Last week, the Senate passed a measure that would allot $10 billion over five years for Nasa to develop two new lunar landers. Buried in a nearly $250 billion bill intended to boost innovation, the measure was equal to about 43% of the space agency’s total budget. Why the extravagance? On one level, it surely makes sense to build a ...

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd didn’t hide its frustration when turning away from Hong Kong in 2013 and choosing to list in the US instead. “The question Hong Kong must address is whether it is ready to look forward as the rest of the world passes it by,” co-founder Joe Tsai wrote in a blog post that chastised the city’s exchange ...

Consider the hedge fund manager’s dilemma. If all she has is $200 million to $300 million in assets under management, she’d barely be able to afford that swanky office and the half-dozen analysts she’d need to run the operation. So she works hard to establish a track record and begins to manage, say, $2 billion to $3 billion. At that ...