IE Insights
The research behind the index.
A growing library of reference-grade analysis derived from the IEPA engine. Every piece is tied to the zones and markets it examines, so no reading ends at a dead end.
29
Pieces
6
Zones covered
117
Economies cited
2024
Engine vintage
The corpus, mapped · hover a node · click to open its entry
29 / 29 pieces
Series B · The Six Lenses · Manifesto
Why We Built Six Zones Instead of One Number
A single rank flatters headlines and fails governments. The case for reading a regional economy as six load-bearing zones, and for naming the one that binds.
Derived from IEPA vintage 2024 · 6 zones · 117 economies
Read the piece →FIG · SIX-ZONE PROFILE: three economies, equal-weight default
Series A
A·01The Foundations
8 PIECESState of the Index 2026
The annual read: where capability rose, where alignment slipped, and the year's biggest movers.
Prosperity🌍 11718 MIN
A·02The FDI Paradox
Why the markets that most need foreign capital are structurally invisible to it, and what the conduit distortion hides.
FDI🇲🇹 🇱🇺 +414 MIN
A·03Alignment Is the Hidden Variable
Institutions, incentives, and the quiet coherence that separates converters from theaters.
Alignment🇨🇷 🇨🇳 +311 MIN
A·04The Conduit Illusion
Headline FDI numbers routed through financial conduits, and how the index refuses to be fooled by them.
FDI🇱🇺 🇳🇱 🇭🇰12 MIN
A·05The Nordic Operating System
What Finland, Sweden, and Denmark actually share, and why it is not culture.
Innovation🇫🇮 🇸🇪 🇩🇰13 MIN
A·06The Gulf's Bet
Sovereign capital as an alignment instrument: what the engine sees in the UAE and Saudi trajectories.
Alignment🇦🇪 🇸🇦 🇶🇦12 MIN
A·07The Comeback Belt
The rising middle: economies compounding capability faster than anyone is watching.
Resilience🇭🇷 🇸🇳 🇬🇪 +410 MIN
A·08Singapore vs the United States
Two number-one stories, two completely different machines. A tale of depth against breadth.
Innovation🇸🇬 🇺🇸13 MIN
Series B
B·09The Six Lenses
7 PIECESInnovation Capacity Is Not Innovation Output
The conversion gap: economies with world-class inputs and missing results, quantified.
Innovation🌍 11712 MIN
B·10The Entrepreneurship Capacity Gap
Where founders amplify a system and where the system quietly absorbs them.
Entrepreneurship🇰🇪 🇮🇩 +512 MIN
B·11Resilience as Competitiveness
Shock absorption is not defensive. The engine shows resilience pays like an offense.
Resilience🇺🇦 🇱🇹 +311 MIN
B·12Coherence Comes First
Alignment binds up to capability, not down to outcomes. The floor, not a lever.
Alignment🇨🇳 🇨🇷13 MIN
B·13The Accelerator, Not the Engine
FDI pays off only where the foundations already hold. Finland against Cambodia, quantified.
FDI🇫🇮 🇰🇭15 MIN
B·14The Outcome You Cannot Build
Prosperity is a readout, not a lever. Why three tied scores tell three different stories.
Prosperity🇰🇷 🇲🇾 🇰🇿12 MIN
B·15Why We Built Six Zones Instead of One Number
A single rank flatters headlines and fails governments. The manifesto.
Prosperity🌍 11716 MIN
Series C
C·01The Evidence
14 PIECESSeventy Percent Would Have Come Anyway
Investor surveys put incentive redundancy at 70 to 85 percent. The most common tool in investment promotion is mostly a discount for buyers who had already decided.
FDI🇯🇴 🇲🇿 🇷🇸 +315 MIN
C·02Everyone Has a Zone
More than 2,300 special economic zones exist and almost no economy is without one. The record calls them a second-best that delays the reform they substitute for.
Alignment🇦🇲 🇲🇷 🇯🇲11 MIN
C·03A Lottery in Sana'a
820 firms applied for 200 grants and the winners were drawn in public. Transparent allocation and a valid control group turn out to be the same act.
Entrepreneurship🇾🇪12 MIN
C·04Guaranteed, Not Lent
A credit guarantee has one dial and no correct setting. Low, and banks stop screening. High, and they lend only to firms they would have funded anyway.
Entrepreneurship🇦🇷11 MIN
C·05Counted, Not Working
Mauritania's incubators went from two to nine in five years. Its own diagnostic found exactly one able to raise money for the firms inside it.
Entrepreneurship🇲🇷 🇨🇱10 MIN
C·06Evidence of Results
Fourteen innovation agencies studied by the institution that funds them. Under a heading marked Impact Evaluations, most of what appears is a count of beneficiaries.
Alignment🇦🇲 🇮🇳 🇬🇪 +1111 MIN
C·07The Park Is Not the Point
A government built technology zones to put companies next to researchers. A tenant survey years later found four percent had started collaborating with them.
Innovation🌍10 MIN
C·08Who Promotes the Promoters
Consultants posing as investors sent two project inquiries to 181 national promotion agencies. Twenty-nine scored above half marks.
FDI🇧🇷 🇦🇹 +17913 MIN
C·09Ask, or Measure
There are two ways to know what would have happened otherwise. One study did both on the same firms, and 41 percent of them fell into a category neither method reports.
Entrepreneurship🇾🇪11 MIN
C·10What Actually Worked
Nine articles of instruments failing. The same record holds the ones that worked, and what they share is not budget. Ecuador did it with five officers.
Alignment🇪🇨 🇲🇺 🇧🇷 +412 MIN
C·11The Honest Empty
For seven economies our own engine assessed over four hundred products each and returned nothing. The emptiness is the diagnosis, so we ship it.
Prosperity🇧🇼 🇳🇬 🇵🇪 +412 MIN
C·12The Threshold Nobody Budgets For
Foreign investment raises growth only above a minimum stock of human capital. Between 23 and 47 of the 69 countries studied sat below the line.
FDI🌍 6912 MIN
C·13Spillovers Travel Down, Not Across
Benefits reach suppliers, not competitors. And when 3,626 published estimates were corrected for publication bias, the average effect fell fivefold.
FDI🇱🇹 🌍13 MIN
C·14A Gap Is Not a Verdict
Sixteen economies build far more capability than they convert into investment. Their prosperity outcomes run from 38.6 to 71.2. The gap alone tells you nothing.
Prosperity🇯🇵 🇨🇭 🇧🇴 +1313 MIN
Every piece cites the engine it was derived from · IEPA vintage 2024 · updated with each annual refresh