Markets

What is the biggest fear hanging over China? Slowing external demand? Could it be the imbalances in its domestic economy? Or the country’s real estate bubble? While these threats are real and challenging nonetheless, debt is China’s most worrying, not...

  By 2040, the U.K.’s debt-to-GDP ratio is likely to reach over 400 percent if the government chooses to continue on its present path. But even as the present government attempts to scale back on a number of welfare benefits...

Our generation urgently needs to spur another era of great social change. This time, we must act to save the planet from a human-induced environmental catastrophe. Sustainable development is a generational challenge, not a short-term task, and governments, civil society,...

Since 1951, the Indian government has somehow managed to fail every single attempt to reach its annual target of increasing the nation’s electricity production capacity. But while the nation continues to struggle with crippling blackouts and power shortages till today,...

Recent economic data has shown that China is slowing down. The question is: Should we attempt to revive growth in the world’s second largest economy? Perhaps not. As it is, China bulls have been late in recognising the unhealthy implications...

READER SUBMISSION – As America’s largest trading partner, Canada’s economic fortunes are intimately tied to those of the United States. Yet thanks to a largely domestic-focused economic action plan, Canada has demonstrated remarkable economic resilience to the global financial turmoil....

Germany and the ECB are now relying on the hope that large-scale liquidity will buy time to allow the adjustments needed to restore growth and debt sustainability in the eurozone periphery. But, if a eurozone breakup can only be postponed,...

By 2014, Scottish voters may have the chance to end the country’s 307-year intermarriage with England and the United Kingdom at a referendum for independence. The growing belief right is now that Scotland has the economic capacity to go it...

Resources should be a blessing, not a curse; yet contrary to common sense, resource-rich countries in Africa have tend to experience less economic growth in the long run than those deprived of natural riches. The new discoveries of natural resources...

Regardless of who wins the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, the next American president will only have limited room for manoeuvre on economic policy. The real choice as such should concern the social policies that accompany a broadly similar set of...

  August has been a dangerous month in European history, but this year it could be the turning point for the eurozone – and perhaps for the world economy. That depends on whether – and how – the European Central...

America has typically relied on its domestic market for economic growth, with consumer spending accounting for some 70 percent of annual GDP growth. Given the strong likelihood that US consumers will remain weak for years to come, America’s growth agenda...

The latest international data show that unaffordable food, pervasive unemployment, and dwindling social support threaten global recovery and the world's population. Yet the world remains fixated on austerity and cost-cutting measures to boost recovery, which in turn has disproportionately affected...

Speculative bubbles, or market bubbles, have often been seen as the cause of financial crises. But, before we conclude that we should rein in the markets, we need to consider the alternative: that bubbles are actually social epidemics that could...

Throughout history, economists and policy makers have often clashed over the role of the government in the economy. Even today, this debate continues; but despite the realities of twenty-first-century technology and globalisation, it is still conducted largely as if governance...