Opinion

  The run-up to OPEC oil ministers’ meeting in Vienna on November 30 has been patchy. Last week’s talks of OPEC officials to resolve the issue of freezing production fell flat. On Saturday, Saudi Arabia abandoned the planned meeting with non-OPEC nations due to lack of agreement on how to share the burden of supply cuts. Despite the hiccups it …

  For all of my adult life I have been hearing that Cuba will blossom economically when Fidel Castro passes away. Now that time has come, and it seems Cuba will continue to struggle. At a superficial glance, the case for Cuban optimism is obvious. So many Cuban-Americans have impressed the world with their business skills and entrepreneurial drive. If …

  Fidel Castro’s passing removes what was long the single greatest psychological barrier to a warmer U.S.-Cuba relationship. But it also adds to the uncertainty ahead with the transition from an Obama to a Trump administration. “A brutal dictator” of a “totalitarian island,” declared President-elect Donald Trump, underscoring the historical trauma still separating the countries. A more restrained President Barack …

  Noah Feldman In the free marketplace of ideas, true ideas are supposed to compete with false ones until the truth wins — at least according to a leading rationale for free speech. But what if the rise of fake news shows that, under current conditions, truth may not defeat falsehood in the market? That would start to make free …

  Lowering the corporate tax rate appears to be all the rage. Donald Trump has promised a cut to 15 percent from 35 percent in the U.S., and British Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to make the U.K.’s corporate tax the lowest in the G-20, which would mean taking it lower than Trump intends to. On the surface, it …

  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is willing to try just about anything to get his company back into China. Publicly, he launched a charm offensive that included learning Mandarin and offering Chinese President Xi Jinping the chance to name his first child (he declined). Less publicly, but no less important, the New York Times reports that his company has developed tools …

  On Sunday, France’s Republican Party will choose its candidate for the presidential election next spring. Opinion polls say that the Republicans are so far ahead that the party, in effect, is about to name the next president — either Alain Juppe or Francois Fillon, former prime ministers offering not-too-dissimilar conservative programs. The polls, for once, had better be right. …

  Environmentalists are stepping up their campaign to ban plastic microbeads, which are polluting our seas and killing marine life. These are also entering our food chain. What are plastic microbeads? They are tiny plastic particles which are found in cosmetics — including facial scrubs, exfoliators, shower gels and toothpastes — and household products as well as industrial processes. A …

  The Chancellor is right to keep his powder dry” was George Osborne’s comment on the mini-budget presented this week by Philip Hammond, his successor at the head of the U.K. Treasury. That’s probably correct given the cloud of uncertainty the Brexit vote is casting over the economy. If he waits too long, however, Hammond risks missing an opportunity to …

  Why has so much of the world succumbed to populist demagoguery and xenophobic nationalism? To a non-trivial extent, economists may be responsible. This idea finds some support in a new book, The Econocracy, written by three U.K. economics students — Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins. They argue that popular dissatisfaction with government has a lot to do …