Two months before the French presidential election, there are many candidates in the race. However, there are only a handful of serious contenders, and the president, Emmanuel Macron, remains the frontrunner. The key question is, will he win re-election? Our forecast is yes.

Asia’s financial services hubs will seek to strengthen cryptocurrency regulations and maintain their balancing act in attempting to minimise speculative and compliance risks.

The 2021 edition of the EIU’s Democracy Index sheds light on continued challenges to democracy worldwide, under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic and increasing support for authoritarian alternatives.

New initiatives by governments are likely to be limited in 2022, as high energy prices and insufficient international funding for developing countries will limit overall progress.

Moon Jae-in of the liberal Minjoo Party has been South Korea’s president since 2017, and his single five-year term will end in May this year. The next presidential election, which is scheduled on March 9th, will be a tight contest between Lee Jae-myung, candidate of the Minjoo Party, and Yoon Seok-youl, who represents the main opposition, the conservative People Power Party (PPP).

On January 17th the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that China’s real GDP grew by 8.1% in full-year 2021.

After posting a strong recovery in 2021, the Asia-Pacific region is set for more modest economic expansion in 2022. This will principally reflect weaker growth in China, where EIU forecasts expansion to slow to 5.3% in 2022, from an estimated 8.1% last year.

Following the end of the Cold War in 1991, Nigeria’s military played a leading role in preventing regional political instability (for example, in 1997 it helped to reverse a military coup in Sierra Leone).

Saralrasmi Jenjaka, a member of the Phalang Pracharat (PP) party, suffered a humiliating by-election defeat in District 9 of the capital, Bangkok, on January 30th, coming fourth out of eight candidates.

In EIU’s latest global outlook video, Agathe Demarais was joined by Matt Sherwood to discuss our outlook for inflation in the US.