CAMBRIDGE: Another tumultuous year has confirmed that the global economy is at a turning point. We face four big challenges: the climate transition, the good-jobs problem, an economic-development crisis, and the search for a newer, healthier...
CAMBRIDGE: Conventional economics has always had a blind spot when it comes to jobs. The problem goes back to Adam Smith, who placed consumers, rather than workers, on the throne of economic life. What matters for well-being, he argued, is not how...
CAMBRIDGE: With the United States leading the way, the world seems to be entering a new era of economic nationalism, as many countries prioritise their domestic social, economic, and environmental agendas over free trade and multilateralism. While...
CAMBRIDGE: Economists have long argued that productivity is the foundation of prosperity. The only way a country can increase its standard of living sustainably is to produce more goods and services with fewer resources. Since the Industrial...
CAMBRIDGE : Commentary on the world economy has never been short of exhortations for greater global cooperation. “What happens anywhere affects everybody … [so] it is pretty clear that the world needs more … international...
CAMBRIDGE: Two competing agendas are currently vying to shape the United States’ domestic and foreign economic policies. One agenda is inward-looking, focusing on the creation of an inclusive, resilient, prosperous, and sustainable American...
CAMBRIDGE: Late last month, a foreign leader accused US President Joe Biden of pursuing “super aggressive” industrial policies. It was not Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose countries are America...
CAMBRIDGE – Our world is undergoing an economic transition that will require effective government action on many fronts to manage climate change, ensure public health, and rebuild our middle classes through good jobs and innovation. But are...
CAMBRIDGE :I wrote recently about the possible emergence, from both the left and right of the political spectrum, of a new economic-policy paradigm that could supersede neoliberalism. The new framework gives governments and community organisations...
CAMBRIDGE: In 1973, the British economist E.F. Schumacher published a book with the captivating title Small Is Beautiful, advocating the use in poor countries of human-scale, less capital-intensive technologies more suited to local conditions. The...
CAMBRIDGE – Early in his career, the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz had an extended stay in Kenya, where he was struck by various oddities in how the local economy operated. Sharecropping was one such anomaly. If farmers were required to...
CAMBRIDGE – On June 5, the world’s leading economies announced an agreement that will bolster their ability to raise taxes on global corporations. The agreement still needs formal approval from a wider set of countries, and there remain...
CAMBRIDGE – Neoliberalism is dead. Or perhaps it remains very much alive. Pundits have been calling it both ways these days. But either way, it is hard to deny that something new is afoot in the world of economic policy. US President Joe...
CAMBRIDGE – Economic development relies on the creation of more productive jobs for an ever-rising share of the workforce. Traditionally, it was industrialisation that enabled poor countries to embark on this transformation. Factory work may...
