At their post-Civil War apogee, 19th-century Republicans were the party of activist government, using protectionism to pick commercial winners and promising wondrous benefits from government’s deft interventions in economic life. Today, a Republican administration promises that wisely wielded Washington power can rearrange commercial activities in ways superior to those produced by private-sector calculations in free market transactions. According to ...

  The issue of what the UK does or doesn’t owe the European Union risks becoming a landmine in the Brexit negotiations. Britain should pay what it legitimately owes for EU services it signed up to. Divorce is never cheap. But by seeking to maximize payment, and by making payment a precondition for the rest of the talks, the EU ...

  Economists have come to rival even journalists and politicians in lack of public esteem. That might be partly because so many economists seem as interested in journalism and politics as in advancing their science. But there’s also a deeper problem: Far from advancing, the science of economics has been going backwards. Economists tend to be either practitioners or theorists. ...

  North Korea allegedly carried out a ballistic missile test on early Sunday. But there was no confirmation from Pyongyang. The US Strategic Command reported that it was a medium- or intermediate-range ballistic missile. Japanese government confirmed that the missile fell in seas between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Kim Jong Un, the reclusive leader of the pariah state, warned ...

  When it comes to robots displacing humans from the job market, government bureaucrats are generally not what springs to mind. The recent McKinsey report on the future of jobs estimates the automation potential of administrative jobs at just 39 percent, far less than the 73 percent potential for accommodation and food services. And yet the public sector is one ...

  So it turns out nothing really is something in the bond market. Big Wall Street firms may lament the persistence of zero interest-rate policies in the US, but they look downright ostentatious when pitted against Europe’s vortex of negative-rate policies. In the past week alone, the volume of negative-yielding euro-zone debt surged 30 percent, to a record 2.6 trillion ...

  The unfunded liabilities of public pensions are out of control across the country. My state, Illinois, is the most severe case, with only 40 percent of those liabilities funded. Given the magnitude of the problem, and the political and legal obstacles to fixing it, it remains tempting to underplay the importance of straightforward financial changes that could put the ...

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump called the US air-traffic system ‘obsolete’ in comments that were cheered by proponents of taking the job of monitoring the skies away from government. Trump, speaking at a meeting of airline executives and other aviation industry officials, made the strongest comments to date from the White House on problems with the air-traffic system. He echoed ...

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. disclosed Iranian business ties that may have violated U.S. sanctions, warning that it may be penalized after a regulatory review of the activities. The company said in a regulatory filing that from 2012 to 2016 it “processed and delivered orders of consumer products for certain individuals and entities located outside Iran covered by the Iran Threat ...

  Emirates Business Micromax Informatics Ltd, India’s leading handset manufacturer and the 10th largest smartphone player in the world, on Sunday announced its foray into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with the entry into the UAE smartphone market. Micromax has entered a strategic agreement with Tchannl, one of the leading players in telecom, IT and consumer electronics ...