Italy’s auction of five and 10-year government bonds on Thursday will be the most important test of investor appetite since the country’s political crisis subsided. Buyers are understandably skittish. Appetite for the 10-year securities the government sold at the end of May was poor, something I remarked on at the time. Since then, yields on Italy’s two-year bonds have climbed ...

The rising US dollar and higher interest rates are pummeling emerging markets. Foreign investors who rode the big rally in these markets in 2016 and 2017 see little reason to stick around and are leaving en masse. This shift will probably persist since dollar-denominated obligations make up some 75 percent of the trillions of dollars in developing-economy debt. True, cheaper ...

Real estate is the driver of the Chinese economy. By some estimates, it accounts (directly and indirectly) for as much as 30 percent of gross domestic product. Keeping housing prices buoyant and development robust is thus an overriding imperative for China — one that is distorting policymaking and worsening its other economic imbalances. Despite reforms in recent years, there’s little ...