Misery loves inflation targeters' company

The United States, Europe, and Japan are all making positive economic strides. In the US, the unemployment rate is falling, and now stands at just over four percent.
29 December 2017

Monetary policy normalisation in Europe

When the European Central Bank's Governing Council met on December 14, there was little to surprise financial markets, because no policy changes could be gleaned from public remarks.
26 December 2017

Preventing the next African famine

After falling for more than a decade, the number of hungry people in the world is rising once again. This year was marked by the worst global food crisis since World War II, with South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, and Nigeria either experiencing famine or teetering on the brink.
25 December 2017

The Pandora's box of the digital age

Is the world sliding dangerously toward cyber Armageddon? Let us hope not; but let us also apprehend the threat, and focus on what to do about it.
22 December 2017

Seeing through big tobacco's smokescreen

We all know how bad tobacco is, that it kills millions of people every year, and that it harms many more. We also know that tobacco
21 December 2017

Can Europe Sustain the Macron Moment?

At the start of 2017, many feared that the European project would experience a near-breakdown within the next year.
19 December 2017

Coming clean in 2018

It has been a bumper year for making the invisible visible. The last 12 months have overflowed with leaks, allegations, and other disclosures, not just of misconduct by individuals, business leaders, and politicians, but also of proactive schemes to prevent that misconduct from ever coming to light.
15 December 2017

Two myths about automation

Robots, machine learning, and artificial intelligence promise to change fundamentally the nature of work. Everyone knows this.
14 December 2017

India's culture war comes to Bollywood

Culture and history have become new battlegrounds in India. Debates over the Taj Mahal's position as a symbol of multicultural India have yet to be settled, yet the nation is already being torn apart further by another cultural controversy—this time, over a film.
13 December 2017

The globalisation of our discontent

Fifteen years ago, I published Globalization and Its Discontents, a book that sought to explain why there was so much dissatisfaction with globalisation within the developing countries.
11 December 2017

Europe's Chance to Lead on Robotics and AI

At least since Mary Shelley created Victor Frankenstein and his iconic monster in 1818, humans have had a morbid fascination with man-made beings that could threaten our existence. From the American television adaptation of...
8 December 2017

Europe's crisis starts at home

Deep divisions within Europe are increasingly threatening the values upon which the European project of “ever closer union” is based. In 2015, during the refugee crisis, many commentators saw a divide between German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán's vision of ethnic purity: a Western Europe of bridges versus an Eastern Europe of walls.
6 December 2017

Poverty is also a psychosocial problem

Being poor is a highly shameful experience, degrading one's dignity and sense of self-worth. While the manifestations and causes of poverty differ, the humiliation that accompanies it is universal.
24 November 2017

Inequality comes to Asia

From China to India, Asian countries' rapid economic expansion has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in recent decades. Yet the income distribution has lately worsened, with inequality now potentially even more severe in Asia than in the developed economies of the West.
21 November 2017

The Upgrade Myth

From the pocket calculator to the Prius, I've always been what they call an “early adopter.” I was a technology enthusiast, a lover of progress, eager to move into the future. No more.
19 November 2017

Central Banks in the dock

On November 11, 1997, the Bank of England took a big step toward independence, courtesy of the second reading in the House of Commons of a bill amending the Bank Act of 1946. The bill gave legislative affirmation to the decision,
15 November 2017

A Federal Spain in a Federal Europe

I have always been a profound admirer of Spanish democracy, but especially since February 23, 1981. On that dramatic day, Colonel Antonio Tejero attempted a coup d'état against the young democratic regime.
10 November 2017

Keeping US policymaking honest

In a recent appearance here at the University of California, Berkeley, Alice Rivlin expressed optimism about the future of economic policymaking in the United States. What Rivlin—who served as Vice Chair of the US Federal Reserve,
8 November 2017

The curious case of the missing defaults

Booms and busts in international capital flows and commodity prices, as well as the vagaries of international interest rates, have long been associated with economic crises, especially—but not exclusively—in emerging markets.
6 November 2017

Has Trump captured the Fed?

One of the important powers of any US president is to appoint members and heads of the many agencies that are responsible for implementing the country's laws and regulations and, in many cases, governing the economy.
4 November 2017