I suspect that long-time watchers of China’s reform efforts may not be that enthusiastic about yesterday’s decision by the country’s central bank to cut the required reserve ratios for banks. Although understandable as a short-term response to a more challenging growth environment, it risks being another attempt to crank up an old economic- model whose effectiveness has declined and whose ...

There were howls of outrage when the Labour Party said earlier this year that it would force the Bank of England (BOE) to set a target for productivity if it won power. The announcement by the Conservative government that Andy Haldane, the central bank’s chief economist, will head a new Industrial Strategy Council is similarly distasteful. The new body “has ...

In signing the Paris climate agreement, the world’s governments pledged to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Leaving aside that their collective efforts and plans to curb greenhouse gases are not enough to accomplish that — the goal itself turns out to be too modest to prevent disastrous warming. Today’s report from the United ...