Today’s global environment is a reminder that politics can close markets as well as open them. Recent geopolitical shifts suggest that the heyday of globalization could be behind us, and firms operating in the global economy will have to grapple with new political challenges surrounding deglobalization and heightened policy volatility. The geopolitical shifts, supply chain issues, inward-looking nationalist policies, and global trade skirmishes point to a new era characterized by lower levels of market integration and less policy coordination between countries. Growing concerns regarding climate change as well as inequality and taxation are pressuring governments to engage in deeper market regulation than before. In the years ahead, firms will be forced to re-evaluate many long-standing assumptions about conducting business. In particular, firms and governments will have to review where their interests overlap and diverge, and how to manage new sources of conflict or new threats to their business models.

The aim of this Conference, organized at ESSEC Business School in Asia Pacific by the ESSEC Institute for Geopolitics & Business, is to advance our understanding of the relationship between firms’ activities and governments’ policy choices in the context of an increasingly polarized global economy. We aim to bring together an inter-disciplinary group of researchers examining the motivations, strategies, roles, and interdependencies of governments and businesses in a new global landscape.

This year, the Conference will be fully in-person, and will be hosted by ESSEC Business School Asia-Pacific, in Singapore, on April 9, 2026.