will bear directly on the rates of workforce participation and, in turn, impact rates of potential economic growth across the industrialized world. at the same time, while in relative terms the old exceed the young, the number of young people in the world is the largest in history. but it is not distributed evenly around the globe : of the 2. 2 billion people added to the world population since 1990, less than 1 in 10 live in advanced countries. in addition africa, which comprises some of the poorest countries in the world, is expected to have the fastest population increase and to reach asian figures within this century in absolute terms. future higher pressures on migration flows are to be expected, as well as further, possibly dramatic consequences for climate change. in response to all these changes, which policies are countries called on to design and implement? my view is that the first and most important response to the confluence of rapid technological change, globalization and demographic trends should be to rebuild human capital and, then, to prioritize human capital investment as a key strategy for economic competitiveness and growth. many observers are now advocating for a greater emphasis on the more creative subjects into a wider school curriculum, integrating science, technology, engineering and mathematics ( the traditional acronym stem ) with the arts ( steam ) and reading and writing ( stream ). it is widely suggested that once both manual and data - driven tasks have been automated, human contribution will be concentrated in those creative tasks that will redefine product differentiation : understanding and anticipating the needs and behaviour of consumers, designing the aesthetics of new products and their integration into every - day life. but this is not sufficient : a more complex and comprehensive definition of “ human capital ” should be endorsed. in the 21st century, the traditional classroom method where knowledge is imparted passively from teacher to students is no longer enough. today ’ s citizens are required to develop and continuously refine a large arsenal of both cognitive and non - cognitive skills. they need to be able to search for specific information in the ever - growing digital ocean that is the internet, recognize the quality of this information and process it critically. to adapt to the modern and more flexible model of business organization, the workforce must develop soft skills such as problem - solving attitudes, teamwork, effective communication and negotiation. workers can survive and successfully exploit the acceleration of the pace of technological innovation only if they “ learn to learn ”, and continuously update their skills. re - designing education policies is an extremely challenging

for controlling intermediaries and those with powers over markets. the growth of asset management, where the activities typical of institutions engaged in banking, insurance and securities investment services intersect, has fostered the rise of financial conglomerates. the presence of these complex organizations creates new channels for the spread of possible crises ; their international ramification and the existence of different types of intermediaries increase the difficulty of coordinating the supervisory bodies involved. generally speaking, the emergence of a small group of very large global operators with substantial capital and highly diversified portfolios strengthens the financial system ; the emergence of such a group nonetheless faces the international community with the problem of forestalling the possibility of an insolvency and defining instruments on an adequate scale for handling such an event. the supervision of financial conglomerates is hindered by the existence of unregulated entities, but problems also arise where all the components are subject to prudential controls. in the case of capital adequacy, it is necessary to avoid double and multiple gearing, which can result in the group as a whole failing to have adequate capital even though the individual units all satisfy their respective capital requirements. the ramification and strategies of groups can reduce the effectiveness of individual supervisory authorities ’ prudential controls and make it less easy to overcome company crises. risk control in the more complex financial conglomerates is often centralized in a single operating unit ; the correspondence between company structures and lines of business ceases to exist ; group activities are no longer covered by supervisory controls, which are divided by country, type of institution and product. regulators are likely to encounter greater obstacles to the effective performance of their tasks because functions that are crucial to the sound and prudent management of the undertaking subject to supervision are carried on in a different jurisdiction. awareness of these difficulties has led to an intensification of cooperative efforts in international fora. at the beginning of 1996 the basle committee on banking supervision, the international organization of securities commissions ( iosco ) and the international association of insurance supervisors ( iais ) set up the joint forum on financial conglomerates and charged it with the task of addressing the supervisory issues raised by these complex financial organizations. in particular, the joint forum has studied the practical means of facilitating the exchange of information among supervisory authorities, at both the national and the international levels, and has examined arrangements for facilitating the coordination of control activities both in ordinary circumstances and in crises. it has also drawn up a list of principles aimed at permitting