FO° Insights is a new feature where our contributors make sense of issues in the news. Even as the focus has been on Ukraine, a bloody and brutal conflict has raged in Tigray for 17 months but hardly attracted global attention. On March 25, rebel Tigrayan forces declared that they would...
In 2019, Pierre Charbonnier penned an article for the French journal Revue du Crieur on the emerging trend known as collapsology. “Theories about the imminent collapse of industrial civilization are in vogue,” he writes in an article titled, “The Splendor and Squalor of...
Some 40 years ago, the Club of Rome published a study with what at the time was a relatively provocative title, “The Limits to Growth.” The book appeared at a time of rising environmental consciousness and growing uneasiness with respect to the state of the planet. Throughout the advanced...
For most of the 20th century, Westerners had one word to sum up any thoughts they may have had about China: inscrutable. Several decades of globalization have radically changed that perception. Fully integrated into the world economy, China plays a dominant role today and is expected to become the...
Projections, no matter how well-grounded in analytics, are a messy business. Three years ago, COVID-19 was unheard of and then-US President Donald Trump’s politics caused uncertainty in international relations, with democracy in retreat across the world. Despite the best-informed...
In an article for Foreign Affairs, “The Real Pandemic Danger Is Social Collapse,” the economist Branko Milanovic, noted for his groundbreaking work on income and wealth inequality, takes a close look at the choices governments and societies are faced with today as the entire world organizes...
Since the beginning of European colonialism in the 16th century, adventurers and investors have responded to the opportunities that exist to control entire zones where they can freely extract raw materials without being bothered by the local populations who may find them invasive. The traditional...
On the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Dani Rodrik posed a controversial question: “Is Export Led Growth Passé?” Writing on September 11, 2008, this famous Harvard professor argued that advanced economies were unlikely to run large current account deficits and import as they did in...
The headlines grabbed attention: “China’s economy grows at slowest rate in nearly 30 years,” noted the Financial Times in a typical example. China’s GDP growth in the second quarter had slowed to 6.2%, the smallest gain since 1992, back when the country’s economy was first shifting into...
The media will never tire of Warren Buffett’s oracular pronouncements, nor will it dare to put them in perspective or critique them. Who better than the Oracle of Omaha, the Pope of Wall Street, Warren Buffett, can we count on to guide the faithful in the dogmas they need to believe about the...
The health care crisis doesn’t only affect humans. It affects the economy. As the game of real-world empires evolves, with Pax Americana showing signs of waning and Chinese power rising, The Economist points to a serious failure of the Trump administration. President Donald Trump appears to...
In America, stock options create some unusual challenges for tax writers. The tax treatment of employee stock and options raises a classic Goldilocks problem. We want to tax this compensation neither too much nor too little. In a recent policy brief, I consider three questions about how to...
The best way to avoid stagnation induced by uncertainty is for governments to look at the road ahead. Interest rates are low, so it should be attractive for companies to borrow and invest in new products and markets. But American companies are not doing that. Instead, they are spending about...
Market timing has long been the holy grail for investors, and evidence suggests that it works but might be a tricky game to play. Homo sapiens like predictability and look for patterns. Sometimes these patterns hold, but at other times they fail. This apparent randomness of markets has long...
