On August 11, China devalued its currency by 2 percent and modestly reformed its exchange-rate system. This was no earth-shattering event, but financial markets responded as if a meteorite had struck ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-14
The debate about whether Greece should leave the eurozone has revived the idea that Germany, and other similarly strong economies, would best serve the rest of the continent if they were the ones to e ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-10
The Islamic State has captured the world’s attention with gruesome videos of beheadings, wanton destruction of antiquities, and skilled use of social media. It has also captured a large part of easter ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-08
At the end of every August, central bankers and financiers from around the world meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the US Federal Reserve’s economic symposium. This year, the participants were greete ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-08
China's current economic woes have largely been viewed through a single lens: the government’s failure to let the market operate. But that perspective has led foreign observers to misinterpret some of ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-07
What impact will China’s slowdown have on the red-hot contemporary art market? That might not seem like an obvious question until one considers that for emerging-market investors, art has become a cri ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-07
If there is a bright side to the turmoil that has roiled the global economy since 2008, it is that not every part of the world has erupted simultaneously. The first blow was the subprime mortgage cris ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-04
To solve the problem of antimicrobial resistance, the world needs not only new drugs but also new behavior – by all seven billion of us. Because of the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, common infect ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-04
The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prison population – about 2.2 million people, five times as many as in 1980. One out of every 100 American adult ...More
EJ Insight2015-09-01
Reports of the death of American power have often been greatly exaggerated. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was thought to have surpassed the United States; today, the Soviet Union no longer exists. In ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-31
Negotiators from the two Koreas appear to have resolved this month’s crisis, in which South Korea’s use of loudspeakers to broadcast messages across the demilitarized zone spurred threats of war from ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-28
The United Nations’ latest population projections suggest that Japan’s population could fall from 127 million today to 83 million by 2100, with 35 percent of the population then over 65 years old. Eur ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-24
Earlier this month, global financial markets nearly imploded. From East Asia to Western Europe, currencies swooned and equity prices tumbled -- all because of China’s decision to allow a modest devalu ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-20
Secular stagnation is looming worldwide, and China is no exception. Globally, the unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus following the 2008 financial crisis has caused debt, equity, and property p ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-18
There is no doubt that Earth is undergoing the sixth mass extinction in its history – the first since the cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. According to one recent stud ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-17
Oil prices have been heading south again, with a barrel of US crude recently falling below US$42 – the lowest level since March 2009, the nadir of the global financial crisis. And, while last year’s s ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-17
One of the greatest challenges facing women in much of the world is the gap between their legal rights and their ability as individuals to claim them. National constitutions are increasingly likely to ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-11
Some economists overlook the modern idea that a country’s prosperity depends on innovation and entrepreneurship. They take the mechanistic view that prosperity is a matter of employment and that emplo ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-07
Over the last 35 years, real wages in the United States failed to keep pace with productivity gains. For the typical non-farm worker, productivity grew twice as fast as real wages. Instead, an increas ...More
EJ Insight2015-08-03