In The News

Nations Line Up to Join China-Led Infrastructure Bank

Will Hickey April 9, 2015
The world’s most populous nation has a sizable sovereign fund and is on track to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy. “The Chinese development model of technology transfer and infrastructure development, including highways, ports, railways, has brought millions out of poverty and into a middle class existence,” writes Will Hickey, of the School of Government and Public Policy...

UK’s Risky Obsession With US Decline

Gideon Rachman April 7, 2015
The United Kingdom understands full well how empires tend to over-reach and shrink, and British historians – notably Yale’s Paul Kennedy, Harvard’s Niall Ferguson and Stanford’s Ian Morris – suggest that such patterns are playing out for the United States, explains Gideon Rachman for the Financial Times. “British policy makers also seem to be operating on the assumption that the continuing rise...

Can Authoritarian Capitalism Outlive Lee Kuan Yew?

John Cassidy April 6, 2015
From 1959 to 1990, Lee Kuan Yew guided Singapore’s remarkable rise to an Asian economic powerhouse. The Singaporean prime minister trail-blazed the creation of an “authoritarian capitalist” model of economic development, soon followed by China. The model was built on western ideas favored by Lee including meritocracy, universal public education, and emphasis on science and technology.. But the...

What the West Can Learn From Japan’s “Lost Decades”

Roland Kelts April 3, 2015
Economists often label Japan as the “the sick man of Asia,” but the country’s stagnation may also reflect its leadership on sustainability. “Japan’s stagnation, pilloried by economists and analysts in the west, may turn out to be the catalyst for its greatest strengths: resilience, reinvention and quiet endurance,” writes Roland Kelts for the New Statesman. He points out that unending population...

Making of a New World Order

Nayan Chanda April 3, 2015
Many US allies including South Korea, Australia and the United Kingdom, signed up for founders’ memberships of the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. “Leaders in Washington were stunned that their transatlantic ‘cousins’ did not even consult them before rushing to sign up with AIIB,” writes Nayan Chanda, YaleGlobal editor, in his column for Businessworld. “Ever since China...

Major Companies Threaten to End Relationships With Indiana Over “License to Discriminate” Law

Louis Weisberg April 2, 2015
A storm of criticism from multinational corporations and human-rights groups has convinced lawmakers in Indiana to backtrack on a vague law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, suggesting that governments could not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” and individuals or businesses could assert such claims in legal proceedings. The law was crafted soon after courts required...

The Curse of Chávez’s Ghost

María Elena Candia March 27, 2015
In the wake of the abrupt drop in global oil prices, Venezuelans have experienced a shortage of food, paper goods and medicines. The Maduro administration makes no effort on economic reforms and instead blames the United States for its heavy dependence on oil revenues and other economic troubles. “There is still no commitment from the government to hike the cost of gasoline, which is heavily...