Where is the global economy heading in 2023? After all the challenges of last year, it’s a question we ask with trepidation. Just as the economy was dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February ramped up inflation. Significant rises in the cost

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African leaders face a dilemma over trade relations with the United States. Should they push for the extension of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) or for each country’s bilateral trade deal with the world’s biggest economy? AGOA was the signature economic policy of the Bill Clinton administration. It

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This year’s Nobel prize in economics, known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, has gone to Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig and former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke for their work on banks and how they relate to financial crises. To explain the work and why it matters, we

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On the lower tip of Manhattan there is a prime piece of real estate, the price of which is somewhat up for debate. To the owners, the Trump Organization, 40 Wall Street is worth an eye-watering US$735 million, or at least it was in 2015. Others disagree, pointing to an

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The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Female Airbnb hosts in the United States earn on average about 25% less per year than their male counterparts for their rentals, according to our new study. That’s slightly higher than the annual gender wage gap

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In 1963, the same year American businesswoman Mary Kay Ash started her cosmetics company, publisher W.W. Norton released “The Feminine Mystique – the book that has since been widely credited with launching the contemporary women’s liberation movement. Ash loathed the term “feminist” and disliked the movement. In a 1983 Dallas

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Unions are more popular now than at any time since 1965, and the U.S. is in the midst of a new upsurge of union organizing. Is a Hollywood drama about angry Starbucks baristas or frustrated Amazon warehouse workers far behind? Hollywood studios and independent producers have long depicted the collective

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has elicited a strong response from China: three days of simulated attack on Taiwan with further drills announced, plus a withdrawal from critical ongoing conversations with the US on climate change and the military. This strong reaction was predictable. President Xi had earlier warned

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Last year, the US’s Biden administration announced plans to increase two-way trade and investment between the US and Africa. The starting point was a revamp of the Trump-era “Prosper Africa initiative”. As American secretary of state Antony Blinken visits three African nations – South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo and

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The U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate 0.9% from April through June, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated on July 28, 2022. It follows a contraction in gross domestic product of 1.6% recorded in the first quarter of the year. Some observers suggest the two quarters of contraction constitute

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