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.

In our contribution to the NYU Abu Dhabi Transition Investment Lab's annual report, in particular on the theme "Understanding Inequality as a Systemic Risk to Financial Markets and Portfolios", our Executive Director, Delilah Rothenberg, makes the case that inequality has earned its place alongside climate and nature as a defining systemic risk of our time. Modern finance has not yet developed the analytical tools that enable diversified investors to adequately factor externalized social costs into their risk-return analysis. As a result, it's increasingly unclear whether markets can facilitate the price discovery needed to reflect the true value of human, social, and natural capital.

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.

In this blog, PDI's Raphaele Chappe and Delilah Rothenberg challenge a foundational assumption underlying monetary policy: that wages are the primary driver of inflation. Drawing on the concept of "plutonomy" — economies where wealth and consumption are heavily concentrated among the affluent — they examine how the growing dominance of high-income households in aggregate demand may be fueling sector-specific inflation in housing, education, and healthcare, while simultaneously undermining the effectiveness of traditional policy tools like interest rate adjustments. The piece argues that for investors, central banks, and policymakers, understanding who is driving demand — and where that demand is concentrated — is essential to managing systemic risk and advancing more resilient, broad-based economic growth.

This Playbook provides an analytical approach to advancing employee ownership (EO) across seven countries in the sub-continent, offering insights that can be adapted to other EMDEs where EO remains underutilized. The Playbook highlights the potential of EO 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. By giving workers a direct stake in the success of the businesses they help build and sustain, EO can drive long-term prosperity, improve business performance, and strengthen communities.