Opinion

  Thomas Malthus was wrong for one simple reason. Humans have survived his 1798 forecast that growing populations wouldn’t be able to feed themselves because innovation and productivity gains allowed them to produce more and more with the same amount of labour and capital: Irrigation, fertilizers, higher-yielding plant species and mechanization have enabled farmers to grow 5 to 6 times …

  With inflation in the euro zone starting to show signs of life, European Central Bank watchers are beginning to speculate about when quantitative easing might taper off. Germany’s Bundesbank, which has been uncomfortable with the bond-buying program from the get-go, is likely to be a leading advocate of scaling back purchases. But there are significant risks to moving too …

  Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have made clear, to varying degrees, that they’re suspicious of big free-trade agreements. Trump has gone further and questioned some of America’s most durable and valuable relationships with other nations. While some of this can be dismissed as campaign rhetoric, the consequences of such talk are far-reaching. At a time of major economic …

  Alibaba’s Jack Ma has big dreams. Having transformed Chinese retail, he’s now determined to reinvigorate globalization. The way to do so, according to his annual shareholder letter released last week, is for other countries to use or replicate Alibaba’s “commerce infrastructure,” which includes everything from sales portals to payment systems. Ma hopes to see similar systems applied on a …

  One of the few bright spots for international investors following the U.K.’s June vote to quit the European Union was the swift establishment of political stability. David Cameron’s decision to fall on his sword threatened a divisive battle for control of the ruling Conservative government; instead, Theresa May emerged unchallenged and triumphant as her rivals dropped away. That stability, …

  The latest U.S. easing of regulations on commerce with Cuba is good news, not least for fans of rum and cigars. But it’s also a sign that President Barack Obama’s drive to normalize relations is approaching the limits of his authority. With this new initiative, Obama has done about as much as he can to lighten the burden of …

  Under a pledge made in 2009 in Copenhagen, the rich countries are supposed to give $100-billion annually to poor nations from 2020. This money is to be used in climate change mitigation. The 38 developed countries — who had signed the vow back then — on Tuesday said that they were “confident” of meeting the target. There was initial …

  In a democracy, the “people” are the supreme arbiters, and their wisdom speaks through the electoral process. Such is the assumption on which the modern world has been built since God and monarchs began to fade from the scene. Lately, however, the wisdom of the people has felt a bit off-key. In one country after another, from the Philippines …

  Of an estimated 2.6 billion mobile-phone owners in low- and middle-income countries last year, 1.4 billion were men and 1.2 were women, according to a study conducted for the mobile industry trade group GSMA. Most of that mobile-phone gender gap was concentrated in just one country, India, where 114 million fewer women than men had phones. This leads to …

  In the 1930s, when U.S. started to build public housing, it was focused in the inner cities, because that’s where lots of poor people lived and worked. In recent decades, public housing is more about giving poor people vouchers, which allows them to move into the suburbs. As a result, poverty in the U.S. is no longer mainly an …