World Economic Forum — From Silk Roads to Supply Chains is today’s most useful short citation because it links the history of Asian integration to the practical question of how firms should redesign supply chains under geopolitical pressure.
“Connectivity endured because networks adapted to changing circumstances, not because exchange was inevitable.”
VoxEU — Resilience Is a Network Property: Europe’s Integration Test for 2050
CEPR / VoxEU | Policy column | July 23, 2026
The column argues that resilience depends on the depth, diversity and quality of economic connections rather than the number of links severed in pursuit of self-sufficiency. For Europe, the implication is deeper capital markets, diversified supply chains and differentiated integration with strategic neighbors. De-risking should mean rewiring concentrated exposure, not retreating into costly autarky.
World Economic Forum — Climate Resilience Can Help Cities and Businesses Grow
World Economic Forum | Urban resilience analysis | July 28, 2026
Climate resilience is becoming a location factor for capital, supply chains and skilled workers. Research covering 1,500 cities finds that protective infrastructure, water systems, cooling, liveability and public-private finance can improve business attractiveness; 45% of surveyed CEOs are considering supply-chain reconfiguration. Adaptation spending increasingly functions as competitiveness policy.
NBER Working Paper 35510 (Bianchi, Fang, Melosi, Rogantini Picco) | Working paper | 27 July 2026
A concrete institutional proposal at a moment when euro-area fiscal space is under strain. The authors argue that the current framework “conflates short-run stabilization with long-run fiscal sustainability, exposing members to deflationary and inflationary tail risks.” Their alternative separates the two: “A centralized Treasury issues Eurobonds to finance countercyclical stabilization, while national governments retain responsibility for long-term fiscal sustainability.” In their estimated model the arrangement “functions as an automatic stabilizer, eliminating the tail risks of deflation and fiscal stagflation”, with no need to suspend national fiscal rules in a downturn.
Branko Milanovic on What Comes After Globalization
Bloomberg Odd Lots (Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway) | Podcast, ~61 min | 27 July 2026
Milanovic supplies the missing label for the current era. Globalisation has visibly fallen out of favour, but naming what replaces it has proved harder; his term is “national market liberalism” — market mechanisms retained, but organised around national rather than global objectives. The conversation draws on his new book on the United States, China and the remaking of the world economic order, and pairs directly with the two VoxEU columns above (items 13 and 14) on what institutional form a fragmented order might take.
Chartbook 461: Polycrisis & nostalgia for lost futures
Chartbook, Adam Tooze | Newsletter | 26 July 2026
Tooze returns to the concept he popularised, prompted by a workshop run by the Centre for Strategic Futures inside Singapore’s Prime Minister’s Office, where he was asked to open on “Polycrisis, the past, the present and the future.” The framing questions are the substance: how the present moment of polycrisis should “recast our understanding of the past”, and “what role does memory play in shaping our understanding of the present, and who we perceive to be friend or foe”. A useful counterweight to the forecast-driven material elsewhere in this overview.
