YANGON – Interest in Myanmar (Burma) has become intense. Last month, Thein Sein became the first president of Myanmar to visit the White Hou…

BEIJING – The “Sunnylands summit,” which brings together Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama at a California estate t…

MOSCOW – From Russia with love? Not in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In recent days, Putin decided to reaffirm the Russian-Syrian geopolitical ma…

NEW YORK – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is mobilizing global action around the great challenge of our time: sustainable development. It …

PITTSBURGH – Almost all recoveries from recession have included rapid employment growth – until now. Though advanced-country central banks h…

BRUSSELS – European policymakers have decided that they must be seen to be “doing something” about youth unemployment. A special summit of E…

NEW YORK – One interpretation of the anti-government demonstrations now roiling Turkish cities is that they are a massive protest against po…

CAMBRIDGE – The world’s major central banks continue to express concern about inflationary spillover from their recession-fighting efforts. …

NEW YORK – Science may be humankind’s greatest success as a species. Thanks to the scientific revolution that began in the seventeenth centu…

CAMBRIDGE – Some critics complain that US President Barack Obama campaigned on inspirational rhetoric and an ambition to “bend the arc of hi…

MADRID – It is a mantra increasingly heard around the world: US power is in decline. And nowhere does this seem truer than in Latin America.…

NEW DELHI – China is subverting the status quo in the South and East China Seas, on its border with India, and even concerning international…

PRINCETON – It is increasingly popular to think of Europe in binary terms. French President François Hollande is constantly flirting with th…

CORONADO, CALIFORNIA – Most people do not think of Charles Darwin as a psychologist. In fact, his work revolutionized the field. Before Darw…

ISTANBUL – Turkey’s economy has been booming for a decade, earning praise not only from financial markets, but also from development economi…

PARIS – When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the United Nations Security Council 20 …

NEW YORK – The “branding” of modern central banking started in the United States in the early 1980’s under then-Federal Reserve Board Chairm…

BRASILIA – The 1945 United Nations Charter represented a historic breakthrough in the pursuit of peace on a multilateral basis. At the end o…

LONDON – The economic situation in the countries of the so-called Arab Awakenings is deteriorating quickly. Egypt is running low on cash – b…

CAMBRIDGE – Nowadays, International Monetary Fund missions come and go in the Middle East without reaching agreement. Meanwhile, Tunisia, Eg…

MADRID – Once upon a time, despots simply acted like despots. Nowadays, they dress up their dictatorships in the trappings of the rule of la…

NEW YORK – On June 1-3, Japan is hosting the fifth meeting of TICAD, the Tokyo International Cooperation on African Development. The meeting…

VENICE – The run-up in gold prices in recent years – from $800 per ounce in early 2009 to above $1,900 in the fall of 2011 – had all the fea…

KIGALI – There is no greater hindrance to a country’s long-term economic development than childhood undernourishment. When a growing body do…

NEW DELHI – One of the most interesting aspects of the prolonged economic crisis in Europe, and of the even longer crisis in Japan, is the a…