Data Driven Articles, built from public data and official sources.
Where the stock market is worth more than the economy
Comparing what a country's listed companies are worth with what its whole economy produces in a year shows how much of national wealth is tied up in the stock market, and how much investors are willing to pay for it. In 2025 the typical country was at 41%, but Hong Kong's listed companies were worth over 14 times its annual output, and 14 of the 66 countries with data were above 100%. Part of that gap is real, and part of it is an accounting quirk rather than a sign of a "bigger" market.
Read MoreWho collects the world's intellectual property royalties? 2005 to 2025
Of the 106 countries that report both sides of the ledger, only 17 earned more from intellectual property (IP) than they paid in 2025. The United States alone collected US$195 billion, about 31% of reported receipts, and its net surplus of US$134 billion is more than five times that of the next country. At the other end, Ireland paid US$210 billion, more than a quarter of all reported payments, while receiving only US$18 billion.
The first chart shows the eight largest net receivers and the eight largest net payers in 2025.
Read MoreA third of the world's electricity is now renewable: 2000 to 2025
Renewables supplied 33.5% of the world's electricity in 2025, up from 18.7% in 2000. Output more than tripled, from 2,867 to 10,702 terawatt hours, because total generation also doubled. Almost all of the extra share came from wind and solar. Hydro is still the largest renewable source, and the country ranking is led by hydro systems, not by the new technologies.
Fossil fuels still supplied 57.7% of electricity in 2025. Coal remained the largest single source. That is compatible with a falling coal share: total electricity grew faster than coal did, so coal output is still higher than in 2000.
Read MoreUS stocks beat the rest of the world by about 2% a year since 1996, but not in every decade
US stocks returned about 10.4% a year between 1996 and 2025, against 8.5% for a global portfolio of developed and emerging markets. At that pace $10,000 invested in January 1996 became about $195,000 in US stocks and about $115,000 in the global portfolio. Most of that gap opened after 2013. Before that, the rest of the developed world was ahead for years, and sector leaders changed every decade.
This is education, not investment advice. Past returns do not predict future returns, and every figure below is before fees and taxes.
Read MoreWho is winning the business of running? HOKA and On have grown more than tenfold since 2019
Two running brands that were small in 2019, HOKA and On, have each grown their annual sales more than tenfold since then. HOKA went from $223 million to $2.59 billion, and On from 267 million to 3.01 billion Swiss francs. Over the same years Nike's total sales rose 19%, and they are now 10% below their 2024 peak. Alongside the new brands sit a new kind of shoe, with a thick foam sole and an embedded plate, that made elite marathon times faster, and a fitness-watch business that now makes up a third of Garmin's sales.
Read MoreWho runs the fastest marathons? Kenya and Ethiopia supply 63% of the top 1,000 times
Of the 1,000 fastest marathon times ever run by men, 404 belong to Kenyans and 227 to Ethiopians, together 63%. Among the 500 fastest women the two countries hold 62%. Every men's world record since 2003 has been set by a Kenyan or an Ethiopian, and on 26 April 2026 Sabastian Sawe of Kenya ran 1:59:30 in London, the first marathon under two hours in a record-eligible race. This article follows the race from its 1896 beginnings to that result, and looks at when and how the East African takeover started.
Read MoreWho is growing the world economy? Asia has supplied 60% of the growth since 1990
Of every dollar the world economy has added since 1990, about 60 cents came from Asia, 14 from North America, 12 from Europe, 6 from Latin America and 6 from Africa. China alone went from 3% of world output to 20%. Since 2019 Asia's share of the new output has risen to 66%.
That is the shape of the world economy today: one region growing fast, three growing slowly and one, Africa, growing in total but barely per person because its population is growing as fast as its output.
Read MoreKenya's shilling has not moved in two years. Its biggest source of dollars is Kenyans abroad.
The Kenyan shilling has barely moved for more than two years: since July 2024 it has stayed between 128 and 131 to the US dollar. That calm is recent and unusual. The shilling lost more than a third of its value between 2020 and January 2024, touching about 163, and before that spent decades sliding from 7 to the dollar at independence to more than 100.
The biggest single source of the dollars behind it is not a crop or a beach. Kenyans abroad sent home about $5.1 billion in 2025, more than the country earned from any single export...
Read MoreIs Portugal unaffordable? A housing problem, not a cost of living one
Ask people in Portugal and many will tell you the country has become unbearably expensive to live in. We looked at 25 years of public data to see whether that holds up. It does for one thing, housing. Buying a home now costs far more relative to pay than it did a decade ago, and a new rental in the municipalities of Lisbon and Cascais, the core of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, costs more than a full-time minimum wage.
Read MoreCoal's share of world electricity has fallen, but its output has grown: 2000 to 2025
Coal supplied 33.1% of the world's electricity in 2025, down from a peak of 40.8% in 2007. Yet the world generated 81% more electricity from coal in 2025 than in 2000 (10,490 against 5,809 terawatt hours), because total electricity generation more than doubled. This article uses Ember's open electricity data to show how both things are true, and where coal power has risen and fallen.
Coal is still the largest single source of electricity, but the mix has shifted. Wind and solar went from almost nothing to about a sixth of the total, while nuclear and oil-based generation lost share.
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