Sofie Festa, Stanford University -- Today, crisis management is more essential than ever in financial and monetary policies. Reports of asset bubbles are dominating the news, while concerns about their burst arise. Governments are seeking new strategies to protect economies from future crises, beginning with shifting the current financial system.
Liza Poliakova, University of Oxford -- On a lava plain outside Reykjavik, a new piece of plumbing offers a glimpse of a lower-carbon future. Climeworks’ ‘Mammoth’, the world's biggest direct-air-capture plant, silently removes CO2 from the air.
Akshay Mediwala, University of Southern California -- Laos’ debt serviceability struggles have persisted throughout 2025 and have been facilitated by increasing reliance on the Chinese government.
Reyansh Girdhar, University of Virginia -- India presents itself as one of the world’s richest tourism landscapes with forty UNESCO sites, diverse ecosystems, deep cultural heritage, and the world’s largest diaspora acting as a natural global marketing engine.
Tanya Rastogi, Stanford University -- Artificial intelligence entails profound water and energy costs, much of which are shouldered by rural communities in the United States.
Siddharth Bellam, Stanford University -- Inflation is cooling, and by most macroeconomic measures, the United States appears to have avoided a recession. For policymakers, these figures amount to vindication. For a large share of American households, however, they mean very little.
Elizabeth Bours, Stanford University -- Overwhelming wealth has long produced overwhelming influence. From the Gilded Age’s industrial titans to today’s tech billionaires, philanthropy has served as both a vehicle for social good and a mechanism for consolidating private power.
Abby Medin, Stanford University -- Private credit represents a necessary evolution of capital markets, improving efficiency and access to financing– but only with transparency and effective risk management.
Liza Poliakova, University of Oxford -- It was the Bretton Woods system of 1944 that established the dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency. For decades after, dollar hegemony has been the bedrock of the global economic order, an ‘exorbitant privilege’ so entrenched it appeared immutable.
