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FROM STRINGS OF SHELLS in the Solomon Islands to large stone disks on the Micronesian isle of Yap or wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in Italy, money has taken many forms [...]

Since the 2011 uprisings in many Middle Eastern and North African countries, the role of women in the economy has expanded somewhat--at least on paper. But as the following vignettes [...]

A piece of paper: dog-eared and taped--somewhat haphazardly--to the wall. The makeshift faculty listing at the University of California, Berkeley's Economics Department symbolizes a humility that flies in the face [...]

In 1971, whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg discovered the so-called Pentagon Papers and spent countless nights photocopying over 7,000 pages before delivering them to the New York Times and the Washington Post. [...]

Liaquat Ahamed Money and Tough Love On Tour with the IMF Visual Editions, London, 2014,208 pp., $40.00 (paper). In Money and Tough Love, Liaquat Ahamed describes the professional lives of [...]

Kenneth S. Rogoff The Curse of Cash Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2016,248 pp., $29.95 (cloth). The Johns--Law and Keynes--strove to defenestrate gold, and they rather liked fiat paper. [...]

Bessma Momani ARAB DAWN Arab Youth and the Demographic Dividend They Will Bring University of Toronto Press, 2015, 176 pp., $21.95 (paper). For those readers who have consumed little information [...]

Joris Luyendijk Swimming with Sharks My Journey into the World of the Bankers Guardian Faber, London, 2015, 288 pp., 12.99 £ (paper). Reality is complicated and the human mind can [...]

Scientists have been using satellite images of Earth at night--often referred to as 'night lights'--to study human activity and natural events for almost 30 years. In the past decade, economists [...]

Matthew Green was raised in the heady world of fine arts, surrounded from boyhood by the works of Old Masters and Impressionists. His father, Richard, the owner of two of [...]

In 2013, Brazilian investigators working on a routine money-laundering case stumbled onto something far bigger: a bribery and bid-rigging scheme involving state-controlled oil giant Petrobras. Operation Car Wash, as the [...]

Until the 2008 financial crisis, tax havens were generally seen as exotic sideshows to the global economy, Caribbean islands or Alpine financial fortresses frequented by celebrities, gangsters, and wealthy aristocrats. [...]

It was just plain luck when Susan Athey glanced out the kitchen window one day last January. A coyote was making off with one of the family's pet chickens clutched [...]

Cross-border capital flows are neither an unmitigated blessing nor an undoubted curse. Used judiciously, they can be beneficial to recipient countries, making up deficiencies in the availability of long-term risk [...]

The 75th anniversary of the Bretton Woods multilateral institutions ironically comes at a time when the benefits of multilateralism are being challenged. Doubts about the functioning of our current trading [...]

Over the past decade, the implications of recent technological innovations for future growth have become a subject of lively debate. Some claim that, in the coming decades, the global economy [...]

The notion of citizenship has evolved over time. Historically, allegiance was typically to an ethnic group or a feudal lord. With the birth of the nation-state in the 19th century [...]

The responsibility for unpaid care work worldwide falls disproportionately on women and girls, leaving them less time for education, leisure, political participation, paid work, and other economic activities. Much of [...]

For those who are dismayed at the depth of political and economic division in the United States today, Harvard University economics professor Claudia Goldin has a simple reminder: there is [...]

Many people believe that social protection generally involves rich countries aiding those that are poor. Aid is important, particularly for extremely poor countries. Bad shocks can quickly devolve into humanitarian [...]

A key challenge for developing economies wishing to strengthen their social protection systems and expand access to education and health is how to raise the necessary revenue in the context [...]

There was bound to come a time in China's modern development--starting in 1949 with the founding of the cradle-to-grave welfare state--when the demands of the people for a better life [...]

We are living in an age of insecurity. Increasingly, the values of liberal democracy, liberal economies, and a rules-based international system are being repudiated--even though they have delivered progress for [...]

