Opinion

  Their situation can be described by the proverb ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’. Their past was gloomy and future appears to be dark. They are trapped between hope and despair. They are the migrants at Calais ‘Jungle’ camp. On Monday, over 1,000 migrants rode buses out of the ‘Jungle’ as French authorities kicked off an operation ...

Economies need competition to work. Almost all basic economic theories, including supply and demand itself, rely on the assumption that companies lower prices to undercut the competition whenever possible. If sellers can set whatever prices they like, that’s a monopoly. And as any good Econ 101 class will teach you, monopolies hold production below its economically efficient level, in order ...

  Change can sneak up on lawmakers and judges, rendering old laws obsolete. Often, that’s harmless. (When was the last time you ran afoul of Reno’s ban on benches in streets or Wyoming’s prohibition on fishing with firearms?) But sometimes, laws that once served a good purpose can get in the way of progress. That’s what’s going on now in ...

  He is the least sentimental of the media moguls, known for being a dispassionate judge of a business’s worth. And now he wants to sell Time Warner. Maybe we should be listening to what Jeff Bewkes is telling us. Sure, there are lots of other things one can discuss regarding the AT&T-Time Warner deal: AT&T’s plan for a 5G-wireless ...

  Donald Trump and his populist, nationalist counterparts in Europe are often portrayed as a threat to democracy. Their supporters argue that establishment politicians and technocrats are an even bigger threat because they listen only to the special interests that feed them. Could it be, then, that democracy in its current American and European forms is a threat to itself? ...

  Given the parlous state of Europe’s economy, it’s hard to imagine that the investments of the region’s banks are among the safest in the world. Yet that is precisely what they would have regulators and investors believe. The banks’ safety has come into the spotlight as European officials — including German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and European Commission financial-services ...

  When smoking costs more, more people quit. That’s why higher cigarette taxes are almost always good policy, for smokers and the public health, too. There’s a catch, though — and it’s one that voters in four states should keep in mind as they consider ballot initiatives next month to raise cigarette taxes: Sin taxes work only if they’re high ...

  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s repeated tirades have raised a wave of worry for the United States. The firebrand leader recently remarked that his country would “separate” from the US. Later, however, he clarified his comment and said he did not plan to sever the nation’s seven-decade alliance with America. For some time now, Duterte has been cozying up to ...

  In the June referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, 61 percent of the voters in the city of Sunderland voted to quit. As a result, 6,700 jobs at Nissan’s factory there are now in peril as the Japanese carmaker weighs whether to build the next version of its Qashqai model in the northeast of soon-to-be-independent England. ...

  India’s celebrated position as the world’s fastest-growing large economy conceals a dangerous weakness: Too few people seem to want to invest in the country. Even going by the government’s growth figures, private investment is shrinking at an increasing pace — by 1.9 percent between January and March, and by 3.1 percent between April and June. India’s Aspirations The government ...