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The growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has heightened interest in the labour market value of AI-related skills, yet causal evidence on their role in hiring decisions remains scarce. This study examines whether AI skills serve as a positive hiring signal and whether they can offset conventional disadvantages such as older age or lower formal education. We conduct an experimental survey with 1,700 recruiters from the United Kingdom and the United States. Using a paired conjoint design, recruiters evaluated hypothetical candidates represented by synthetically designed resumes. Across three occupations - graphic designer, office assistant, and software engineer - AI skills significantly increase interview invitation probabilities by approximately 8 to 15 percentage points. AI skills also partially or fully offset disadvantages related to age and lower education, with effects strongest for office assistants, where formal AI certification plays an additional compensatory role. Effects are weaker for graphic designers, consistent with more skeptical recruiter attitudes toward AI in creative work. Finally, recruiters' own background and AI usage significantly moderate these effects. Overall, the findings demonstrate that AI skills function as a powerful hiring signal and can mitigate traditional labour market disadvantages, with implications for workers' skill acquisition strategies and firms' recruitment practices.
This research article presents new data on military procurement in Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), Poland, and France, and uses these data to analyse procurement patterns, delivery timelines, and force-generation constraints against the background of a deteriorating security situation and rising Russian capabilities. We show that procurement has substantially increased since 2022 with Germany and Poland focusing on land forces, while the UK’s spending is focused on maritime forces. However, we show that procurement needs to accelerate and be frontloaded to be prepared for a possible Russian attack assessed to occur as early as 2030, as delivery delays of three years or more persist. Military strategy and technology are evolving rapidly, particularly with the growing role of unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and multi-domain integration. Military planners must modernise weapons and strategy while simultaneously scaling existing and effective systems. We show that sustained investment in European technology is essential for modernisation. European weapons tend to be expensive due to low production volumes in a fragmented market, and a focus on cost-effectiveness is vital to ensure the EU’s planned €800 billion defence spending is sufficient and fiscally sustainable.
Investments into manufacturing facilities represent valuable information about the pace, evolution and geographic distribution of the clean energy transition. This information is unstructured and scattered across multiple sources, making it difficult to process. Here we present Tuone, a semi-automated framework for tracking manufacturing investments, combining large-scale text analysis with a knowledge graph linking companies, facilities, technologies, capacities and investments over time. The framework transforms unstructured public information into a machine-readable database, enabling consistent identification of investments across countries and technologies. We apply Tuone to batteries, electric vehicles, green iron, solar photovoltaics and wind manufacturing in Europe, developing a database covering investments of €198 billion across 343 facilities between 2016 and 2025. The resulting resource provides a transparent and extensible foundation for analysing clean energy manufacturing investment, supporting research on industrial policy, economic security and supply-chain development.
Subsequent US administrations have shifted the focus of US foreign policy over the last decades. A pivot to Asia characterised President Obama's administrations while President Biden focused on Europe. President Trump's second administration emphasises homeland security and the Western hemisphere. Meanwhile, the Middle East continues to be an important focus of US foreign policy. But do these 'pivots' result in different weapon export patterns, one of the key resources of US foreign policy? The US defence industrial base produces the most advanced weapons in the world and they are in high demand thanks to their effectiveness. In this paper, we analyse all US foreign military sales notifications since 2008 based on a novel database. Our descriptive evidence does not show a 'pivot to Asia' during the Obama presidency while exports to Europe have increased substantially during the Biden presidency and Russia's war against Ukraine. The first Trump administration shows no clear shift towards Asia nor towards the homeland but in the second administration, first evidence suggests that FMS are declining while the US military is substantially increasing its demand from the US defence industrial base-consistent with a shift to the homeland. Three policy implications emerge. First, while strategies set the tone, the United States has historically reacted to actual needs as they emerge, a factor that US defence companies need to consider. Second, from the perspective of recipient countries of weapon sales, US 'pivots' need to be taken with a grain of salt. Finally, military planners, especially in Europe, need to prepare for less dependence on the US military industrial base given the general uncertainty and the much more forceful shift in US policy during the current administration compared to previous 'pivots'.
The US has replaced Russia to a great extent as an energy supplier to the European Union, but this has not so far created a new vulnerability.
