In The News

Farid Baddache June 22, 2018
Governments and consumers have expectations when choosing among products and companies, and five global trends are emerging: Customers increasingly assess the meaning, purposes and consequences of projects, and companies can encourage customer loyalty by demonstrating their products contribute social benefits. In particular, customers expect companies to promote environmental protection and work...
Ruth Michaelson May 7, 2018
The Egyptian parliament has approved a law ahead of the summer tourism season seeking to clamp down on alleged harassers. As Ruth Michaelson observes for the Guardian, the law allows “authorities to fine up to EGP 10,000 (about £405) anyone found to be pestering tourists ‘with the intention of begging or promoting, offering or selling a good or service.’” Ultimately, this measure intends to...
Claire Lee March 1, 2018
Uncivil behavior flourishes when governments impose defamation laws that protect reputations over public declarations of truth. The global “MeToo movement underscores the problems with South Korea’s defamation law, reports Claire Lee for the Korea Herald. “Women’s activists and some lawmakers criticized the defamation law as one of the biggest challenges that sexual violence victims here face,”...
Zia Qureshi February 22, 2018
People even in the world’s most advanced and wealthiest economies are unhappy and politically fractured – this despite a full recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and growing economies. “The increasingly unequal sharing of the economic pie lies at the heart of the rising social discontent,” explains Zia Qureshi for Brookings. “Income and wealth inequalities have risen practically in all major...
Seren Selvin Korkmaz and Alphan Telek February 1, 2018
Political movements focused on democracy and justice are more anti-populist than populist, argue Seren Selvin Korkmaz and Alphan Telek for Open Democracy. Deepening polarization between conservatives and progressives – the inability for governments to reach compromise – adds political uncertainty and threatens prosperity. “’The tyranny of the majority’ which is becoming the hegemonic power in...
Nayan Chanda January 2, 2018
The uncertainty of a topsy-turvy world has many implications for global security and the global economy. Turkey is backing away from the United States and working with Russia on Syria; Saudi Arabia has turned on neighbor Qatar; Australia, wondering about US dependability, works with China; Russia supported a social media campaign that influenced the US presidential election; and in the United...
Eshe Nelson December 15, 2017
Despite ample warnings, including the book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty, inequality continues to rise in most parts of the world: the top 10 percent in the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, India and the Middle East own about half the wealth. More than 100 researchers from 70 nations monitor the dangers through the World Inequality Lab, based at the Paris...