In The News

Half of Investments Channeled Through Tax Havens

Steve Anderson May 24, 2013
Each year many of the world’s developing nations lose out on billions of dollars through corporations’ use of tax havens, notes a report from ActionAid. Companies increasingly focus on tax reduction. According to the report, nearly half the money invested in some nations goes through tax havens, a move that ultimately costs the developing nations a sum triple the amount of annual aid. Developed...

How Austerity Kills

David Stuckler, Sanjay Basu May 15, 2013
Suicide, long correlated with high unemployment rates, is on the rise in the wake of government austerity. “People looking for work are about twice as likely to end their lives as those who have jobs,” note David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu in an opinion essay for the New York Times. The two conducted research on health trends in countries enduring economic crisis and found that gradual, targeted...

Put Doomsday on the Schedule

David Dapice January 7, 2013
Americans, like most citizens all over the world, resent paying taxes, but are fond of government programs that allow health care, education or science to flourish. The US is overextended, living beyond its means, and Congress is divided over how to ease the climbing debt: Liberal Democrats want to tax the rich, while conservative Republicans aim to reduce spending that help citizens. Congress...

For Better Planning, Watch Global Demographic Trends

Joseph Chamie December 12, 2012
An understanding of demographic trends can assist governments in targeting policies for the future and saving money for education, retirement, taxes, healthcare, distribution of natural resources, and more. More importantly, targeted policies can ease resentment emerging over demographic imbalances. The globe can anticipate an additional 1 billion people by 2025 – a total of 8 billion – and...

Obama’s Global Challenges

Bruce Stokes November 9, 2012
The US has the world’s largest economy and military and, like it or not, citizens around the world recognize that they must live with the presidential choice of US voters. Political analysts have estimated that US presidents tend to keep about 75 percent of their promises, and President Barack Obama has maintained a higher rate, reported at more than 80 percent during his first term in office....

Reelected Obama Looks at Fiscal Cliff

David Dapice November 7, 2012
President Barack Obama has won the hard fought battle for a second term. But he has no time to rest or celebrate. The president and US politicians must hurry to put finances in order, warns economist David Dapice. Congress failing to agree on raising taxes or cut spending invoked a deus ex machina of painful automatic cuts and deadlines. In summer of 2011, the US Congress came close to...

Will China Delay Reform – Again?

Mary Kay Magistad October 29, 2012
Every decade, China’s Communist Party undergoes a leadership transition. The Brookings Institution estimates that about 70 percent of the members of three leading institutions - the Politburo Standing Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission – will be replaced, marking the largest shift in power in three decades. Party power in recent years is increasingly linked with...