Opinion

  Tesco Plc’s move to acquire cash-and-carry wholesaler Booker Group Plc is a bid by Britain’s biggest grocer to tackle a serious problem that faces all of the nation’s big supermarkets. It’s also a cunning succession plan. The deal makes strategic sense. Tesco can transform some of the excess space in its big hypermarkets into Booker distribution centers. It’s not ...

  Some bold and simple policies have merit; Friday’s executive order that temporarily bans the citizens of certain countries from coming to the US, and stops indefinitely the entry of Syrian refugees, is not one of them. As designed and implemented, there are genuine doubts about the order’s effectiveness in meeting its stated objective of preventing terrorism. It also risks ...

  “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.” — President Donald Trump, January 20. Washington is not a swamp. Since at least the days of Jimmy Carter, presidential politicians have run against Washington, ...

  Russia was one of the best trades of 2016 by a country mile. A strengthening ruble supercharged foreign interest in domestic Russian government bonds, pushing yields down to around 8 percent from 12 percent in mid-2015. Contrary to appearances, there’s still some room to run. There’s a realistic chance that inflation will cool to the Russian central bank’s 4 ...

  Not surprisingly for a president whose slogan is “America First,” Donald Trump has expressed deep skepticism about the United Nations. Nevertheless, his appointment of a skilled and popular politician as the new US permanent representative stands to help make the UN a more effective forum for advancing US interests. It will be South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s job to ...

  British Prime Minister Theresa May met US President Donald Trump on Friday to garner support as UK is poised to leave European Union. May fared well in meeting with Trump, who promised her what the former demanded. She returns with Trump’s promise to seek an early trade deal with Britain once it leaves the European Union, a commitment from ...

  Just a few years ago, many were proclaiming the decline of behavioural economics. In 2009, the well-known game theorist David Levine delivered a lecture called “Is Behavioural Economics Doomed?,” in which he casts doubt on some prominent behavioural theories. In a few fields, such as finance, behavioural ideas have gone mainstream; in others, like game theory, interest is slowly ...

  Ebay Inc. has managed to right the ship. Now it’s time to get sailing.Shares in the e-commerce company rose 9 percent in after-hours trading as investors cheered a fourth-consecutive quarter of sales increases. Maintaining a full year of gains helped quiet concerns that without PayPal Holdings Inc., the subsidiary it split from in 2015, eBay would be left for ...

  As UK Prime Minister Theresa May tries to show the world that Brexit won’t be a disaster, it’s useful to consider what the UK can actually offer the world once it’s deprived of its European Union crutches. Perhaps its eventual role is to be the world’s quirky creative hub: That core competence won’t go away with Brexit, and it ...

  It is still early days, but a picture of the economic policy approach favored by President Donald Trump is gradually coming into focus. Here are some of its key features as signaled by the words and actions of the administration in its first week in office: It is targeting higher growth and greater job creation using what can be ...