Opinion

Gig economy workers are in the driver’s seat. With ride-hailing demand outstripping labor supply, a strengthening economy may accomplish what activists have failed to achieve: better pay and benefits. Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc reported earnings that exceeded expectations, citing a rapidly improving market for ride-hailing. Not everything was perfect. While enthusiastic about demand trends, the two companies admitted ...

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, is hamstrung in competing for talent with the rest of the investment industry. As a public institution, it faces what it calls “barriers to remuneration.” In other words, it can’t pay its stars what they would earn working at a hedge fund. But a study just published celebrating 20 years of active management ...

In his first budget request to Congress, President Joe Biden is set to propose $715 billion in defense spending — a 0.4% cut in real terms. After four years in which military spending increased substantially, the administration is right to take aim at Pentagon excess and seek greater value for taxpayer dollars. But perhaps the biggest obstacles to realising those ...

If the Trump presidency and Brexit convinced the European Union to start acting more like a sovereign power and less like a supermarket, Covid-19 has shown there’s a depressingly long journey ahead. First there was fighting over protective medical equipment. Then the bungled start to its vaccine rollout. Now the scale of the bloc’s dependence on the US and Asia ...

When Covid-19 first plunged Europe into lockdown last spring, there were plausible predictions of a tidal wave of corporate insolvencies. That hasn’t happened, at least not yet. The number of companies declaring bankruptcy declined by about a fifth in the euro area last year, even as economic output contracted more than 6%. Firms were saved by overwhelming government support, including ...

It hasn’t been an edifying few days for Hong Kong. After a domestic worker from the Philippines was found late last week to have contracted a more infectious strain of Covid-19 locally, all 370,000 foreign women working in the territory’s homes were ordered to take coronavirus tests, many queueing for hours over the weekend to do so. They faced the ...

In the debate over President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and climate bill, it was perhaps inevitable that some policy makers would object to including anything other than traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges. More surprising is the “new pundit view,” which casts doubt about spending in precisely that narrow category. This is a perspective based on very imperfect data. Especially ...

As anyone who has tried to invest in India can tell you, India’s states are as distinct from each other as European countries. Every now and then, India’s politicians are reminded of this as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi certainly was earlier this week, when his all-conquering Bharatiya Janata Party fell short of expectations in state elections. Of the four ...

Britain’s Vaccine Task Force was the country’s biggest triumph since the 2012 Olympics — and it was a lot more consequential. It gave the UK, which has one of the world’s highest pandemic death tolls, early access to a suite of effective vaccines and a jumpstart on immunising the population. It saved countless lives. Can the government replicate that success ...

Fining and imprisoning Australians returning from India is more than just an extreme effort to discourage travel from the subcontinent during its calamitous surge in Covid cases. It’s emblematic of a siege mentality that politicians, sadly, see as a winning electoral strategy. Australia has temporarily banned its citizens from entering if they have been in India within two weeks of ...