing China’s economy to slow down. China has adhered to its zero-tolerance approach to the virus for nearly three years, despite the fact that this policy has caused immense economic harm and public dissatisfaction. Therefore, it is important to shed light on the effects of the Zero-Covid policy on the Chinese economy and the measures that need to be undertook by the government after its abandonment of the policy to revive its economy.