Washington / AFP Whether or not Britons vote this month to quit the European Union, fellow voters across the continent are increasingly sceptical of the benefits of staying in the bloc. A Pew Research Center survey published on Tuesday suggests the June 23 Brexit referendum will be close, with 48 percent of British voters polled unfavorable to Europe and ...

  Securing long-term economic viability remains a challenge for the Melanesian states, with geographic isolation, climate change, natural disasters, and aid dependency presenting significant problems for these relatively young countries. Vanuatu has a population of 270,000 and a GDP of $771 million. Designing an economy that is capable of supporting some 83 islands who mainly practice subsistence farming is a ...

  Greece, that hotbed of worst economic practices, has provided a perfect illustration of one of the biggest problems facing governments: In a world that’s increasingly unified by technology, the fiscal systems are still designed for 20th-century business models. The Sharing Economy A series of tax hikes went into effect on June 1 in Greece, including a one percentage point ...

  Dmitry Filippov SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 6 was met with positive reactions from both countries and gave grounds for cautious optimism regarding going forward with the peace treaty negotiations and making progress on the Northern Territories dispute. As I wrote of Abe’s visit: [T]he ...

  Bloomberg One of the biggest winners from an Indonesian tax amnesty may turn out to be the shares of real-estate developers, as funds get channeled into investments in the nation’s houses and apartments. Bank Indonesia estimates about 560 trillion rupiah ($42 billion) of undeclared income will be repatriated as a result of the reprieve. In a country where less ...

  BLOOMBERG Vancouver’s mayor is considering a tax on empty homes to help boost supply and damp prices in North America’s hottest residential market. Owners need to be prodded to live in the properties they buy or rent them out as the city faces an acute housing shortage, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said in an interview. “We’re looking at new ...

  Bloomberg BentleyForbes once owned such renowned properties as the Watergate office complex in Washington and Bank of America Plaza, Atlanta’s tallest skyscraper. Now the company is on the verge of vanishing. C. Frederick Wehba, who co-founded the Los Angeles-based real estate firm in 1993 and was chairman until 2012, said he will announce his official separation as an adviser ...

WASHINGTON The robots are coming — but not in numbers that would imperil most Americans’ jobs. Few subjects have inspired as much hype as robots. Consider some sample headlines: “Robots and Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs within the Next 20 years,” “Robots Could Put Humans Out of Work by 2045,” “Why the Highest-Paid Doctors Are the Most Vulnerable to ...

  China, which has been a top business hub over the last two decades, is now experiencing slow growth amid increasing hostile business environment and lack of political will to accelerate structural reforms, triggering pessimism among European companies. Fifty-six per cent of European firms polled by the European Chamber of Commerce in China said they are finding it more difficult ...

  Galbaatar Lkhagvasuren SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Mongolia has declared in its National Security Concept that it will develop friendly-neighbor relations and wide-ranging cooperation with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Yet individuals and other groups both in China and Russia have attempted cyber attacks on Mongolia numerous times, most of which have been reported to the ...