The outlook for the global economy in 2012 is clear, but it isn’t pretty: recession in Europe, anaemic growth at best in the US, and a sharp slowdown in China and in most emerging-market economies. Asian economies are exposed to China. Latin America is ...

Hard economic times are correlated with protectionism, as each country blames others and protects its domestic jobs. In the 1930’s, such “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies worsened the situation. Unless political leaders resist such responses, the past...

There are four issues that matter in economics: growth, stability, sustainability and fairness. The developed world has, rightly, been engrossed with stability and sustainability of late; but we must also consider long-run growth. Growth is particularly i...

Economics is at the start of a revolution that is traceable to an unexpected source: medical schools and their research facilities. Neuroscience – the science of how the brain, that physical organ inside one’s head, really works – is beginning to ch...

The Greek government needs to escape from an otherwise impossible situation. It has an unmanageable level of government debt (150 percent of GDP, rising this year by 10 percentage points), a collapsing economy (with GDP down by more than seven percent thi...

The United States is going through difficult times. Its post-2008 recovery has slowed, and some observers fear that Europe’s financial problems could tip the American and world economy into a second recession. American politics, moreover, remains gri...

Perhaps for the first time in modern history, the future of the global economy lies in the hands of poor countries. The United States and Europe struggle on as wounded giants, casualties of their financial excesses and political paralysis. They seem conde...

The outlook for the global economy in 2011 is, partly, for a persistence of the trends established in 2010. These are: an anaemic, below-trend, U-shaped recovery in advanced economies, as firms and households continue to repair their balance sheets; a str...

Economists like to talk about thresholds that, if crossed, spell trouble. Usually there is an element of truth in what they say. But the public often overreacts to such talk. Consider, for example, the debt-to-GDP ratio, much in the news nowadays in Eu...

Big economic crises often cause iconic companies to falter. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is a model of the modern global enterprise. A particularly dynamic and innovative business model came from outside and took over central aspects of British and...