In The News

Darwin’s Recessionary Tip: Act Like a Beetle

Jonathan Guthrie January 12, 2009
Darwin’s teachings on evolution, explained in “The Origin of Species,” may offer pointers and solace for those intent on handling global recession. In the Financial Times, Jonathan Guthrie suggests that both companies and species share the drive to survive and expand: “Companies and living organisms share the objective of generating surpluses, either of money or calorific energy. Repeated...

US and China Must Tame Imbalances Together

Michael Pettis January 6, 2009
With surging liquidity and massive trade imbalances, no one should have been surprised by the global economic crisis, because as finance professor of Peking University Michael Pettis explains, this has been the historical pattern. Pettis details the history of the crisis, starting in 1980s, when US policy encouraged securitization of mortgages, converting illiquid assets into highly liquid...

The End of a Gilded Age

Harold James January 6, 2009
Waves of globalization are characterized by intense innovation, along with increased wealth, productivity and consumption, notes Princeton professor Harold James in an opinion essay for the Baltimore Examiner. Agriculture gave way to manufacturing, manufacturing gave way to services, and services gave way to online interactions, and James notes that “In each case, a dramatic crisis created the...

Emerging Economies to Reap From Global Crisis

Dani Rodrik December 19, 2008
Because of the global economic crisis, emerging economies will gain more power in global institutions, as the crisis has diminished both financial and political influence for the US and Europe. Emerging economies like South Korea, Brazil, India and China command a greater share of the global economy, and the developing nations must prepare for their new role, advises Dani Rodrik, political...

Divergence Grows Between China and the West – Part I

Xu Sitao December 18, 2008
The international community hopes that China steps up as a global leader on a wide array of crises. But the West is then taken aback when China goes about pursuing policy with seeming unconcern about the world. This YaleGlobal series analyzes the growing divergence between China and the West over two issues – the global economic crisis and festering discontent in Tibet. Due to trade imbalances,...

In China, Anger Rises as Economy Falls

Barbara Demick December 15, 2008
A global economic downturn prompted consumers in the West to slow spending, disrupting hiring and payroll in China and sparking sporadic protests, reports Barbara Demick for the Los Angles Times. China’s growth and employment rates still surpass those in the US, yet any economic slowdown “could present the leadership with its biggest political challenge since the student protests at Tiananmen...

Japan's Doing Better Than You Think

Philip Bowring December 5, 2008
Financial analysts in the West often point to Japan as an example of what not to do during an economic downturn. “[A]voidance of the Japan experience with deflation is often given as a reason for the United States, the United Kingdom and the Eurozone as a whole (trying to drag Germany with it) to justify almost any level of bailout-outs and fiscal stimulus to revive their economies,” explains...