In The News

India’s Education Deficit

Nayan Chanda May 30, 2016
Education, acquiring an ability to combine and apply knowledge and skills, is a driving economic force for the 21st century, suggests India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The country must do more to prepare and employ its citizens, with more than half under the age of 30. “To employ its emerging young population, the country needs to create nearly a million jobs a month,” writes Nayan Chanda,...

G7 Vows Growth Efforts as Japan's Abe Warns of Global Crisis

Tetsushi Kajimoto May 27, 2016
The Group of Seven industrial powers are in an ongoing quest for global economic growth, but declined to move forward with Japan’s assessment of a “sense of crisis” and the risk of economic contraction. “G7 leaders wrapped up a summit in central Japan vowing to use ‘all policy tools’ to boost demand and ease supply constraints,” reports Reuters. Also, “the G7 committed to market-based exchange...

What Macroeconomists Are Missing

Andrew Sheng May 25, 2016
Mainstream economic models failed to predict the 2007 global economic crisis. In an essay for CaixinOnline, Andrew Sheng suggests that the models overlook the impact of uncertainty and that fragmented analysis neglects global connections: “[S]pecialists and departmental agencies know more and more about less and less and are unable to connect the dots to view the economic and social system as a...

Fighting the Next Global Financial Crisis

Robert J. Shiller May 18, 2016
Investors hunt for news from many sources and assess the reliability. Investor attention can focus on surprising trends, and regulators must adapt to shifting narratives and moods, explains Robert Shiller, Yale economics professor and the 2013 Nobel laureate in economics. Shiller details the history of money-market funds and the threat of mass withdrawals during the 2008 global financial crisis....

Managing Debt in an Overleveraged World

Michael Spence April 29, 2016
Debt still threatens the global economy. Debt as an investment in the future, delivering high yields or serving a long-term purpose is not necessarily a problem, notes economist Michael Spence for Project Syndicate. He reviews the risks: high levels of household and individual debt are more problematic than corporate or government debt; slowing growth without inflation could increase defaults;...

Memorandum to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

From: Jeffrey E. Garten April 28, 2016
Trade policy is among the issues prompting US voters to coalesce around Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as presumptive nominees for president. Clinton opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, calling for a crackdown on trade violations and more enforcement; Trump is critical of nearly all trade agreements, vowing to get tough with top partners like Mexico and China. “The problem is not with the...

OECD Issues Damning Report on Effect of Brexit

Chris Giles April 27, 2016
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development argues that Brexit – the UK leaving the European Union – would be an economic shock with costs. “In the longer term, [the OECD] calculates that more restrictive trading arrangements with the EU alongside less competition, lower foreign direct investment and fewer skilled immigrants, would hit gross domestic product by a central estimate of...