Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy showed that he doesn’t merely hold a better poker hand than Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont; he’s also the better player. Unfortunately, the Catalan separatism problem won’t be resolved by this particular game. At some point, Spain will need to offer Catalans an arrangement with which they can live. An example of a potentially acceptable arrangement ...

The general perception is that global bond yields are historically low because monetary policy has been aggressively eased. This leads to expectations that yields will rise—possibly sharply—once the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank start the process they call “balance sheet normalization.” After all, when he was Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke spent a lot of time and effort ...

When the economies of Nigeria and South Africa recently rebounded, it wasn’t oil or minerals that did the trick. It was agriculture. Faster and more sustainable agricultural growth is crucial not only to the continent’s economy, but also to its ability to feed and employ its surging population. Agriculture still accounts for a quarter of gross domestic product and as ...