Opinion

  Facebook has detailed its plan for combating fake news. It will effectively outsource the fact-checking of news stories flagged by users as possibly fake to third-party groups that should, at a minimum, be signatories to a code developed at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism training organization. But by making a small group of vetters the arbiters of “truth,” …

  The fall of Aleppo is a human catastrophe. It’s also a demonstration of the perils of choosing the middle course in a military conflict. Sometimes it’s possible to talk and fight at the same time. But in Syria, America’s decision to pursue a dual-track, halfway approach made the mayhem worse. A battered Secretary of State John Kerry made one …

  OK, I should have headlined it, “My favorite economics books of 2016.” There surely are many good books that I missed. Still, the four below share certain appealing characteristics. They tell us stuff we don’t know, which alters our view of the world. They are all deeply researched and reported. They’re clearly written. For your dedicated economics wonk or …

  In questioning the “One China” policy that’s governed US-China relations for nearly four decades, President-elect Donald Trump seems to believe he’s wielding powerful leverage to persuade leaders in Beijing to give the US a better deal on trade. In fact, he’s setting himself up to fail —and ignoring the more effective tools at his disposal. The 1979 decision to …

  The United States announced that it has withheld a major aid package to the Philippines over significant concerns about the rule of law under President Rodrigo Duterte. This comes as a response to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte war on drug pushers. It has claimed more than 5,000 lives so far. Even before he was elected Philippines president, Duterte had …

  The news media have been abuzz for a few weeks about the proliferation and effect of fake news. Facebook Inc. is changing how it handles news from dubious sources, while Twitter Inc. is rethinking how to respond to bots promoting fabricated articles. Alphabet Inc. (Google) has rejiggered its algorithms to fight phony stories. All of which raises some very …

  Hong Kong property investors thought they could pick up pennies in front of the steamroller called the Federal Reserve. No longer. US short-term rates were climbing hard even before Donald Trump’s victory. Interbank liquidity in the city was more than abundant, however, thanks to capital fleeing a weakening Chinese currency to the safety of the pegged Hong Kong dollar.All …

  The unemployment rate is down to 4.6 percent, which sounds pretty good. But the unemployment rate doesn’t count people who’ve given up looking for jobs, which is why the employment-to-population ratio, especially the ‘prime-age’ ratio for those 25 through 54, may be a better measure of the health of the labor market. After I wrote about this metric, several …

  During his campaign and even since becoming president-elect, Donald Trump has said a lot of things and cited a lot of figures that appear to be completely made up. When he has talked about the economy, though, Trump has often relied on actual government statistics. For example, there was Trump’s charge that Barack Obama has been “the first president …

  Here’s a maxim for life as a famous economist: If your theory wins a Nobel Prize, look out — it might already be running into big problems. When the Black-Scholes-Merton option-pricing model won the prize in 1997, it had already required some major tweaks to fit new data; a decade later, it was being blamed for the financial crisis. …