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

Viewpoints 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

Viewpoints April 1, 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

Viewpoints 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

Viewpoints March 29, 2018

Despite a propaganda blitz meant to shift the blame for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK earlier this month, Russia looks set to face bruising consequences. The newfound unity among European Union leaders on the matter and the appointment of fierce Russia hawk John Bolton as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser are potential precursors of collective Western action against Russia.　The difficulty lies in figuring out how far that ac

Viewpoints March 27, 2018

The European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has a reputation as something of an activist because of her willingness to take on US tech giants. And yet she has approved what is, from a leftist activist point of view, a particularly evil deal, Germany-based Bayer’s acquisition of US-based Monsanto.　The $66 billion deal creates an incredible concentration in the seed and pesticide markets. If it’s approved in the US, too, the three biggest companies in this market -- Bayer-Mo

Viewpoints March 26, 2018

You had to be there.　As Americans took to the streets Saturday, defying a political order that, in Washington and many state capitals, has allowed extremists to write gun laws, the bodies -- of both the dead and the living who marched in their honor -- mattered a lot. Hundreds of thousands in cities big and small showed up. It was an extraordinary coming-out party for a movement that is now, at long last, undeniably mass.　The marches against gun violence would not have been as big without the un

Viewpoints March 26, 2018

Predicting the course of technological progress is extremely difficult. Just because worries about human obsolescence ultimately turned out to be misplaced in the Industrial Revolution doesn’t mean that the same happy result must necessarily prevail this time around. So the persistent question about artificial intelligence -- or “robots” in common parlance -- is whether they will make human workers obsolete.Recent rapid progress in machine learning -- a very powerful and flexible statistical pre

Viewpoints March 26, 2018

In China, don’t forget the ones that got away.　This month’s session of the National People’s Congress, the legislature that typically rubber stamps the Communist Party’s wishes, made plenty of headlines on personnel and policies. Also telling is what didn’t happen and who didn’t get what job.　Notable omissions send important signals on what type of economy the incoming cabinet envisages and how much latitude the central bank, itself under new leadership, will have to steer it.The broader task fo

Viewpoints March 22, 2018