Soccer can be annoying, especially to those who watch only the big tournaments. There are too many fouls, baffling referee errors and players without a scratch on them rolling in the grass as if in unbearable pain -- and too few goals. But the 2018 World Cup has been surprisingly different (with a few exceptions). The improvement probably comes down to a single rule change: Referees now have access to video replays.　 A little more than a week into the monthlong competition, it’s too early to kno

Viewpoints June 24, 2018

Four of China’s leading film executives recently gathered on a Shanghai stage with a bleak message. “There are 20,000 film and television companies” in China, said Wang Changtian, president of Beijing Enlight Media. “Many aren’t making money at the moment, so why are they still here?” He predicted that thousands will go bankrupt over the next year -- a full-on bubble in movie-making, ready to pop.　It’s a classic Chinese tale. Bureaucrats in Beijing decide a favored industry must become globally

Viewpoints June 24, 2018

I recently noticed a string of interesting news stories, all with the same theme. Domino’s Pizza is donating money to 20 US cities, to be used for fixing potholes and cracked roads. Salesforce has donated $1.5 million to reduce homelessness in San Francisco, and its CEO, Marc Benioff, has spoken of grander schemes to end homelessness in the city entirely. And Facebook is talking about renovating a defunct bridge that runs across the San Francisco Bay near its offices.　All of these initiatives, i

Viewpoints June 24, 2018

A high-profile court case about meritocracy and college admissions has captured much attention. A group called Students for Fair Admissions alleges that Harvard University uses highly subjective personality ratings to penalize Asian applicants. The former tend to outperform white applicants on every measure except for so-called personality, but the number of Asian-American students at Harvard has fallen relative to the Asian-American population, while the number for white students has risen, dur

Viewpoints June 21, 2018

As the global number of asylum seekers continues to increase, migration is now a political lightning rod on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet politicians don’t seem interested in solving the problem so much as wielding it against opponents.　According to a new European Union report on the asylum situation, 954,000 asylum applicants were awaiting decisions in Europe at the end of 2017, 16 percent fewer than a year earlier. Fewer new applications were lodged, and more of them were rejected as the

Viewpoints June 21, 2018

President Donald Trump and the Democrats can’t agree on anything, except one big thing: China. After the administration announced plans on June 15 to impose tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports, Charles Schumer, the Democrats’ Senate leader, called the decision “on the money.”　 That was a startling statement on a startling fact: China has few friends left in Washington, on either side of the political aisle. The bipartisan vote to block Trump’s compromise on ZTE Corp. sanctions is further e

Viewpoints June 21, 2018

Every four years, as football fans gear up for the World Cup, researchers engage in a game of their own: trying to determine just how costly the tournament is to employers and economies. Our own contribution to this genre suggests that the calculation is a bit more complex than is generally acknowledged.　To calculate the number of productive hours at risk in this year’s tournament, we assume local office hours are between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and that 50 percent of each country’s workforce will be

Viewpoints June 19, 2018

The success of North America’s bid to host the 2026 World Cup is one hopeful sign that the US and its neighbors could be ending the era characterized by dysfunctional governance, infrastructure neglect and a withdrawal from the world stage. For the first time in ages, America has something to look forward to.　Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the world has seemed zero sum, divided into winners and losers: the political extremes of left and right, terrorism versus nations, the wealth of the ho

Viewpoints June 18, 2018

Theoretically, the Trump administration’s immigration policy is based on two core principles: upholding the rule of law and promoting a “merit-based” system that’s good for the economy.　So why has the Department of Homeland Security just proposed to scrap the International Entrepreneur Rule, a late-Obama program intended to lure the world’s most promising entrepreneurs to create companies and jobs in America rather than elsewhere?The department doesn’t dispute the lawfulness of the program, whos

Viewpoints June 18, 2018

The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017 is sure to loom large in future accounts of China’s relations with the world. It was then that the party cleared the way for Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely, and when Xi himself advertised China’s global ambitions by declaring that Beijing would now “take center stage” in world affairs. It was also when Xi threw down the gauntlet in an equally consequential way. 　In his three-hour speech to the assembled delegates, Xi extolled the

Viewpoints June 17, 2018