Technical knowledge gives us the power to live better lives. Compare Europe today with the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago. We have industry, mass consumer goods, air transport and the tools for essentially universal education and healthcare. The Romans had ...

This is the year of the “Black Water Dragon,” an astrological cycle that indicates change, but with a measure of calm, sensibility, and prudence. The people and governments of Asia certainly hope that this proves to be the case, but uncertainties – ...

More than three years after the global financial crisis, the world still has a nasty plumbing problem. Credit pipes remain clogged, and only central banks are working to clear them. But their ability to do so is waning, posing yet another set of risks for...

Emerging markets have performed amazingly well over the last seven years. In many cases, they have far outperformed the advanced industrialised countries in terms of economic growth, debt-to-GDP ratios, countercyclical fiscal policy, and assessments by ra...

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...