Three main events affected the structure of the inflation basket: the COVID-19 pandemic, first in the spring of 2020 and then during the second wave, the energy crisis caused by Russia’s manipulation of the gas market and, more recently, its attack on Ukraine. Thanks to access to high-frequency data, the Polish Economic Institute has been able to estimate that in April 2020, during the spring lockdown, inflation in Poland may have been 1.25 pp. higher than the official measure. At the same time, during the escalating energy crisis in December 2021, the official CPI was overestimated by 0.34 pp. Poorer households were hit by inflation 0.23 pp. more than wealthier ones – according to the Polish Economic Institute’s report entitled ‘Calculating inflation in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic and aftermath of Russia’s attack on Ukraine using transactional data’.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been accelerating changes in the existing model of the functioning of the world economy. Supply chain resilience is gaining in importance. The EU is facing a major challenge of reducing its dependence. At present, 76 per cent of oil and 68 per cent of gas imports in the EU are from non-OECD countries. Simultaneously, for as many as 11 of the 30 raw materials critical to the energy transition, the EU’s dependence on imports exceeds 85 per cent. More than 7 per cent of EU imports are products with a high degree of dependence on deliveries from outside the EU-27, including over 4 per cent among key manufacturing ecosystems such as electronics, energy and health. The EU is also twice as dependent as the US on demand in non-OECD countries. Therefore, changes in the current supply chain seem necessary – according to the Polish Economic Institute’s report entitled ‘The decade of economic resilience. From offshoring to partial friendshoring’.
During the first three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, 70% of Poles got involved in helping refugees. Private spending on this purpose may have reached EUR 2.14 billion (PLN 10 billion) during this period, 0.38% of GDP, according to the Polish Economic Institute’s estimates. For comparison, in 2021 as a whole, private spending on charitable causes amounted to PLN 3.9 billion. The total value of help for refugees assigned by the Polish authorities and provided by citizens during the first three months of the war amounted to almost 1% of the country’s GDP.
The sensitivity index (SI) created by the Polish Economic Institute shows that the following countries’ food security is the most threatened as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Benin (SI = 97.6), North Korea (SI = 97.3), Sudan (SI = 92.5), Nicaragua (SI = 90.8) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (SI = 89.8), followed by Armenia, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, and Rwanda.
The Emitting 7 (E7) – the world’s most polluting countries: China, the United States, the European Union, India, Russia, Japan and Brazil – account for almost 72% of global GDP and 66% of global emissions. To stay on course for the 1.5°C target, the E7 will need to spend USD 67 trillion by 2030, the equivalent of 7.6% of global GDP in 2019 and 10.6% of the E7’s GDP in 2019 per year. Failure to reach the target will be even costlier: 11–13.9% of global GDP could be lost per year if the temperature rises by 2–2.6°C. None of these economies will hit its climate goals during its target year. Based on their current trajectories, net-zero emissions will be achieved by the EU in 2056, by the US in 2060, by China in 2071 and by Russia as late as 2086 – according to the Polish Economic Institute’s report entitled The Emitting 7: The time and cost of climate neutrality, presented during the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The latest report of the Polish Economic Institute shows that technological (arithmetic mean 5.83) and political (5.48) factors will have the greatest impact on the development of the labour market from now until 2035. Slightly lower scores (5.32) are given to legal factors and economic factors (5.13), while the lowest average scores for the impact of a given group of factors on the labour market in the future are given to ecological factors (4.84), values (5.07) and social factors (5.09), respectively. In contrast, political (3.93) and legal (3.80) factors are among the most difficult to predict. Social factors (3.71) and economic factors (3.70) are considered to be slightly less uncertain in the context of labour market developments up to 2035. The driving forces on the labour market in the outlook to 2035 will be the level of labour market virtualisation and the ability to work in dispersed teams. Based on these factors, four labour market development scenarios and profiles of employees with desirable competences have been formulated and included in the PEI report 'Foresight of Competences of the Future'.
Poland was 18th out of 27 EU member states in the ranking of the indicator measuring the development of the green economy in 2011-2019. As the PEI’s analysis shows, the development of the green economy is positively correlated to economic growth. A comparison of average total GDP growth in 2011-2019 in the countries with the highest green economy development indicator (25.7%) and those with the lowest (15.4%) points to the benefits of developing green technologies and infrastructure, which translates into a noticeable difference in the rate of economic growth (10.3 pp). Although individual countries’ economic growth is the result of many factors, the results of the model raise questions about the need to choose between raising the standard of living and a sustainable development model. Investing in the green economy does not slow down economic growth, while simultaneously enabling countries to achieve climate targets, according to the PEI’s report entitled The green economy and its impact on the climate and economic growth.
The EU is largely dependent on energy commodities imported from Russia. 25% of the crude oil, 45% of the natural gas and 44% of the hard coal imported by the EU come from Russia. Yet as the Polish Economic Institute’s report entitled “An EU independent from Russia? Alternative sources of energy commodities” shows, the EU’s dependence on energy commodities can be reduced significantly. The EU could reduce gas imports from Russia by as much as 91% as already in 2022, the PEI’s analysis shows.
In this report, we sought to measure the value of the data that Polish Internet users generate on digital platforms (social media and Internet search engines). This value was estimated from two sides: firstly, in terms of the revenue that Polish users’ data generates for digital platforms (Facebook and Google) and, secondly, in terms of the value that the users themselves assign to the data and privacy online.
Development convergence is taking place in the European Union, mainly due to the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries’ accession to the EU.
The world economy has become three polar in the past 20 years. Three, rather than two, powers account for half of GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP). China joined the United States and the European Union, which we treat as a single economic entity in this study.
The European Union will reduce CO2 emissions by 55 per cent compared to 1990, but no sooner than 2032. Due to accelerated decarbonisation, the first 10 countries will achieve climate neutrality by 2045.
At present, as many as 7 Member States of the EU have public debts exceeding 100 per cent, with the limit laid down in the Maastricht Treaty at 60 per cent. In the US, the scale of the Fed’s quantitative easing related to the pandemic has been as much as 57 per cent higher than during the financial crisis.
Although the volume of world trade in goods dropped by 5.5 per cent in 2020 against 2019, the demand for electronics soared and deliveries of computers went up by 13.1 per cent.
Spending on infrastructure makes up just 20 per cent of all public investment in EU countries. The remaining 80 per cent can be classified as investment in human capital – spending on citizens’ health and education
The potential annual carbon costs per household in the EU27 is estimated at EUR 373 for transport and EUR 429 for residential buildings.
Every year, global CIT revenues are as much as USD 240 billion lower due to profit shifting to tax havens.
Education, the labour market and mental health are three areas where the young generation will be hit the hardest by COVID-19.