The European Union’s Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products, or EUDR as it’s now commonly called, was formally adopted in April 2023 following the draft agreement reached in November 2022. It represents, by most measures, one of the EU’s most ambitious regulatory efforts to curb deforestation linked to commodity imports. Palm oil, soy, beef, and cocoa are […]
Few areas of healthcare have changed as rapidly or as visibly as telemedicine. Once a peripheral offering, it has now moved toward the center of service delivery in many systems. For economists and policymakers trying to track its expansion, the challenge is not only the novelty of the model, but the limitations of the data […]
Since its passage in July 2022, the Financial CHOICE Act has subtly but unmistakably shifted the landscape for bond issuers in the United States. While the Act was, at first glance, positioned as part of a broader effort to streamline financial regulation and promote market stability, a closer reading—and certainly, its early implementation—reveals a notable […]
Discussions of the circular economy often lean toward the aspirational. It’s one thing to declare an ambition to move from waste to resource, quite another to quantify what is actually happening on the ground. The real challenge for policymakers, economists, and industry leaders is measurement: tracking not just intentions but material flows, and doing so […]
Since its launch in 2021, India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission has generated a mixture of anticipation and uncertainty across the clean-tech sector. The mission, designed to position India as a leading producer and exporter of green hydrogen, places heavy emphasis on building transparent, resilient supply chains for the technologies that underpin this emerging industry. Electrolyzer […]
The Environmental Protection Agency’s 2022 revisions to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) have brought a sharper, and arguably overdue, focus on the traceability of soybean oil used in biodiesel production. While the broad outlines of the RFS2, introduced back in 2018, were familiar to most stakeholders, these latest adjustments—particularly the call for explicit, documented traceability—are […]
The informal sector remains one of the most persistent—and elusive—features of many economies. Policymakers and analysts routinely debate its size, its contribution to livelihoods, and the best path to formalization. Yet the tools for measurement are often limited, particularly in contexts where economic activity escapes official registration. The International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) framework, typically […]
The 2022 enforcement data for the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) offered, if nothing else, a stark reminder that regulatory vigilance in timber supply chains is no longer theoretical. For wood product distributors and importers, the penalties imposed during the 2020–2022 period painted a picture that was, depending on one’s perspective, either overdue or somewhat harsh. […]
The Blue Food Labeling and Sustainability Act, introduced in the US Senate back in 2021, marked a curious yet inevitable evolution in food labeling policy. For years, various advocacy groups had lobbied for a way to help consumers distinguish between seafood sourced responsibly and that harvested in ways less kind to marine ecosystems. The bill, […]
The evolution of smart cities has placed new demands on urban planners—demands for precision, foresight, and a more systematic way to manage the complexity of modern metropolitan life. It is no longer enough to zone by intuition or tradition. Cities today require a sharper, data-driven approach to balancing economic growth with livability, environmental sustainability, and […]
Japan’s Act on Promotion of Corporate Social Responsibility in Natural Resource Sectors, enacted in 2021, quietly introduced what is proving to be a notable shift in how firms—particularly in high-tech industries—are expected to manage the social and environmental risks embedded in their raw material supply chains. While not as headline-grabbing as some other regulatory frameworks, […]
Canada’s Modern Slavery Act, passed quietly in 2018, began to show its sharper teeth in 2023. For the first time, Canadian courts issued orders compelling companies—some large, some perhaps caught off guard—to produce modern slavery statements. This development, anticipated by some and surprising to others, signals that the enforcement phase of the legislation is no […]
E-government has become more than a vision of digital convenience. For many policymakers and businesses, it’s now a practical necessity—an answer to the growing demands for efficiency, transparency, and international integration. But as more economic activity spans borders, traditional administrative systems often become a bottleneck rather than a bridge. The International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) […]
When the US-Egypt Free Trade Agreement was first signed back in 2004, few could have predicted how radically the conversation around supply chain transparency would shift over the following two decades. The agreement was functional, if somewhat conventional, focusing largely on tariff reductions and basic market access provisions. But the 2022 renegotiation of the FTA—finalized […]
When the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation came into force in 2017, the electronics sector was among the industries most directly affected. It’s perhaps no surprise. The very components that power our modern devices—tiny yet critical—are often the ones most entangled in complex, opaque supply chains. From 2017 through 2022, regulators, companies, and civil society groups […]
The persistent gap between men’s and women’s earnings is a subject of ongoing concern, debate, and policy experimentation in economies around the world. Yet meaningful action requires a clarity of diagnosis that often eludes high-level statistics. For economists and policymakers, understanding not only the existence but the distribution of gender pay gaps—across sectors, firm sizes, […]