There’s an old joke in economics that stock markets have predicted nine out of the past five recessions. The point being that predicting a recession solely based on the stock market is difficult.

At the 2025 global climate summit, COP30, held in Belém, Brazil, one decision stood out with major consequences for Africa: countries agreed on a new set of progress indicators.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Nick writes about economics, financial markets and investing. Following the soft July jobs report that showed a 4.3% unemployment ...

Lagging indicators are widely used to measure business, economic, and financial market trends. Lagging indicators measure events that have already happened. Lagging indicators lack predictive power ...

Fears of a recession are back on investors’ minds. But predicting the onset of an economic downturn, let alone the length and severity of one, is difficult even for the experts. As a rule of thumb, ...

Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola is a Senior Researcher at the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). He has received numerous research grants focused on climate ...