As the world grapples with an unprecedented confluence of devastating floods, wildfires, and droughts, the debate about how to address the escalating climate crisis is increasingly distorted by big-bu ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-30
The United States and China remain on a collision course. The new cold war between them may eventually turn hot over the issue of Taiwan. The “Thucydides Trap” – in which a rising power seems destined ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-29
When I coined the BRIC acronym back in 2001, my primary point was that global governance would need to adjust to incorporate the world’s largest emerging economies. Not only did Brazil, Russia, India, ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-28
At least half of the global population lacks access to essential health services, and health-care expenses push almost 100 million people into extreme poverty each year. How scarce resources are distr ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-25
Three upcoming international gatherings – the G20 Leaders’ Summit in September, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in October, and the United Nations Climate Change Confere ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-24
The 2008 financial crisis in the United States kicked off a debt supercycle, which spread to Europe in 2010 and has recently engulfed many of the world’s low-income and lower-middle-income countries. ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-18
In just one year, inflation in the United States has fallen from a peak of about 9% to just 3%. Standard economic models suggest that such rapid disinflation would be possible only with a large increa ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-18
Disruptive technologies are rarely welcomed by workers or others with a significant stake in the status quo. Innovation requires adaptation, and adaptation is costly. Powerful incumbents’ resistance t ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-17
As Western governments face the increasingly urgent task of accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy, the pendulum has swung away from a heavy reliance on markets to drive innovation toward ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-17
What a difference two years make. In 2021, when interest rates were near zero in the United States and the United Kingdom and slightly negative in the eurozone and Japan, the consensus was that they w ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-16
In May, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed new power-plant rules that would effectively require every existing coal- or gas-fired plant in the United States either to capture and store mo ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-15
US President Joe Biden and his team get little credit for their management of the American economy. Aware that the 2024 presidential election, like most, will turn on economic conditions, or perceptio ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-14
This year marks the halfway point for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the ambitious set of global targets introduced by the United Nations in 2015. These 17 goals, devised to ad ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-14
The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused commodity prices to soar in recent years, severely undermining global food security. Now, global food prices are down from the peaks of a year ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-11
The global economy is addicted to the relentless – and unsustainable – extraction of natural resources. Yet despite our complete dependence on nature, its contribution – for example, the water used to ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-09
Who should pay for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction? Shortly after Russia’s invasion, my co-authors and I estimated that it would cost roughly €200-500 billion ($220-550 billion) to rebuild the countr ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-08
As Western governments face the increasingly urgent task of accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy, the pendulum has swung away from a heavy reliance on markets to drive innovation towa ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-07
International trade has boosted economic growth in many countries, especially those without abundant natural resources or fixed capital. In addition to creating opportunities for cross-border specia ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-04
Suppose that you had invested your wealth in a broadly diversified set of stocks, starting in January 1871, with the dividends being rolled back into your portfolio, and with your portfolio being reba ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-03
It shouldn’t make sense. Donald Trump has just been indicted on four criminal charges, including defrauding the United States and conspiring to deprive Americans of their voting rights. Trump also fac ...More
EJ Insight2023-08-03