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

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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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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.
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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The Debt-Growth Controversy

Michael Boskin May 22, 2013

The recent controversy over errors in a 2010 paper by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff is a sad commentary on the politically toxic atmosphere surrounding fiscal policy in the US, Europe, and Japan. The Reinhart/Rogoff paper is just a small part of a large literature that shows high debt levels to be economically ri…
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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.
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Apocalypse Not Now

Tony Rothman May 22, 2013

Apocalyptic prophecies – from Y2K to Mayan baktuns – divert resources and attention from more consequential scientific developments and debates. As journalism shifts toward sensationalism over empiricism, doomsday panics are becoming increasingly frequent – and increasingly damaging.
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Reinvigorating Egypt’s Economy

Mohamed A. El-Erian May 20, 2013

While blaming the revolution is not a persuasive explanation for Egypt’s current economic woes, its appeal to many Egyptians is understandable. Over the last few months, their economic situation has gone from bad to worse.
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The Resistible Fall of Europe: An Interview with George Soros

George Soros May 15, 2013

The politics of the eurozone countries is European politics, and European politics is not serving these countries well. In an extended interview, George Soros explains why – and what should be done about it.
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Austere Illusions

Robert Skidelsky May 21, 2013

A government cannot liquidate its deficit if the source of its revenues, the national income, is diminishing. It is deficit reduction, not debt, that is profligate, because it implies wastage of available human and physical capital, quite apart from the resulting misery.

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…
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…
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…
Emmanuel Guerin May 13

Green Sovereign Wealth

PARIS – At the end of 2011, sovereign-wealth funds’ assets under management amounted to $3 trillion, following 237 direct inv…
Kemal Derviş May 10

Balancing the Technocrats

ISTANBUL – A simplistic (actually, naive) view of markets is that they exist almost in a “state of nature,” and that the best…
Dani Rodrik May 10

What Use Are Economists?

CAMBRIDGE – When the stakes are high, it is no surprise that battling political opponents use whatever support they can garne…
Jomo Kwame Sundaram May 10

The Mismeasure of Poverty

ROME – In early 2012, outgoing World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced that the Millennium Development Goal of halving…

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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…
Christopher R. Hill May 21

Managing Syria’s Meltdown

DENVER – As Russian and American diplomats prepare for a Syrian peace conference, the Middle Ea…
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…
Christopher Lane May 14

The Distortion of Grief

CHICAGO – How long does it take to mourn the death of a loved one? The question is peculiar, ev…