The European Union’s post-pandemic recovery plan represents a historic opportunity – as well as a major risk. After intense negotiations, the EU agreed to issue joint debt – for the first time ever – ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-13
The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the planet will warm by 1.5º Celsius by 2040 unless urgent measures are taken to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions. Aft ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-12
Earlier this year, the World Bank commissioned me and five fellow academics to develop recommendations on how to improve the methodology behind its annual Doing Business report, which ranked countries ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-12
Second chances are not common in this world, but one is arriving now. The scope and scale of government support for businesses and workers during the COVID-19 crisis of the last 18 months have swept a ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-08
In 2011, when still vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen reassured her colleagues that drama around the federal government’s debt ceiling “usually turns out to be just theater.” Theater ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-07
Biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people around the world are declining at an unprecedented rate. Species extinctions are accelerating, with grave implications for human health, food and wate ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-06
A major debate is in the making – or, more accurately, beginning to be reopened – in the United States about the appropriate objectives and triggers for monetary policy in the modern American economy. ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-05
A handy tool makes a handyman. If land and housing supply are compared to flour and bread respectively, the shortage of housing supply in Hong Kong is not simply attributed to insufficient flour. The ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-05
The COVID-19 pandemic has made global aging impossible to ignore. This pandemic is the first to occur since the world’s population aged over 65 exceeded that under five, and COVID-19-related mortality ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-04
Moves are afoot to replace or at least greatly weaken Kristalina Georgieva, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director since 2019. This is the same Georgieva whose excellent response to the p ...More
EJ Insight2021-10-04
The impending bankruptcy of Chinese real estate giant Evergrande, with its $300 billion in debt, has roiled global investors. Analysts have focused mainly on whether the Chinese government will succee ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-30
The hottest day on record in Jordan since 1960 was a staggering 49.3° Celsius, (120.7° Fahrenheit) in July 2018, one month after I became prime minister. Jordan is not unique: heat waves have been cau ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-29
World leaders are making increasingly ambitious commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and limit the catastrophic effects of climate change. But to convert commitments into results, more must ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-28
While we already have mature technologies that can replace fossil fuels in many parts of our economy, there are areas where eliminating carbon pollution will be much more difficult. Steel, shipping, a ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-28
The planet is heating up – and so are global geopolitics. With less than two months until the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, the United States and China must comm ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-27
El Salvador this month became the first country to adopt a cryptocurrency – in this case, Bitcoin – as legal tender. I say the first, because others might follow. But they should think twice, because ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-27
A stream of recent data suggests that the global economy is showing signs of stagflation, that odd 1970s-style mixture of rising inflation and declining growth. Those who have noticed it – and there a ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-24
How will the global economy and markets evolve over the next year? There are four scenarios that could follow the “mild stagflation” of the last few months. The recovery in the first half of 2021 has ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-24
Recent developments in Norway could have momentous implications for climate-related commitments at the UN climate-change conference (COP26) in Glasgow this November. In August, a government-appointed ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-23
COVID-19 has sharpened the focus on many challenges with which the world has long been grappling, including rising inequality, insufficient access to adequate health care and education, and climate ch ...More
EJ Insight2021-09-21
