Transition Report 2026-27: Frontiers of competitiveness launch

Join us at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on Tuesday 17 November 2026 at 16:00 (London time) for the launch of the Transition Report 2026-27. 

The discussion, moderated by Katie Prescott, features:

• Luis Garicano, Professor of Public Policy, LSE
• Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist, EBRD
• Andreata Muforo, Partner, TLcom Capital

The discussion will be followed by drinks and canapés at 17:30. For in-person attendance, register via the button above.

The event will be streamed online.

Entitled Frontiers of competitiveness, the report discusses how economies can reinvent themselves in today’s world and not fall behind. As technology advances and geopolitics shift, what countries produce and export changes. Rising global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and increased defence spending could, in principle, create opportunities for economies to develop new export capabilities. Yet, leveraging these demand shocks will be challenging. Economies’ export structures tend to be highly persistent, and developing new export specialisations is more difficult in the case of complex products such as AI and military goods. Building new capabilities involves trial and error, requires active policy support and tends to be more successful where economies already have established specialisations in related upstream or downstream products.

The policy challenge is to use scarce public resources well. With defence spending absorbing a growing share of constrained public budgets, support is best directed at the conditions under which existing capabilities can develop into new comparative advantages: skills, research infrastructure, access to finance and integration into cross-border supply chains. Where such capabilities are already present, they point towards AI-enabled applications, regional defence production and specialised roles in global value chains, though which of these prove viable is something firms will establish through experimentation rather than something policymakers can determine in advance.