• OPINION

  Middle East migrants give US a boost

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 26/07/2017

  » A little over a week ago, Stanford University mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani died aged 40 after a battle with cancer. In that short lifetime, she accomplished more than most of us ever will. Mirzakhani was one of the world's greatest mathematicians -- a recipient of the Fields Medal, maths' highest honour.

• OPINION

  Private equity will do a lot of good for Japan Inc

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 22/08/2017

  » Back in 2012, I wrote a blog post calling for more private equity in Japan. Japanese companies are held back by a hidebound, inefficient workplace culture. Managers are often grey elder statesmen promoted up through the ranks, instead of dynamic outsiders ready to shake things up. Shareholders are often passive owners, doing little to push companies to raise profitability, while managers build empires instead of focusing on what their companies do best.

• OPINION

  Economists in the age of Trump

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 12/01/2017

  » Economists are going to have to approach things a bit differently if they want to stay relevant in the Trump age. Research is going to become more important. Some humility wouldn't hurt. And they should look someplace other than the federal government to test their ideas.

• OPINION

  Don't count on a crash from a Trump trade war

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 22/11/2016

  » Talk of war is in the air -- trade war!

• OPINION

  How to fill the void once Trump kills off the TPP

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 01/12/2016

  » The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would have created trade links between the US, Japan and a number of other Asian countries, is dead. Donald Trump has vowed to kill the pact on his first day in office. That won't be a hard promise to keep, as the trade deal was already effectively dead -- Mr Trump's move is just a flourish.

• OPINION

  Economists face reality of figures

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 12/12/2016

  » Economics has always had to grapple with questions of moral philosophy. Unlike most natural sciences, econ deals directly with issues of government and social policy.

• OPINION

  Kudlow is a troubling economics adviser for Trump

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 21/12/2016

  » Donald Trump is reportedly close to picking Larry Kudlow to be the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers. This will doubtless annoy many economists and policy wonks because Mr Kudlow isn't an economist -- he didn't even major in econ in college. He's an econ commentator, much like me, but without the academic training.

• OPINION

  Searching for a better way of measuring inequality

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 31/03/2016

  » Inequality is, without a doubt, the hot topic in econ circles these days. Economics conference seminars on the subject are standing-room-only. Columns and blog posts about inequality are widely read and discussed, and Thomas Piketty's book was a bestseller.

• OPINION

  Building a tower of jumbled jargon

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 08/04/2016

  » In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty proudly declares: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." To which Alice replies: "The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things."

• OPINION

  Two wrong theories about China

  News, Noah Smith, Published on 25/02/2016

  » Western observers struggle to make sense of what's happening to the Chinese economy. Since China is slowing, dragging down commodity prices and forcing a number of other countries into recession, this in an important problem to puzzle out. But how should we evaluate China's economy? I find that western writers tend to subscribe -- explicitly or implicitly -- to one of two folk theories of China. Both have serious deficiencies.

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