Showing 1 - 10 of 28
It's the economic history, stupid
Oped, Iker Saitua, Published on 14/01/2026
» Every year, I walk into a first-year lecture hall in Bilbao at the University of the Basque Country (EHU) and watch shoulders slump. The title of the course I'm teaching -- "Economic History" -- draws a similarly dejected reaction from my students: "Meh." "Boooring." "What's this even for?" Some call it "the history class", as if it belonged to another century.
What's to blame for inequality?
Oped, Keun Lee, Published on 01/09/2025
» Over a decade ago, Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson, together with their co-author Thierry Verdier, contrasted America's "cutthroat" brand of capitalism with Western Europe's "cuddly" version. The qualities that make cutthroat capitalism more conducive to innovation, they argued, also lead to higher levels of inequality, while cuddly reward structures tend to lead to lower growth and higher welfare. Today, inequality is soaring, notably in the United States. Do policies aimed at boosting innovation risk making a bad situation worse?
Building the next generation of public institutions
Oped, Geoff Mulgan, Published on 28/02/2025
» Public institutions worldwide are in crisis. Trust in them is declining, and US President Donald Trump's administration, working hand in glove with the world's richest man, Elon Musk, view them as enemies that need to be dismantled. In the face of funding cuts and geopolitical fragmentation, multilateral organisations look weaker than ever.
Will we waste the AI opportunity?
Oped, Daron Acemoglu, Published on 25/02/2025
» I was fortunate to participate in the recent AI Action Summit in Paris, where many discussions emphasised the need to steer AI in a more socially beneficial direction.
The Trump shock is the Democrat Party's fault
Oped, Daron Acemoglu, Published on 19/11/2024
» The outcome of the US presidential election was more of a Democratic loss than a triumph for Donald Trump. The Democrats lost not because US President Joe Biden stayed in the race too long and not because Kamala Harris is unqualified but because they have been losing workers and failed to win them back.
Beastly diversions
Oped, Postbag, Published on 19/10/2024
» Re: "Thailand's most unlikely A-list celebrity", (PostScript, Sept 22) & "Hippo rescue", (PostBag, Oct 17).
How South Korea broke the mould
Oped, Keun Lee, Published on 02/07/2024
» South Korea is one of just a few countries to transform itself from a low- to high-income economy and the only country to go from a recipient of aid from the OECD's Development Assistance Committee to a DAC donor. It achieved this not by blindly following a pre-designed development path but by taking the right detours.
Democracy really needs to be more pro-worker
Oped, Daron Acemoglu, Published on 25/06/2024
» Even if the feared extremist wave did not quite materialise in the European Parliament election this month, the far right performed well in Italy, Austria, Germany, and especially France. Moreover, its latest gains have come on the heels of major shifts toward far-right parties in Hungary, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden, among others.
Still haunted by Washington Consensus
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 11/06/2024
» In 1989, the British economist John Williamson christened what was to become the defining intellectual export of the era of globalisation: the Washington Consensus. Initially a reference to the policies adopted to tackle macroeconomic turmoil in Latin America, the term quickly morphed into a canonical "ten commandments" of development.
Beyond the hype: Gauging AI's true economic impact
Oped, Daron Acemoglu, Published on 30/05/2024
» According to tech leaders and many pundits and academics, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform the world as we know it through unprecedented productivity gains. While some believe that machines soon will do everything humans can do, ushering in a new age of boundless prosperity, other predictions are at least more grounded. For example, Goldman Sachs predicts that generative AI will boost global GDP by 7% over the next decade, and the McKinsey Global Institute anticipates that the annual GDP growth rate could increase by 3-4 percentage points between now and 2040. For its part, The Economist expects that AI will create a blue-collar bonanza.