Regions

Designating Microsoft’s business software under the UK's new regulatory framework contradicts the government's stated goals of driving innovation and economic growth, as over-regulating these tools would deter long-term investment and represent an disproportionate, unnecessary exercise of authority when standard competition laws already suffice.

Some proposals would give too much power and discretion to the CMA, create unnecessary costs, potentially chill procompetitive behavior and investment, increase unpredictability in the UK’s merger control regime, and needlessly expand the CMA’s powers to investigate algorithmic behavior in ways that could harm UK consumers.

Amidst this time of increasing technological dynamism and global tensions, and given the special relationship that exists between the United States and the UK, the CMA should reassess how it can implement the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 in a more light-touch way.

The UK’s proposed under-16 social media ban reflects a recurring moral panic about new technologies and would undermine youth connection, parental choice, and online privacy without evidence that blanket bans address the real causes of harms to children.

The UK’s proposed Cyber Security and Resilience Bill presents a much-needed opportunity to kickstart the growth of the UK’s lagging cyber insurance market, which will make businesses more resilient to the increasing frequency and significance of cyberattacks.

Canada says it wants to be a technology and innovation economy, but its research budget still treats balance across disciplines as the priority. If innovation is the actual goal, the Carney government should shift funding from social sciences and humanities toward NSERC and CIHR.

A ban on personalized pricing would not make Canada more affordable; it would eliminate discounts at the bottom of the distribution and raise the floor for price-sensitive shoppers, the very consumers these proposals aim to protect.

Canadian innovation, productivity, and competitiveness are weak. Absent serious policy change, they will likely get even weaker. A turnaround requires addressing Canada’s core challenges—most fundamentally, a Canadian political economy that is not designed for the techno-economic environment the country now faces.

Canada’s privacy regulators are restricting the use of public online data for AI training, but this approach could undermine AI innovation. Canada should instead adopt a harm-based framework focused on concrete privacy risks.

The Canada Strong Fund is trying to be a sovereign wealth fund, development bank, commercial investor, industrial policy vehicle, and retail savings product all at once. Until Ottawa clearly defines its purpose, it risks becoming a debt-financed vehicle searching for a rationale.

A new irrigation technology incorporating AI sensors reduces water use by 30 percent and methane emissions by 47 percent compared to continuous irrigation methods.

Proposed changes to Kenya’s competition regime will hinder, not help its digital economy. Rather than impose substantial changes based on the false premise that digital markets require special treatment, Kenya should use existing enforcement tools to police its growing digital markets.

ITIF’s submission focuses on the ITC’s interest in recent developments in the digital economy for key SSA markets, including national and regional regulatory and policy measures and market conditions that affect digital trade.

When attempting to evaluate the effect that a policy intervention can have on development or innovation, researchers and policymakers routinely look to short-term impacts, both out of urgency and because of the difficulty in maintaining contact with participants over several years.

Over the last decade, mobile money services have brought banking to populations that have lacked formal financial services by allowing users to manage money on their mobile phones. First launched in Kenya in 2007, 96 percent of Kenyan households now use mobile money and can withdraw funds in physical currency from 110,000 agents across the country.

South Korea produces large numbers of STEM graduates, but too many are attracted to medicine, and too few go into engineering. Korea should rebalance its education financing and university incentives to ensure that enough engineers are ready to work in advanced industries.

In the AI economy, competitive advantage will depend less on memorizing information and more on the ability to question intelligent systems, identify errors, and refine outputs. Korea’s education system should adapt to prepare students for workplaces where managing AI-generated mistakes is more valuable than speed of recall.

As Korea moves toward its goal of commercializing Level 4 autonomous driving by 2027, the central constraint may not be technological readiness but whether the government reforms the mobility market in advance. Without regulatory changes, Korea risks deploying advanced autonomous vehicles within a closed, taxi-centered system.

The Virtual Brunei Initiative shows how small nations can use immersive technology to build digital skills, promote cultural exchange, and drive economic growth through coordinated public-private partnerships.

