Independent analysis across four coverage areas
Ten studies, each beginning from a measurement question rather than a forecast, and each opening with the conditions under which its conclusion would not hold. Where a later report revisits an earlier one, it states whether the original assessment was supported.
Housing, land and affordability
Housing is commonly reported as a price series and is more informative as a quantity series. This coverage area establishes why the two diverge, what a decade of accommodative credit did and did not do to the supply deficit, and why the binding constraints are construction cost, serviced land and public delivery rather than the cost of finance.
The Quantity Gap
The global housing deficit widened from 201 million units in 2010 to 269 million in 2023, through the cheapest decade of credit on record. This is the quantity evidence QR-02 said was needed.
The Affordability Gap
House prices have outrun incomes across the OECD since 2015. We show why the price series cannot identify the cause, and what the supply-side evidence has to explain instead.
Food systems and agricultural productivity
Agricultural total factor productivity has ceased compounding, and output growth is increasingly met from additional inputs rather than from technology. This coverage area decomposes the slowdown across research intensity, adoption lag and climate effects, and establishes why a stalled productivity trend presents as a thinner buffer stock rather than as a price increase.
The Plateau, Confirmed
New estimates put global agricultural productivity growth at 0.76 percent a year against a requirement now revised up to 2 percent. Our July reading was directionally right and understated the gap.
The Productivity Plateau
World agricultural output growth has fallen to its slowest rate in six decades, and the productivity component is doing most of the damage. We separate the input contribution from the technology contribution and price the difference.
Compute, power and industrial capacity
The compute buildout is a macroeconomic event rather than a technology development. This coverage area quantifies the electricity the load will draw, identifies the generation that must be built to serve it, and traces where several hundred billion dollars of annual capital expenditure lands in the national accounts and on household bills.
Capital Before Revenue
Four firms guided to as much as 630 billion dollars of 2026 capital spending in a single earnings week. We trace where that money lands in the national accounts and which parts of the economy are now levered to it.
Powering the Buildout
Meeting data centre demand needs generation, not just capital. We follow the supply side through to 2035 across three cases and show why coal does more of the near-term work than the announcements suggest.
The Load Curve
Data centre electricity consumption is set to more than double by 2030 while remaining under 3 percent of world demand. Aggregate and concentration. The concentration is not, and the concentration is the economics.
Trade, energy prices and inflation
Three studies on price formation under policy and supply disruption: how a tariff schedule stacks and why an average rate misleads at firm level, why trade volumes slow even as the effective rate falls, and how much of an energy shock reaches consumer prices before wage bargaining transmits it further.
Tariffs After the Ruling
A court decision struck down one layer of a four-layer schedule. We rebuild the stack and explain why merchandise trade volumes still slow sharply this year.
The Passthrough Problem
Brent moved from 61 to above 100 dollars inside a quarter. We model the passthrough into headline and core inflation and set out what would have to break for second-round effects to appear.
Tariff Arithmetic
World merchandise trade is now expected to fall in 2025, roughly three percentage points below where it would have been without recent policy shifts. We separate the level effect from the redirection effect.