Tag Archives: Comment

INEQUALITY: Unless it is confronted, social cohesion and democracy itself will come under growing threat  COMMENT | Kaushik Basu | At the end of a low and dishonest year, reminiscent of the “low, dishonest decade” about which W.H. Auden wrote in his poem “September 1, 1939,” the world’s “clever hopes” are …

It is important to recognise that data alone are not enough, common sense matters COMMENT | KAUSHIK BASU | After years of stressing the importance of evidence-based policymaking, economists have clearly had some influence on politicians. What economists now need to do is to impress upon those same politicians that citing …

Why inflation and monetary-policy adjustments by central banks might not impact its price COMMENT | JIM O’NEIL | Writing about oil prices is always risky. In a January 2015, I suggested that oil prices would not continue to fall, and even predicted that they would “finish the year higher than they …

COMMENT | By Amos Wekesa | Recently out of curiosity, my son asks me why I fly economy class when I travel with him, his brother and sister. I realized that children need a lot more explanation about why we do certain things. I tell my son, I make sure I don’t …

Why changes in broadly shared economic assumptions are potentially riskier than more dramatic events COMMENT | CHRISTOPHER SMART | One of the great mysteries of today’s global markets is their irrepressible enthusiasm, even as the world around them appears on the verge of chaos or collapse. And yet, investors may be …

 How it reveals impact of the state undermining workers’ organisations and unions COMMENT | MORRIS KOMAKECH | Ugandan doctors opted to strike over poor remunerations, which they say compromise their work ethic. The doctors’ plight is understandable. Doctors in public facilities earn, on average, about US$300 per month. This level of …

Centrist politicians must engage in behavior so costly that a conventional politician would never emulate it COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | At a recent conference I attended, I was seated next to a prominent American trade policy expert. We began to talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which …

Planning buzzwords like `smart cities’mean little if the theories behind them benefit only a few COMMENT| CHRISTINE AUCLAIR & MAHMOUD AL BURAI | Cities, the American-Canadian author Jane Jacobs once observed, are engines for national prosperity and economic growth. But in their current form, modern cities are also catalysts of inequality and environmental …

The continent’s pension funds could lead institutional investors in committing funds to local infrastructure COMMENT | IBRAHIM ASSANE MAYAKI | As the US Federal Reserve embarks on the “great unwinding” of the stimulus program it began nearly a decade ago, emerging economies are growing anxious that a stronger dollar will adversely …

Publicising violence against journalists will end an era of historically keeping it behind the headlines COMMENT | LEON WILLEMS | Every five days, on average, somewhere in the world, a journalist is murdered for being a journalist. Nine out of ten times, no one is prosecuted, creating an atmosphere of impunity that extends …