Opinion

  What a moment for President Obama to deliver his valedictory address to the U.N. Tuesday — defending the liberal international order at a time when it’s under severe stress around the world. Obama’s speech was preceded by some sickening reminders of how global security is fraying: The day before, a Syrian, or perhaps Russian, airstrike had ravaged a U.N. ...

  Self-driving cars got a green light from the U.S. government this week, but still have their own challenges: erratic human drivers, compromised visibility, unexpected route changes. Here’s one they won’t face until they catch on: zoning. As soon as self-driving cars are readily available, proponents will run into political battles over land use, a challenge familiar to urbanism advocates. ...

The idea that the world is awash in savings — one factor driving the theory of secular stagnation — is, on the surface, a persuasive one. Too bad it may not be true. Yes, the postwar generation is wealthier than any before it. But the ultimate value of any investment depends upon being able to convert it into cash and ...

  Technology has put powerful computers in billions of pockets, but an invention much more mundane than the smartphone — the shipping container: a rectangular steel box — also has changed the world. Because of it, two of today’s preoccupations — infrastructure and globalization — are connected by a chain of events that began more than 60 years ago and ...

  Many people seem to expect Chancellor Angela Merkel to apologize. Her party, the Christian Democratic Union, keeps underperforming in regional elections. Most recently, the CDU took a drubbing in parliamentary elections in Berlin on Sept. 18. The reason: the backlash against the kindness Merkel showed toward refugees last year. There have been five defeats this year, in every state ...

  In publishing new guidelines for automated vehicles this week, the U.S. Transportation Department tacitly acknowledged two important truths: This technology will probably be great. And no one knows what will happen. The regulators took a restrained approach, offering a safety checklist for manufacturers and better guidance for state officials but stopping short of issuing restrictive new rules. That’s prudent: ...

  Bank of Japan (BoJ) comprehensively reviewed the sustainability of a series of daring policy decisions that it had taken since January at its meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. The mellowed central bank weighed the effectiveness of these decisions and unveiled a massive overhaul of monetary policy. The latest steps to commit itself to stoking inflation over the longer term ...

  Until a few years ago, Africa Rising was a dominant theme in conversations about the global economy. That enthusiasm has since cooled, so that in newsrooms and think tanks and conference panels, “Africa Rising!” has given way to a more questioning “Africa Rising?” While some of that pessimism may be justified, we do not have the luxury of distracting ...

  Last Wednesday was a historic day for behavioral science. The White House released the annual report of its Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. The U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team released its own annual report on the same day. With the recent creation of similar teams in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Qatar, the two reports deserve careful attention. Outlining dozens ...

  Let’s be honest. The world would be a better place if a revolutionary tribunal in the near future sent North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and his henchmen to the gallows. Kim’s subjects are so malnourished that North Koreans are notably shorter than their South Korean cousins. The state’s gulags are so large, you can see them from space. Survivors of ...