Opinion

Toshiba Corp. looks to be selling everything. Except its chip business. If ever there was a sign the embattled Japanese firm doesn’t expect — or dare we say it, want — to offload its prized unit to Bain Capital LP and friends, it’s the garage sale that was suddenly launched on Sunday. Toshiba announced plans to sell 600 billion yen …

How big can the largest tech companies get? How completely can they come to dominate the economy? The “big five” — Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon — now have a combined valuation of over $3.3 trillion, and make up more than 40 percent of the value of the Nasdaq 100 index. As the digital economy continues to grow faster …

Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has a long and thoughtful essay about the shortcomings of neoliberalism — the economic programme of free markets and free trade. He writes: Economists’ contributions to public debate are often biased in one direction, in favor of more trade, more finance, and less government. That is why economists have developed a reputation as cheerleaders for neoliberalism, …

South Korea’s corporate watchdog is going after charities that the nation’s family dynasties may have been using to skirt power-diluting inheritance taxes and maintain control, according to a Bloomberg News report recently. That’s a smart move, but an incomplete one. For the crackdown on the $12 billion in foundation money held by chaebol including Samsung Group and Hyundai Motor Group …

Under President Barack Obama, the government took steps to impose greater accountability on the industry and protect students from predatory schools. The policy is both just and cost-effective: For-profit schools saddle students with more debt and lead to higher default rates than traditional schools. In 2016, the department issued the gainful-employment rule, which requires any educational program receiving federal student …

The world’s cities will add 2.5 billion more residents by 2050, more than half of them in Asia. The effect of this great migration on climate change will depend in part on what kind of homes, factories and office buildings they live and work in. It’s a seemingly minor but significant issue that should attract attention from officials gathered at …

It’s easy to see the oil and gas asset sell-off proposed by Norges Bank Investment Management, the entity that runs Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, as a bet on the hydrocarbon industry’s long-term decline. Indeed, Siv Jensen, Norway’s finance minister and the proposal’s addressee, predicted such a decline in a conference speech on Friday. But there’s a better reason …

At a global economic conference last weekend, the US was everywhere and nowhere. In conversations at the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils, people wrestled with challenges to the global trading system, developing infrastructure for the 21st century, and restoring trust in experts and leadership. Donald Trump was never far off — his election being a kind of shorthand for …

Is Tesla Inc.’s Semi on the verge of doing to the trucking industry what the iPhone did to telecommunications? Probably not — but the decarbonization of road freight may still upend both the logistics business and the oil industry. To see why, have a look at the International Energy Agency’s estimates last week for future oil demand. Consumption by passenger …

The Russian economy is once again relying on consumers, who are borrowing more to buy real estate and imported products. The growth is real, but it’s also meager. And it will be hard to sustain without bigger changes. On November 13, Rosstat, Russia’s official statistics agency, announced that the country’s gross domestic product increased 1.8 percent year-over-year in the quarter …