Research & Insights

Mobilizing private capital is a central pillar of many governments’ affordable housing plans. But which investment approaches support affordability and climate goals - and which risk making them worse? PDI is pleased to be a co-founding member of the Taskforce on Affordable and Sustainable Housing (TASH). In this publication, we provide a preliminary assessment of the impacts that housing financialization is having on people and the planet in Europe.

In his 2026 annual letter, the head of the world's most powerful asset manager is telling shareholders — plainly — that capitalism is working, just not for enough people. Fink's solution centers on expanding access to capital markets — more people investing in stocks, more retail participation, tokenized assets in digital wallets, investment accounts seeded at birth. These are useful mechanisms, and broader market participation is better than the status quo. But there's a foundational problem with asking workers to invest more in the stock market when the stock market is partly built on not paying them enough in the first place.

It’s not easy to neatly summarise what corporate governance is ‘for’ but if you asked many people who work in and around the field the word ‘accountability’ would feature prominently. In particular, when talking about the Anglo-American model, this typically means accountability to shareholders.

Workforce representation on company boards is established in Europe, yet remains rare in the UK and US. Recent progress has stalled, revealing the fragility of arrangements relying on leadership commitment rather than institutional anchoring.

An iterative blueprint for capital market actors, policymakers, and regulators to explore how capital markets can play a transformative role in building a regenerative and inclusive economy by realigning financial value with real-world value.

The Playbook highlights the potential of employee ownership to create more inclusive and resilient economies, particularly in emerging markets where wealth concentration and economic inequality remain pressing challenges from within and across countries.

This article is a preview into a forthcoming report that examines how economic inequality is emerging as a systemic threat to the economy and financial markets, paralleling the recognition climate change and biodiversity loss have already received. The report will include additional analysis and citations. We are grateful to the Transition Investment Lab for their feature of this work.

We are in the polycrisis and a time of deep uncertainty, where the reliability of predictive models based on history is being called into question, and where new ways of thinking are essential to address the complexity of interconnected systems. After six years we have a strengthened conviction that our original thesis is correct – to address the polycrisis, we must co-create solutions together with stakeholders from all walks of life. And to do this, we must address economic inequality and rising polarization.

The Financing for Development Addis Ababa Action Agenda calls for increased private finance, debt sustainability, and an enhanced focus on addressing systemic issues and financial stability to support economic growth in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs). However, barriers to adequately priced capital for EMDEs remain high.  This session explored the proposition that, in order to incentivize sustainable investment in EMDEs at scale, investors need to understand the systemic and/or systematic risks of not allocating such capital. Significant research has been conducted on the overlooked opportunity of investing in these markets. However, according to dominant market interpretations of risk, investors typically believe they can achieve comparable or stronger returns in developed markets with less risk than EMDEs.