How should one evaluate the agreement reached in Paris this month at the United Nations climate change conference? No sooner was the deal announced on Dec. 12 than the debate erupted. Some avid enviro ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-18
Recent trends in productivity growth make it hard to be optimistic about the future. In 2014, the global growth of total factor productivity, or TFP, which measures the combined productivity of capita ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-16
The Nobel laureate Robert Mundell once said, “Great powers have great currencies.” China, whose government Mundell long advised, seemed to take this notion to heart, prodding the International Monetar ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-14
Fear of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” first appeared in the 1990s, and for the past two decades, policymakers have worried that hackers could blow up oil pipelines, contaminate the water supply, open floodga ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-11
This week, Angus Deaton will receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”. Deservedly so. Indeed, soon after the award was announced in October ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-08
Over the next few weeks, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are likely to put in place notably different policies. The Fed is set to raise interest rates for the first time in almost ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-03
Last month, China’s leaders revealed details of the country's 13th five-year plan, which will guide the economy’s trajectory until 2020. Gone are the directives to expand industrial production at a br ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-03
Since the Nov. 13 terrorist bloodletting, Paris has been practically under martial law. In this subdued and challenging context, world leaders are convening in the City of Light at the United Nations ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-01
Last month’s monetary policy statement from the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) contained a striking statement: “If endogenous momentum is inadequate and returns on investment low, growth must rely on d ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-01
Today’s labor markets are undergoing radical change, as digital platforms transform how they operate and revolutionize the nature of work. In many ways, this is a positive development, one that has th ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-30
I traveled to Paris from London last Monday. It takes two-and-a-half hours by train. We are neighbors, our histories and populations intertwined. My 10-year-old granddaughter will go there next week w ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-23
The global commodity supercycle is hardly a new phenomenon. Though the details vary, primary commodity exporters tend to act out the same story, and economic outcomes tend to follow recognizable patte ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-20
Ever since the terrorist attacks in January on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, Parisians knew that barbarism lurked around the corner and that it would strike again. But ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-17
Informal discussions on Britain’s relationship with the European Union are under way. With a referendum on the UK’s continued EU membership set to take place before the end of 2017, the talks are the ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-11
A great deal of water has flowed through the Taiwan Strait in the 70 years since the leader of China’s Communists, Mao Zedong, met the leader of his nationalist opponents, Chiang Kai-shek. So the rece ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-11
For much of the year, investors have been fixated on when the Fed will achieve "liftoff" – that is, when it will raise interest rates by 25 basis points, or 0.25 percent, as a first step toward normal ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-10
The high cost of gender inequality has been documented extensively. But a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that it is even higher than previously thought -- with far-reaching conse ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-09
Over the last few months, a great deal of attention has been devoted to financial-market volatility. But as frightening as the ups and downs of stock prices can be, they are mere froth on the waves co ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-09
So far, international climate talks have failed to find a mechanism that will successfully reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol attempted to use a system of tradable qu ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-06
