Chloregy

The world is only just beginning to see glimpses of cyber war – in the denial-of-service attacks that accompanied the conventional war in Georgia in 2008, or the recent sabotage of Iranian centrifuges. States have the greatest capabilities, but non-state actors are more likely to initiate a catastro...

The Trouble with Libertarian Paternalism

Thursday, 12 April 2012 Raghuram Rajan

By exploiting behavioral quirks, libertarian paternalists would nudge people into making decisions that are good for them, even while individuals have complete freedom to change their mind. The problem is that the semblance of choice is an illusion, because individuals do not consciously think throu...

The Anti-Fragile Life of the Economy

Monday, 02 April 2012 Antoine Danchin

Nassim Taleb, famous for his prescient identification of rare “black swan” events that are correlated with economic catastrophes, recently proposed “anti-fragility” as a way to conceptualize the reproduction of markets and output in the face of such events. In fact, anti-fragile structures and proce...

Fair Trade With Free-Trade Blinders

Monday, 12 March 2012 Dani Rodrik

Too many economists are prone to attribute concerns about globalization to crass protectionist motives or ignorance, even when genuine ethical issues are at stake. By ignoring the fact that international trade sometimes involves redistributive outcomes that we would consider problematic at home, the...

Going Global on a Shoestring and a Smartphone

Tuesday, 06 March 2012 Richard Lakin

In the past year, the ability of digital media to promote social change has been amply proven by the Arab Spring, WikiLeaks, and the Occupy movement. We saw this start a few years ago in Iran, but in the last 12-14 months there has been an even more robust and growing digital movement to promote eco...

The Political Economy of Superstars

Tuesday, 06 March 2012 Kenneth Rogoff

High salaries for athletes and movie stars are easily accepted by the public. So why, if a financial trader or a corporate boss is paid a fortune, does the public suspect that he or she must be undeserving or, worse, a thief?

Can Europe Be Saved?

Thursday, 01 March 2012 Alfred Gusenbauer

In 2011, Europe’s financial and banking crisis escalated into a sovereign-debt crisis. A problem that began in Greece ended up raising doubts about the very viability of the euro – and even of the European Union itself... This management structure is neither democratically legitimate nor justified b...

Local Resilience Sustainable Societies

Thursday, 01 March 2012 Philip Monaghan

‘Eco cities,’ urban ‘place-making,’ and the ‘big society’ – what do these things have in common? They are all concepts of sustainable settlements (low carbon, more equal and prosperous living) that are most likely doomed to failure. Why will they falter? Because visions for local self-determination ...

The Streets of 2012

Tuesday, 07 February 2012 Naomi Wolf

What does the New Year hold for the global wave of protest that erupted in 2011? Did the surge of anger that began in Tunisia crest in lower Manhattan, or is 2012 likely to see an escalation of the politics of dissent?

Referendum on Obama

Wednesday, 01 February 2012 Michael Boskin

The 2012 US presidential election will be a referendum on Barack Obama’s policies and performance. A Republican presidential victory, together with Republican control of Congress, would most likely lead to substantial reduction, repeal, and replacement of many Obama initiatives, attempts to reform t...

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