Explaining Japan’s economy to Western audiences is hard.One big reason for this is that explaining something as large and complex as a $5 trillion economy is an inherently difficult task. A second reason is that Japan tends to be somewhat out of sync with the US and Europe -- when the US was struggling in the early 1980s, Japan was powering ahead, and when the US recovered in the 1990s, Japan stagnated. A third reason is that the economic institutions that govern Japan -- the centralized but wea

April 1, 2018

The market creates income inequality; governments reduce it through taxes and social transfers. That’s the conventional picture -- only it doesn’t work as well as it used to, and new ways of fighting inequality are needed, likely focusing on moving more people into better-quality jobs.　In a recent paper (and a shorter blog post), two economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Orsetta Causa and Mikkel Hermansen, explored how traditional redistribution has worked to c

April 1, 2018

It was not supposed to happen like this. The formation of a new German government took so long that it was only after the Italian general election on March 4 resulted in a political earthquake that France and Germany started to work on reforming the eurozone. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have now resolved to sort out their differences and deliver a joint reform roadmap by July. But they cannot ignore changes brought by the landslide victory of Italy’s anti

March 30, 2018

When I served as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013, I developed a friendly relationship with the head of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Nikolai Makarov. He was a short, barrel-chested man with a congenial personal style, and given my own somewhat compact physique, I could at least tell my boss, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, that I literally saw things “eye to eye” with my Russian counterpart. Our meetings occurred both in Moscow and several times in Brussels at NATO headquarte

March 29, 2018

There’s a fundamental flaw in the Russian propaganda narrative about the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK earlier this month: It assumes that Western nations want to gang up on Russia and punish it regardless of whether there’s any evidence linking it to the assassination attempt. In reality, the Western response to the incident shows how reluctant European nations are to escalate tensions with Russia.　The diplomat expulsions announced on Monday we

March 29, 2018

As Americans consider Stormy Daniels’ story of her alleged 2006 affair with President Trump, we might want to acknowledge that she isn’t the first adult entertainer to reportedly hook up with a future president. In 1955, the politician was Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy and the other woman was a stripper named Tempest Storm. The different manner in which Americans have digested these parallel tales reveals a lot about how our nation has evolved -- and not -- over the last half-century.　Tempe

March 29, 2018

If there were ever any checks on the erratic, impulsive Trump foreign policy, they nearly vanished last week.　President Donald Trump’s replacement of national security adviser H.R. McMaster with the uber-hawkish John Bolton practically guarantees that the president will walk away from the Iran nuclear deal in May. And Bolton’s call for a pre-emptive attack on North Korea makes any prospects for a Trump-Kim Jong-un summit look slimmer than they already were.　Yet, the scariest thing about Bolton i

March 28, 2018

Much remains uncertain about the upcoming Trump-Kim summit. Though caution is necessary in dealing with North Korea, the US officials preparing for this unprecedented event must be open to all possible outcomes, including a real breakthrough paving the way for positive changes in North Korea and the end of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula. 　First, it is important to not set expectations too high. This is only the first ever summit between North Korea and the US. One cannot expect to solve al

March 28, 2018

Spring is the season for students and young professionals to be making plans. The coming summer is a good time to jump on internships and work opportunities or to get extra credit through summer academic programs. High school and college seniors in particular will look beyond graduation dates, considering options for employment or continuing education.　Many in this situation may already be considering going abroad. I would like to take that idea a step further and make the case for going “off th

March 28, 2018

The evening before the 2016 presidential election, California Gov. Jerry Brown joked at a political dinner in Sacramento, “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country.”At the time, it seemed a safe-ish bit of humor because, of course, Hillary Clinton would win. When she didn’t, I came to imagine Brown’s remark as the opening volley establishing California as the state of resistance -- unique, independent, distinct from

March 27, 2018