The changing nature of work is upending traditional employment and its benefits. In developed economies, global drivers of disruption--technological advances, economic integration, demographic shifts, social and climate change--are challenging the [...]

New research reveals that multinational firms have invested $12 trillion globally in empty corporate shells, and citizens of some financially unstable and oil-producing countries hold a disproportionately large share of [...]

With the global economy enjoying its broadest synchronized expansion since 2010, and further gains forecast for this year and next, it is tempting to conclude that economic dangers have receded [...]

Trading gold for salt is clearly a thing of the past. But studying the market for salt in 19th century India and the effects on trade of building a railroad [...]

While automation will eliminate very few occupations entirely in the coming decades, it is likely to have an impact on portions of almost all jobs to some degree--depending on the [...]

In recent years, many economists have questioned the ability of technological progress to keep propelling the economy forward despite declining population growth and rising dependency ratios (Gordon 2016). According to [...]

The global financial crisis and the bailouts of major financial institutions renewed skepticism in some quarters about central banks' monopoly on the issuance of currency. Such skepticism fueled the creation [...]

In the early 1930s, as the Great Depression took hold, the international capital flows that were critical to the functioning of the world economy dried up. The reasons are still [...]

National and local governments own a potential gold mine of assets, mostly in the form of real estate and government-owned companies. With better governance, many of these assets--such as outdated [...]

Besides their captivating beauty, one thing the Caribbean countries have in common is their vulnerability to frequent and costly natural disasters. Many are among the 25 most vulnerable nations in [...]

December 2015 was a whirlwind month for Angus Deaton. There was the trip to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in economics from King Gustaf of Sweden. And there was [...]

On the evening of June 20, 1790, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton met at Thomas Jefferson's home on Maiden Lane, in New York. Over a long dinner, the three struck [...]

Atypical developing economy collects just 15 percent of GDP in taxes, compared with the 40 percent collected by a typical advanced economy. The ability to collect taxes is central to [...]

Almost a decade after the onset of the global financial crisis, national debt in advanced economies remains near its highest level since World War II, averaging 104 percent of GDP. [...]

It has often been said that the world's aggregate poverty gap--the total monetary amount by which all poor people fall below the poverty line--is modest when one uses poverty lines [...]

Every year there are major discoveries of oil and gas deposits around the world. Government officials and citizens alike are jubilant, anticipating the prosperity these discoveries herald. But that exuberance [...]

Drop by David Autor's office at lunchtime and you'll find the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economics professor munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that he brings from [...]

Nowhere in the world has conflict been as frequent or as violent over the past 50 years as in the Middle East and North Africa. On average, countries in this [...]

A new wave of leaders in sub-Saharan Africa has expressed renewed commitment to fighting corruption. This trend reflects a recognition that good governance is key to fostering growth and economic [...]

According to official statistics, Luxembourg, a country of 600,000 people, hosts as much foreign direct investment (FDI) as the United States and much more than China. Luxembourg's $4 trillion in [...]

In nearly 40 years of navigating government, academia, and international financial institutions, Ricardo Hausmann has been on a quest to discover what makes some countries succeed and others fail. He [...]

The first automobiles were essentially old-fashioned carriages with engines strapped on; it took years for pioneers like Henry Ford to design a vehicle specifically adapted to the new internal combustion [...]

The League of Nations did not have a Facebook page. Its staff didn't Google or order online from Amazon. A century ago foreign direct investment involved tangible things like railways [...]

Improving health care and increasing the number of people who are healthy may be a major development goal of the international community, but even in rapidly growing developing economies there [...]

Angola, the third-largest economy in Africa, relies on imports to keep its economy running. It is a heavyweight exporter of oil, diamonds, and iron ore, but it imports food, medicine, [...]

Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies has slowed sharply since the global financial crisis, declining from 10 percent a year in 2010 to less than 3.5 percent in [...]

Fewer Nordic banks are using cash in their branches. India recently scrapped 86 percent of its banknotes. Korea plans to stop minting coins by 2020. Online payments are booming. The [...]