Marc Canal

Senior Fellow, McKinsey Global Institute, Barcelona

Leads research on global progress, productivity, and economic growth and their intersections with demographics, human capital, and innovation and technology

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About Marc

Marc is an associate partner and senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey’s business and economics research arm. He is based in Barcelona.

Since 2016, he has led research on productivity and prosperity. This includes areas ranging from global progress and economic growth to demographics, skills, innovation, and technology. Marc speaks about these topics and broader global trends around the world, including in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. He is a coauthor of the book, A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come.

Prior to joining MGI, he served as a consultant at McKinsey, working in industries such as banking, retail, and the public sector in Europe. Marc holds a degree in business administration from ESADE Barcelona, a master’s in financial economics from HEC Paris, and an MBA from the London Business School.

Publications

“A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come,” McKinsey Global Institute (Book), January 2026

“Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality,” McKinsey Global Institute, January 2025

“Pixels of Progress: A granular look at Vietnam’s development journey,” McKinsey & Company, August 2024

“Investing in productivity growth,” McKinsey Global Institute, March 2024

“Pixels of Progress: A granular look at human development around the world,” McKinsey Global Institute, December 2022

“Will productivity and growth return after the COVID-19 crisis?,” McKinsey Global Institute, March 2021

“Problems amid progress: Improving lives and livelihoods for ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom,” McKinsey & Company, October 2020

“Solving the United Kingdom’s productivity puzzle in a digital age,” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2018

“Solving the productivity puzzle: The role of demand and the promise of digitization,” McKinsey Global Institute, February 2018

Op-eds

“A Century of Plenty: from possibility to probability,” DLD, June 2026

“A Path to Universal Prosperity by 2100,” Project Syndicate, February 2026

“A century of plenty is possible…If we choose it,” Milken Institute Review, February 2026

“Human and AI ingenuity can deliver a Century of Plenty,” Wall Street Journal, January 2026

“Emerging Economies Must Get Rich Before They Get Old,” Project Syndicate, March 2025

“Mexico's aging will require accelerating productivity,” Expansion, January 2025

“All Progress Is Local,” Project Syndicate, December 2022

Podcasts and video

“A Century of Plenty,” Hello Tomorrow, October 2026

“Andrew McAfee on AI, jobs, and ‘permissionless innovation’,” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2026

“Is progress behind us, or is ‘plenty’ still possible?,” McKinsey & Company, September 2026

“Why progress is more physical than we think,” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2026

“Some hard questions about a world of plenty,” McKinsey Global Institute, August 2026

“How do we reach universal prosperity by 2100?,” McKinsey Global Institute, August 2026

“Estamos en un Cambio de Era,” The PortCast, August 2026

“From Recovery to Plenty,” Athens Investment Summit, July 2026

“Growth at Scale in the Age of AI,” The Strategy Skills Podcast, March 2026

“22 stats that prove global prosperity by 2100 is possible,” The Existential Hope Podcast, February 2026

“How the whole world can exceed Swiss living standards by 2100 (backed by data),” Existential Hope, February 2026

“Pulling off another century of human progress,” McKinsey Global Institute, January 2026

Education

London Business School
MBA

HEC Paris
MSc, managerial and financial economics

ESADE
Bachelor’s, business administration