In The News

Denmark the New “American Dream”? PIIE

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard March 2, 2020
Denmark may represent a new version of the American dream, as voters and Democratic candidates in the US presidential race seek secure benefits, especially affordable health care. An OECD study suggests that low-income families in Denmark, due to reduced inequality, can enter the middle class in two generations whereas low-income US families require five generations. Such reduced inequality comes...

Global Retirement Ages Creep Higher: CNBC

Lorie Konish February 15, 2020
Life expectancy is higher worldwide, and governments and individuals respond by hiking the retirement age. “Fueled by changes in lifestyles, working practices, diet and medical advances, people living today can expect to live up to 30 to 40 years longer when compared with people at the beginning of the 20th century,” notes the Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey. A majority of US workers plan to...

Investors Come Back for Bitcoin: Financial Times

Eva Szalay and Laurence Fletcher February 10, 2020
Bitcoin’s excellent performance in 2019 has attracted investors from banks and asset managers once again, despite past worries about the currency’s reputational risk, lack of regulation, and volatile returns. In 2017, bitcoin went above US$20,000, prompting Wall Street banks to rush and develop their own digital currencies with blockchain technology. CME Group launched the first futures on a...

Global Economy Without Cushion: Project Syndicate

Stephen S. Roach February 6, 2020
Global recessions are rare, but the world may have dodged one in 2019. The world posted GDP growth of 2.9 percent that year, far below the average 3.5 percent posted since 1980. Deviations from the trend signal a warning even for strong economies and corporations, suggests economist Stephen S. Roach with Yale University. “Unlike individual economies, which normally contract in an outright...

Slowbalization: Lobe Log

John Feffer December 25, 2019
The slow food movement – relaxing, eating local, focus on tradition – has influenced slowness in other areas of life including education and travel. “To a world addicted to ever greater connection speeds, ever faster modes of transportation, and ever more caffeinated feats of multitasking, the go-slowers recommend a perverse resistance to the frenzied scherzo of modern life in favor of a more...

Questions for a New Era of Business: Fortune

James Manyika and Lareina Yee December 24, 2019
A new era of business, much like the industrial revolution or the internet boom, is underway. Companies that recognize the trends including aging populations, new technologies, growing economies, improved health and increased influence of developing economies will flourish. Challenges include inequality, stagnant incomes, populism, climate change, rivalries that disrupt trade and concentration of...

41 Percent of World’s People Under Age 24: Guardian

Simon Tisdall November 30, 2019
More than 40 percent of the world’s population is under age 24, and many hold concerns about globalization, rising inequality, corruption, fewer democratic protections and a warming climate. So the young, like so many from history hungry for change, are protesting. “Yet while younger people, in any era, are predisposed to shake up the established order, extreme demographic, social and political...