Joseph E Stiglitz

The problems posed by the disaffected Americans – resulting from decades of neglect – will not be solved quickly or by conventional tools. An effective strategy will need to consider more unconventional solutions, which Republican corporate interests are unlikely to favour.

Change entails risk. But the Trump phenomenon – and more than a few similar political developments in Europe – has revealed the far greater risks entailed by failing to heed this message.

It's been a quarter-century since Japan's asset bubble burst – and a quarter-century of malaise as one “lost decade” has followed another.

In response to asymmetric shocks and divergences in productivity, there would have to be adjustments in the real (inflation-adjusted) exchange rate, meaning that prices in the eurozone periphery would have to fall relative to Germany and northern Europe.

The failure of globalisation to deliver on the promises of mainstream politicians has surely undermined trust and confidence in the “establishment.” And governments' offers of generous bailouts for the banks that had brought on the 2008 financial crisis, while leaving ordinary citizens largely to fend for themselves, reinforced the view that this failure was not merely a matter of economic misjudgments.

For 200 years, there have been two schools of thought about what determines the distribution of income – and how the economy functions.

I wrote at the beginning of January that economic conditions this year were set to be as weak as in 2015, which was the worst year

SOMETHING interesting has emerged in voting patterns on both sides of the Atlantic: Young people are voting in ways that are

Sri Lanka is fortunate to have a low level of urbanisation today; but this is likely to change in the next two decades. This gives the country the opportunity to create model cities, based on the adequate provision of public services and sound public transport and attuned to the cost of carbon and climate change.

Last year was a memorable one for the global economy. Not only was overall performance disappointing, but profound changes – both for better and for worse – occurred in the global economic system.

Former US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke once said that the world is suffering from a “savings glut.”

It is perhaps true that unhealthy habits are more concentrated among poor Americans, a disproportionate number of whom are black. But these habits themselves are a consequence of economic conditions, not to mention the stresses of racism.

At the end of every August, central bankers and financiers from around the world meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the US Federal Reserve's economic symposium. This year, the participants were greeted by a large group of mostly young people, including many African- and Hispanic Americans.

The third Interna-tional Conference on Financing for Development recently convened in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors.

The future of Europe and the euro now depends on whether the eurozone's political leaders can combine a modicum of economic understanding with a visionary sense of, and concern for, European solidarity.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are poised to hold their annual meetings, but the big news in global economic

LAST July, when United States federal judge Thomas Griesa ruled that Argentina had to repay in full the so-called vulture funds that had bought its sovereign debt at rock-bottom prices, the country was forced into default, or “Griesafault.”