Our tool suggests India is a strong contender. Holding India back is its low productivity per worker and poor education levels, but it still is the top-scoring emerging market.
Jiawen Cui
We believe that developed market real estate investment trusts (DM REITs) are poised for a sustained period of positive performance driven by attractive valuations, subdued development activity, and solid macro fundamentals. This is despite interest rates that are set to remain well above pre-pandemic norms.
At the top of the Quality of Life category are cities with lower inequality and residents that live long lives. Most of these cities also provide residents with access to a wide range of recreation and cultural amenities. They tend to be smaller than the leading cities in the Economics or Human Capital categories, and every city in the top 10 is located in Western Europe, bar one in Australia.
At the top of the Quality of Life category are cities with lower inequality and residents that live long lives. Most of these cities also provide residents with access to a wide range of recreation and cultural amenities. They tend to be smaller than the leading cities in the Economics or Human Capital categories, and every city in the top 10 is located in Western Europe, bar one in Australia.
In our recent virtual roundtable event for commercial real estate, we discussed our expectation for eurozone interest rate cuts in H2, starting this month, despite the recent uptick in inflation and negotiated wage data.
We recently launched our new Global Cities Index, which covers the 1,000 largest cities in the world and evaluates their performance in five categories: Economics, Human Capital, Quality of Life, Environment, and Governance. In Part 1 of our blog series, we covered the overall results of the Global Cities Index. In Part 3, we examine the leaders in the Human Capital category.
Indian consumers’ spending power is far behind that of their Chinese counterparts, and we are sceptical about the pace of catch-up. Even if the Indian economy achieves the ambitious growth targets set, there are few signs that record levels of income inequality will reverse soon.
China’s production of electric vehicles is booming, accounting for nearly 70% of global EV sales in 2023 with 9.5 million vehicles produced. If the success of Japan’s auto industry in the last century is any guide, the rise of China’s EV sector promises to lift productivity and sustain the growth momentum of manufacturing for years.
Economic decoupling from China is ongoing, but the latest evidence suggests that, especially outside the US, the process is gradual and piecemeal. Trade decoupling may be slowly spreading from the US to other advanced economies, however surveys suggest foreign investors’ attitudes to China improved slightly in 2023, though they are still more negative than a few years ago.
This report highlights the vulnerability of food production cost in ASEAN given the impending physical and transition risks of climate change. It also highlights the critical policy response at domestic and international level to support the transition.
We find emerging, but not overwhelming, macro proof to support the recent geopolitical narrative of excess Chinese goods production that unfairly undercuts global manufacturing competitors on price. Without compelling evidence in the data, there is likely no impetus for authorities to adopt meaningful course-corrective measures to rein in any perceived excess capacity problems zeroed in by Western trading partners anytime soon.
A return to the sustained ‘lowflation’ of the 2010s is unlikely, in our view. But we also doubt that the economic landscape has changed significantly enough that inflation will ‘unanchor’ from target at a higher level. Over the longer-term, we expect inflation to average around 2%, though this will include longer periods above target than was the norm post-financial crisis.
Generative AI has the potential to substantially improve the medium-term growth outlook for the economy. It arrives at a perfect moment – labour is going to be less supportive of growth as aging dynamics hit home and productivity is flagging.
Beijing’s reinvigorated support for manufacturing is quite the economic gamble. With property still in the doldrums and the post-Covid services recovery having largely run its course, the rationale is that manufacturing could minimise the risk of a broader activity slowdown.
We have recently added CPI estimates for selected major metros in the US to our US Cities and Regions Service. They shows notable historical variations in inflation between US cities.
After getting carried away at the turn of the year with the likely extent of Federal Reserve rate cuts in 2024, markets recently have swung too far in the opposite direction. We still expect the Fed to cut rates by 50bps this year and the European Central Bank by 100bps.
Our latest global relative return index (RRI) signals that risk-adjusted investment opportunities in commercial real estate (CRE) should start to emerge this year before becoming more widespread in 2025. At this point, our baseline expected returns move higher than required returns, pushing the global all-property index above the 50 mark.
As expected, the BoJ maintained its policy rate at 0%-0.1% at Friday’s meeting. With more confidence on the ongoing wage-driven inflation dynamics and a strong appetite for policy normalisation, the BoJ looks more likely to end its zero-interest rate policy in the autumn.
As the UK population ages, time-use data suggest that the property sectors with structural tailwinds will be those that provide space for activities related to home entertainment, eating and drinking, socialising, events, leisure, hobbies, and sports/exercise.
We examined the disruption of generative AI at the US county level. We identified several metros – Atlanta, Denver, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC – that had at least one county with the highest percent of displaced workers from AI.
