Opinion

As America’s economic reopening fitfully proceeds, it is becoming clear that it will require a precious resource often in short supply: trust. Americans are about to see a new referendum on how strong is the glue that holds them together. Should you show up again for work? It depends how much you trust the pronouncements of your employer that the ...

During the coronavirus lockdown, a particular meme has been doing the rounds on Instagram and Twitter. It shows a woman in a pink ballgown, complete with tulle train billowing out behind her. She’s not standing on a glitzy red carpet. She is in a supermarket produce section, clutching a bunch of carrots in one hand and reaching for a red ...

Even as some retailers begin to open stores again, the pain across malls and main streets continues to take its toll. J Crew Group Inc said it would begin pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and enter into a $1.65 billion debt-for-equity swap with its lenders, becoming the first major US retailer to succumb to the economic convulsions caused by the ...

The inevitable video-call backlash is well underway. Videoconferencing is exhausting, people complain. Our brains have to work harder than they do in face-to-face interactions. And so we give each other advice on how to combat Zoom fatigue and speculate whether it’s worse for extroverts. However, some people have been having the opposite experience. Since they got the hang of video ...

Thanks to coronavirus-induced declines in tax revenue — and record filings for unemployment benefits — state and local governments are in crisis. Many have underfunded pension systems and few have significant reserves. None can run deficits as readily as the federal government. Like so much of the economic news as of late, the closest precedent is the Great Depression. In ...

The US Treasury Department has asked more than 200 public companies that received almost $1 billion in loans under the Paycheck Protection Program to return the money, even if they technically qualify as small businesses. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said the program wasn’t intended for these companies because they have access to the capital markets. Yet consider the federal ...

India is reopening, but a partial end to the world’s harshest coronavirus lockdown is failing to bring cheer. Anxiety still clouds the outlook amid a lack of meaningful fiscal help for workers and companies. Starting from May 04, PM Narendra Modi’s government relaxed restrictions on the production, sale and transport of goods in districts identified as green and orange. However, virus ...

Harvard economist Melissa Dell recently won the 2020 John Bates Clark medal, which is given to outstanding economists younger than 40. Dell’s most famous research concerns the importance of institutions in a country’s long-term political and economic development. It carries a dire warning for the US as well as other nations. What is an institution? To most people it means ...

My good friend Joel Havemann died the other day. No, he wasn’t a victim of the coronavirus. Since early 1990 at age 46, he had been battling Parkinson’s disease, a struggle that he was bound to lose. The more he succeeded in prolonging life, the weaker he would become at the end of life. As his strength dissipated, he would ...

Crises tend to widen fault lines that already exist. The Covid-19 pandemic has been no exception. Before the virus hit, the unbalanced nature of recent economic growth was already straining federal structures around the world, from the US to India to Europe. The current crisis threatens to open new disagreements and deepen old ones — and transform some political entities ...