In The News

Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow

Sharon LaFraniere January 15, 2008
Huge industrial trawlers, most from Europe, push through waters off the African coast, efficiently scraping sea beds clean of fish. Such nonselective industrial fishing has devastated fish populations and habitat, destroying a livelihood and encouraging more African fishermen to use their boats to assist fellow Africans in fleeing their homelands for work in Europe. Governments throughout Africa...

The Challengers

January 15, 2008
The world is making way for the ambitions, innovations and confidence of multinational companies based in emerging economies, reports the Economist. Examples include Tata Group, owner of Tata Motors, which just released a tiny fuel-efficient car that costs a mere US $2500; Embraer of Brazil, the world's third-largest aircraft company; and Wipro, Infosys and Tata Consulting Services, which...

Stop the World (and Avoid Reality)

Alan S. Blinder January 14, 2008
The US was long the most open and competitive economy in the world. But candidates for US president, both Democrats and Republicans, respond to voters’ desire for a time out from international engagement, a mood labeled “Stop the World Syndrome,” by economist Alan Blinder in an opinion essay for the New York Times. The attitude stems from frustration over the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as...

The IMF’s Next Mission?

Harold James January 10, 2008
With imbalances threatening ongoing disruption to the global economy, Harold James, history and international relations professor at Princeton University, proposes a new task for the International Monetary Fund. In the past, the IMF has served as a crisis manager for global economic problems, and James proposes that the IMF assist nations with massive sovereign funds. China has $1 trillion in...

World Food Stocks Dwindling Rapidly, UN Warns

Elisabeth Rosenthal January 10, 2008
Extreme weather events, a growing population, increasing affluence adding more meat to diets and diversion of grain crops for subsidized biofuels have led to depleted food reserves and soaring prices reserves. High oil prices add to the complications of transferring food aid to the most vulnerable developing nations. Wealthy nations can compensate by reducing tariffs and importing more grain,...

Where Boys Were Kings, A Shift Toward Baby Girls

Choe Sang-Hun January 9, 2008
For centuries, parents in the agrarian economy of South Korea favored male children. But government campaigns and increasing work opportunities have led to a gender ratio that demonstrates a reversal in the preference for males and perhaps even a new appreciation for female children. Adult males, with the help of their wives, were once expected to care for aging parents. In recent decades, women...

Can the Midwest Regain Its Economic Clout?

Richard C. Longworth January 9, 2008
Achieving economic stability requires a strategy that does not neglect global markets or trends. In the US, the Midwest region has been devastated by companies shifting manufacturing operations first to southern states, paralyzing debt among farmers, followed by globalization with its shift of factories and jobs to low-wage countries. “Of course, an economic revolution as disruptive as...