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Economists are famously bad at predicting growth. A new technique might help them get a little better. When assessing a country’s potential to prosper, economists typically look at aggregate measures such as education, investment or national debt. This hasn’t worked particularly well: China’s economy, for example, has kept growing at a fast pace even though they’ve been predicting a slowdown ...

Annoyed by Congress’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration is redoubling its efforts to undermine the law. The latest act of sabotage: Top federal health officials have been told not to help states sign up Americans for insurance policies as part of this fall’s open enrollment period. Reducing the number of people who buy policies will ...

Those cheering the looming departure of Wolfgang Schaeuble from the German Ministry of Finance should not do much. His successor may not be as ornery, but southern Europeans—and above all Greeks—shouldn’t expect any better treatment. Schaeuble has held a wide range of positions since he was first elected to the German parliament in 1972; he’s been interior minister, chief of ...

This past week, I gave a lecture to a Georgetown University graduate seminar. The instructor’s challenge to me was to talk about technology as integral to energy security. Here is the argument I laid out for these students. In wind and solar energy—which only significantly depend on hydrocarbons during manufacturing and transport—technology is a relatively simple lens on energy. For ...

When discussing Japan’s debt, most people get caught up in the issue of fiscal solvency. As everyone by now knows, Japan has a very high level of debt versus gross domestic product: This attention-grabbing number—about twice the level of the US—often gets people asking whether Japan will default. Some believe a default is likely when the country runs out of ...

Bloomberg US equities fluctuated near records, while the dollar’s rally stalled near a two-month high as investors assessed the prospects for tax reform after a Republican senator raised concern it could inflate the deficit. The S&P 500 Index traded in a tight range close to all-time highs along with other US gauges. The dollar retreated after touching the highest level ...

Reuters Egypt’s stock market fell on Tuesday, ending a six-day winning streak that took the blue-chip index to an all-time high, while Gulf bourses traded narrowly but a couple of petrochemical shares boosted Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian index dropped 0.5 percent to 13,931 points. A purchasing managers’ survey published on Tuesday showed non-oil private sector activity fell at its sharpest ...

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to keep its benchmark rate at a seven-year low this week amid slowing growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. With inflation climbing fast toward the Reserve Bank of India’s medium term target, the Federal Reserve starting to shrink its balance sheet and growing speculation the government may loosen purse strings to bolster ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank should avoid cutting interest rates further because borrowing costs are at an appropriate level even as loan growth remains subdued, according to the chief of the country’s biggest lender. The current benchmark rate of 4.25 percent is “quite optimal,” PT Bank Mandiri President Director Kartika Wirjoatmodjo said in an interview on Sept. 28. “Overall liquidity is ...

Bloomberg Australia’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged — as expected — reinforcing Governor Philip Lowe’s reluctance to follow developed-world counterparts and tighten policy. “Over recent months there have been more consistent signs that non-mining business investment is picking up,” Lowe said in Tuesday’s statement. “A consolidation of this trend would be a welcome development. Business conditions as reported in ...