Japan should revise its draft AI IP code to remove technically infeasible disclosure mandates and instead adopt workable, pro-innovation transparency standards aligned with international efforts like the Hiroshima AI Process to preserve U.S. alignment and avoid deterring AI investment.

Boeing and Airbus have long dominated the global commercial aircraft industry in production and innovation. But the rise of COMAC—China’s government-created, mercantilist-fueled national champion—threatens the foundations of market-based commercial aviation.

Between 2005 and 2024, Chinese firms received approximately 3 to 8 times more subsidies as competitor firms in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The EU’s Tech Sovereignty Package seeks to reduce reliance on American technology, but by restricting access to the firms driving innovation in cloud computing, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure, it risks weakening Europe’s competitiveness and strengthening China’s position in the global tech race.

As Daniel Castro writes in Tech Policy Press, U.S. export controls were intended to preserve America’s AI lead, but by accelerating China’s push for technological self-sufficiency and strengthening competing AI ecosystems, they may be undermining that goal.

Chinese industrial policy is reshaping global manufacturing and impacting every U.S. state. The result is growing risk to American industry, jobs, and national security.

The EU’s Tech Sovereignty Package seeks to reduce reliance on American technology, but by restricting access to the firms driving innovation in cloud computing, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure, it risks weakening Europe’s competitiveness and strengthening China’s position in the global tech race.

ITIF believes that in many important respects the Draft Guidance appears to broadly track the EU’s own revised technology transfer guidance (Revised EU Guidance) on technology pools in a largely unproblematic way but rightly declines to follow the Revised EU Guidance’s discussion of the competitive analysis involving licensing negotiation groups.

The EU has an array of discriminatory policies that target major U.S. tech firms, a legitimate basis for action under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. U.S. policymakers should favor amicably negotiated solutions, but this tool is available as a last resort if necessary.

The EU is increasingly imposing digital fines based on firms’ global turnover rather than local revenue—a structure that disproportionately targets large U.S. technology companies. As other countries adopt similar regulatory models, Washington must push back before the European playbook becomes the global standard.

For policymakers to bolster their regional innovation capacity and global competitiveness, they first must know where they stand. This report benchmarks 48 regions across Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Serbia on 13 commonly available innovation indicators.

Echoing social capitalism, the encyclical gets technology and employment wrong, succumbing to the lump-of-labor fallacy and short-term protection over long-term progress.

The Pope’s AI encyclical reflects social capitalism’s animus toward growth, technology-driven creative destruction, international economic competition, and large business.

If the UN were serious about ending poverty and improving living standards worldwide, it would make productivity growth the organizing principle of its sustainable development agenda.

Country cases show that the Trump administration’s tariffs have had a paradoxical effect. They have given Washington short-term leverage in some bilateral negotiations, especially with countries seeking improved access to the U.S. market or deeper security and technology ties. But they have also accelerated a global search for optionality.

American tech companies built the digital economy, and they are its leading producers. But America better watch out, because the EU is making a concerted effort to rewrite the rules of the game through regulatory policy.

A bill proposing ex ante regulation of digital markets in Brazil would harm efficiency and innovation. Given the significance of this bill, the Brazilian legislature should not proceed with a motion to bypass typical civil procedures and debate.

Brazil’s Digital Markets Bill promises to tame tech giants, but in reality, it threatens to import Europe’s flawed regulatory experiment—punishing innovation more than protecting consumers

This report ranks more than 200 regions across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States on 13 commonly available indicators of innovation competitiveness, and offers policymakers a guide to bolstering regional and national innovation capacity.

A combination of privacy-protective age verification systems utilizing digital forms of identification and AI, parental controls that are readily available and easy to use, and greater transparency from digital platforms would increase children’s safety and privacy, encourage innovation in improved safety and privacy controls, and better inform policymakers and parents on next steps to protect children.

Mexico's newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, can reverse President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's anti-innovation policies toward genetically modified maize, and improve the lives of small farmers across Mexico.