The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, is well deserved. While imperfect, his invention of micro-lending is an important tool to make the free market system work better for the world’s poor. Nevertheless, the vision that Grameen represents, of a peaceful integrated “globalized” world in which can all prosper, […]

It has become fashionable in the last few years to express enthusiasm for emerging market investment by focusing on the “BRIC” economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China), a term first coined in a 2003 paper by Goldman Sachs, which looked for the potential economic superpowers of 2050. This is a dumb idea for two reasons: there […]

The EU Tuesday finally agreed to admit Bulgaria and Romania on January 1, 2007, but expressed deep concern about the level of corruption in both countries. Is this a problem that affects only the countries concerned, or might it affect the EU economy as a whole, bringing it new diseconomies from EU enlargement?

The end of a period of cheap money and high asset prices is invariably marked by class action lawsuits and aggressive prosecutions by District Attorneys eager to make a name for themselves through opposing powerful malefactors. In 2001, the victims were management of Enron, Tyco, Global Grossing, Dynegy and Adelphia Communications. This time around, the […]

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Annual Meetings in Singapore Tuesday and Wednesday will focus on the world’s development needs but will leave unasked the most important question: are the Bank and the Fund themselves helpful to development, and if not, what can be done about them?

Russia is said to be keen on inviting foreign capital into its electric power generators; an ambition that at first sight conflicts with its determination to keep control over its oil and gas sectors. However, this apparent confusion in economic doctrine is explained by the Russian government’s overriding concern with security and power-political matters. What’s […]

The Wall Street Journal Wednesday strongly endorsed a paper by Kip Hagopian in the California Management Review denouncing the expensing of stock options, and demanding a return to the previous system whereby stock option costs were as far as possible ignored. The paper was co-signed by 26 eminent figures, including astoundingly Milton Friedman. I will […]

New home sales for July, announced Thursday, were down 21.6% from the previous July, confirming that the real estate bubble of 2001-05 has ended. Nevertheless, conventional wisdom remains that the housing market is due for only a modest correction, before resuming its strength – after all, the United States hasn’t seen a nationwide house price […]

The collapse of the Doha round of trade talks in July raised fears that the world might be about to descend into 1930s style autarky, with a huge negative effect on prosperity. Unless things get very much worse, that’s unlikely in trade as a whole, if only because the historical memory of the 1930s remains […]

The difficult Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the continued sectarian violence in Iraq and the attempted terror attacks on transatlantic flights have combined to throw a remarkable gloom onto the world geopolitical outlook. This gloom has clear economic costs, to which we need to adjust.