Exclusive Opinion, Commentary and Op-ed from today's Top Economists and Public Intellectuals

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Europe’s Lost Keynesians

Kenneth Rogoff May 23, 2013

There is no magic Keynesian bullet for the eurozone’s woes, despite what many commentators and much of the public seem to believe. The eurozone’s difficulties stem from European financial and monetary integration having gotten too far ahead of actual political, fiscal, and banking union – not exactly a problem that Keynes tried …
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Boards on Their Backs

Simon Johnson May 23, 2013

The recent governance controversy at JPMorgan Chase has masked a much larger issue. Five years after the largest financial crisis in almost 80 years, one can count the number of properly qualified board members – across all megabanks – on the fingers of one hand.
Focal Points

Visionary Voices

The challenges facing developing countries – from providing clean water to fighting infectious diseases – are jeopardizing their economic growth prospects, on which the global economy's health increasingly depends. Project Syndicate, working with the Gates Foundation, the Columbia Earth Institute, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, provides analysis of the trends and debates shaping developing countries’ potential – and the global economy’s prospects.
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Misreading the Global Economy

Ashoka Mody May 23, 2013

Over the last three years, the IMF's economic forecasts have repeatedly proved to be overly optimistic. The problem is rooted in a misdiagnosis of the global economy's problems, including the impact of the eurozone crisis and slowing GDP growth in emerging economies.
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The Human City

Parag Khanna May 23, 2013

The world is undergoing rapid urbanization, with the share of the population living in cities set to reach 60% by 2030. International institutions, governments, NGOs, and others must work together to make cities efficient, livable, and sustainable, using technology and public policy to support citizens’ welfare and aspirations.
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Europe’s Clash of Generations

Gene Frieda May 23, 2013

EU leaders are under pressure from a new generation of voters, for whom the original purpose of European integration – preventing war – holds little significance today. If EU leaders do not respond effectively, emerging political parties will seek to restore the protective national barriers that their predecessors demolished.
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After Ahmadinejad

Mehdi Khalaji May 22, 2013

The disqualification of two leading candidates for Iran's presidency sends a strong message from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. Simply put, Khamenei is determined to avoid the type of friction that has characterized his relationships with previous presidents, particularly outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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The Night-Watchman State’s Last Shift

Andrew Sheng, Xiao Geng May 22, 2013

Too often, debate about the relationship between the state and the market casts them as opposing forces locked in a zero-sum struggle. But this simplistic approach quickly renders constructive discussion a casualty of the ideological battle between advocates of state and market capitalism.
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Overcoming East Asia’s Sovereignty Disputes

Charles Tannock May 22, 2013

Disputes over territorial sovereignty are among the thorniest of all diplomatic disagreements. While the sovereignty disputes in the South and East China Seas involve seemingly non-negotiable claims, the resources surrounding the islands can nevertheless be shared, nurturing habits of closer regional cooperation in the process.

Michael Boskin May 22

The Debt-Growth Controversy

STANFORD – The recent controversy over errors in a 2010 paper by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff is a sad c…
Pingfan Hong May 21

China’s Interest-Rate Challenge

NEW YORK – China’s successful transformation from a middle-income country to a modern, high-income country will depend largel…
Sanou Mbaye May 21

Africa’s French Roadblock

DAKAR – In recent years, China and Africa have formed one of the modern era’s most successful economic and trade partnerships…
Robert Skidelsky May 21

Austere Illusions

LONDON – The doctrine of imposing present pain for future benefit has a long history – stretching all the way back to Adam Sm…
Mohamed A. El-Erian May 20

Reinvigorating Egypt’s Economy

NEWPORT BEACH – Some two years into Egypt’s grass-roots revolution, the country’s economy is in a worrisome downward spiral. …
Jeffrey Frankel May 20

The Flawed Origins of Expansionary Austerity

CAMBRIDGE – Several of my Harvard University colleagues have recently been casualties in the crossfire between fiscal “auster…
Michael Spence May 18

Learning About Growth from Austerity

MILAN – In a recent set of studies, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff used a vast array of historical data to show that the …
Barry Eichengreen May 17

Open-Access Economics

CANBERRA – The brouhaha over Carmen Reinhart’s and Kenneth Rogoff’s article “Growth in a Time of Debt” may be the most conspi…
George Soros May 15

The Resistible Fall of Europe: An Interview with George Soros

Editor’s note: On May 12, George Soros was awarded the Tiziano Terzani Prize for his 2012 book Financial Turmoil published in…
Richard Cooper and… May 14

China’s E-Tail Revolution

SHANGHAI – When you think about centers of technological innovation, Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Seoul are probably the firs…

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Tony Rothman May 22

Apocalypse Not Now

PRINCETON – Recently, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s most powerful…
Christopher R. Hill May 21

Managing Syria’s Meltdown

DENVER – As Russian and American diplomats prepare for a Syrian peace conference, the Middle Ea…
Jaswant Singh May 21

The Invisible-Border War

NEW DELHI – A half-century after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the border between China and Indi…
Dominique Moisi May 20

America by Proxy?

PARIS – The demise of the Roman Empire resulted from a combination of strategic overreach and e…
Kanayo F. Nwanze May 18

Harnessing the Remittance Boom

ROME – For more than a decade, Asia’s economies have been on the move – and so have its people.…
Liah Greenfeld May 17

Nationalism, Madness, and Terrorism

BOSTON – If we want to understand what drove the Boston M…
Erik Solheim May 16

A New Deal for Fragile States

PARIS – Today, roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in conflict-affected and fra…
Ana Palacio May 16

The Importance of Doing Business

MADRID – This month, an independent review panel is expec…
Randall Morck May 15

Oily Dirt

EDMONTON – Calm discussion of the environment nowadays is about as plausible as reasoned dialog…
Bjørn Lomborg May 15

Hugging a Burning Tree

PRAGUE – We are all brought up to recycle paper to save trees. We get countless e-mail admoniti…