Opinion

Google investors may have had a flashback to the company’s bad old days of 2015. That year may feel like a distant memory. That was before news cycles were measured in seconds. It was before people were talking in earnest about FAANG stocks and before Mark Zuckerberg had sat through multiple rounds of congressional hearings. Back then, Google’s growth looked ...

Much of modern economic theory is based around a simple idea: Human beings maximise utility. But what is utility? Many people think of it as happiness or pleasure; British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the inventor of utilitarianism, conceived of it this way. But this isn’t how modern economists think of the concept. To an economist, utility simply means how much people ...

There are times when it seems we’re worrying about things that aren’t worth worrying about. A good example these days is inflation. Amazingly, the complaint is that it’s not rising fast enough. In March, the consumer price index, or CPI, had increased 1.9% over the past year. The gain of another inflation indicator, the “deflator” of the personal consumption expenditures, ...

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are still among the richest people in the world, but they are worth a lot less this week than they were last. The decline in their fortunes, and that of Google parent company Alphabet Inc. after a disappointing earnings report, should sound a note of caution — not just to investors, but to ...

It was only a few years ago that the term OLED elicited excitement among consumers and investors. Organic light-emitting diodes were the hippest new display technology because they offered better screen quality while using less power. Smartphone makers were keen to preach the technology’s virtues in order to juice sales. When Apple Inc. finally joined the party in 2017, it ...

Anyone who still thinks Australia’s economy is an all-conquering model of perfection is likely to get a wake-up call soon. A 28-year run of expansion has had people abroad fawning over life Down Under — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell among them. For all the superlatives, though, the local central bank considers everything far from rosy. Reserve Bank of Australia ...

China’s second Belt and Road Forum, convened by President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, looked less like an imperial celebration than a summit meeting. Xi’s tone had also become less triumphant. Instead, he spoke about a commitment to zero corruption. He promised to make the environment a central concern for any infrastructure projects included in his globe-spanning Belt and ...

If this was Mike Coupe’s manifesto for J Sainsbury Plc’s life without Walmart Inc.’s Asda, it was pretty disappointing. The Sainsbury chief executive officer promised improvements to stores and price cuts. But details were vague and it is not immediately clear that they will be enough to revive the group’s underlying sales growth, which continues to decline. Among the plans ...

Silicon Valley has been a perennial champion of globalisation and free trade because of the belief that expanded access to markets would mean higher profits for American tech companies and more jobs for American workers. That love of globalisation might sour if a Chinese company becomes the next big winner. The growing popularity with American teens of the Chinese-created video ...

Why should the US government try to help the manufacturing? Although factory work used to offer a pay premium, this has disappeared in recent years: Manufacturing workers also tend to work long, grueling hours. But because of automation and global supply chains, mass manufacturing employment isn’t poised for a comeback in the US; either things will be made by low-wage ...