Opinion

  The Indian government’s decision to elevate a well-respected deputy governor at the Reserve Bank of India to become the country’s next central banker is, frankly, a bit of a relief. The naming of Urjit Patel comes after months of quite unnecessary drama — first over whether current RBI chief Raghuram Rajan and the government were getting along, then whether …

  When China’s top securities regulator said recently that it plans to delist Dandong Xintai Electric Co. for falsifying initial public offering documents, it didn’t grab many headlines. But it suggested some far-reaching changes may be afoot. Xintai is the first company to be expelled from Shenzhen’s ChiNext board for such an offense, and one of only a handful that …

  Although First Ladies have been given important responsibilities in their husbands’ presidencies, none has taken such an active part in policymaking as Hillary Rodham Clinton did. Here are excerpts from interviews my colleagues and I conducted with Clinton administration officials and others who discussed her personality and her role. Did you get the impression that she may have been …

  An aging America reduces the economy’s growth — big time. That’s the startling conclusion of a new academic study, and if it withstands scholarly scrutiny, it could transform our national political and economic debate. We’ve known for decades, of course, that the retirement of the huge baby-boom generation — coupled with low birthrates — would make the United States …

Lots of presidential-campaign observers have been questioning the numbers in Hillary Clinton’s plan to make public colleges and universities “free” for students whose families earn below a set threshold. And I will admit that I am a longtime skeptic of proposals to further subsidize higher education. But one thing critics such as myself tend to overlook is the positive value …

  New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, on most days simply a bore to pass through, descended into chaos last weekend. Waves of confusion rippled through its terminals when passengers, thinking a terrorist attack was underway, stampeded haphazardly in search of refuge. It was all for nothing. There was no attack, no “active shooter.” Evidently, a crowd watching the Olympics …

  With plunging copper prices, weak currency, ballooning budget deficit and skyrocketing inflation, Zambia is grappling with an unprecedented economic challenge. And the newly re-elected President Edgar Lungu has an extremely tough job at hand — to remedy the various ills ailing the country’s economy. There was a time when the southern African nation had seen the GDP growing at …

  Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, has written the best article I’ve read on Britain’s exit from the European Union. In an essay for the New York Review of Books he makes many excellent points, but one is of surpassing importance. It’s an obvious point, or ought to be, that nonetheless has been almost entirely ignored …

  Of all living things, why do humans alone create advanced technology? Not long ago, scientists thought it was because we are the only intelligent life form on this planet. That explanation alone no longer suffices. Over the last decade, scientists have discovered that crows can use tools, hyenas can cooperate to solve complex problems, jays can plan for the …

  “Communism would have worked, if the Soviet Union had only tried it for real.” I must have heard this argument a dozen times from die-hard leftist friends. Marxist economists such as Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick even wrote a book making exactly this claim. No doubt, true believers will be just as unwavering in the face of Venezuela’s collapse. …