Economics & Business Archive

In recent years, Egypt, Israel and Cyprus have all discovered huge natural gas fields off their coasts, raising export potential and perhaps the prospects for better political ties in the region through new energy partnerships. At least this is the scenario that the United States is hoping for. Last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s envoy on energy affairs, Amos Hochstein, told Bloomberg that “we’re just beginning to open the spigots of what is the potential for the broader region.” That is already evident in the improved ties between Israel and Turkey after their June rapprochement, motivated by gas […]

With the warring parties in Yemen locked in a stalemate on the ground, the battle for the Arab world’s poorest country is moving to a new front: the economy. The government-in-exile of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi is planning to shut down the Central Bank of Yemen in the capital, Sanaa—a city that Houthi rebels have controlled for two years—and establish a new bank in the southern port city of Aden. Hadi hopes to cut off financing to the alliance of Houthi rebels and military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which control Yemen’s northwestern highlands and western […]

Over the past few decades, Latin America became the very public incubator of new economic models—or at least of flamboyant variations on old ones. For a while, it seemed as if the region might just give birth to some kind of a successful hybrid: a populist, leftist formula for expanding economies and erasing poverty, powered by the free market and assertively steered by governments. But those days are gone, and they’re exiting the stage with the same bombast and drama with which they burst onto it. No one would suggest that the so-called 21st Century Socialism concocted by the late […]

On Aug. 4, Nepal elected its 24th prime minister in 26 years. In this period, the country has seen two mass political movements for democracy, in 1990 and 2006; one decade-long civil war from 1996 and 2006; a royal massacre in 2001; the rise of an autocratic monarchy and transformation to a republic in 2008; three big political movements of identity-based assertion and rights, in 2007, 2008 and 2015; five elections, including two for a Constituent Assembly—tasked with writing the country’s post-conflict constitution—in 2008 and 2013; and three constitutions, promulgated in 1990, 2007 and 2015. To this relentless saga of […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on a range of countries’ space priorities and programs. Last month, the Japanese Ministry of Defense announced plans for a network of radar and optical telescopes that will track foreign satellites as well as space debris, which it hopes will be fully functional by 2022. In an email interview, Yuichiro Nagai, a researcher at the Policy Alternatives Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, discusses Japan’s space policy. WPR: What are Japan’s space capabilities, in terms of its space-industrial complex, and who are its major international partners, in terms […]

On Sept. 7, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced the resignation of Finance Minister Luis Videgaray and appointed Jose Antonio Meade, a reputable technocrat, as his replacement. Since Videgaray had been instrumental in organizing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Mexico City late last month, most coverage framed his exit as the fallout. But Videgaray’s resignation had more to do with a longer track record of failing to deliver on ambitious economic and structural reforms. It was the latest upheaval in Pena Nieto’s Cabinet at a time when the Mexican economy faces mediocre growth, mounting debt and a […]

In late August, the European Union ordered Ireland to collect more than $14 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple. The move followed an investigation by the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, which found that Apple’s effective corporate tax rate on its European profits had fallen from 1 percent in 2003 to just 0.005 percent by 2014. At a press conference announcing the move, the EU commissioner responsible for competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said that “member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies—this is illegal under EU state aid rules.” EU member states are allowed to set […]

Once taboo, the targeting of hospitals and health care providers in wartime has become such a frequent occurrence in today’s conflict zones that Doctors Without Borders, the humanitarian aid organization that goes by its French acronym MSF, now calls it the new normal. Attacks that previously seemed to occur unintentionally or sporadically now appear to be a deliberate strategy of war. This is particularly the case in Syria and Yemen, where hospitals and doctors are targeted so often that medical care now has to be provided in places such as caves and chicken coops in order to avoid detection by […]

On Tuesday, Francois Hollande became the first French president in 12 years to visit Vietnam, a former French colony. Despite their troubled past marked by a nearly decade-long war that ended with France’s military defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954, relations between Paris and Hanoi have warmed during Hollande’s presidency, part of France’s deepening interest in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific more broadly. By a number of measures, the visit was a productive one. Vietnam Airlines purchased 40 jets from France’s Airbus, totaling $6.5 billion in sales; low-cost private airline VietJet purchased 20 planes, totaling $2.39 billion; a regional […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and host Peter Dörrie discuss the prospects for Uzbekistan after President Islam Karimov’s death, the challenges of implementing Colombia’s peace deal with FARC rebels, and Iran’s posture toward the West and Saudi Arabia in the year since signing its landmark nuclear deal with world powers. For the Report, Kimberly Ann Elliott joins us to talk about the global backlash against liberalized trade. Listen:Download: MP3 Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Uzbekistan Faces Continuity With Karimov’s Successor—and the Same Challenges Why Colombia’s Historic Peace Breakthrough Was the ‘Easy Part’ […]

During a visit by Bhutan’s foreign minister to Beijing last month, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said that his government hoped to establish official diplomatic relations with its neighbor and work to solve their long-running border dispute. In an email interview, Tilak Jha, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, discusses China’s outreach to South Asia. WPR: How extensive are China’s ties across South Asia, and how does China’s South Asia outreach fit with its broader foreign policy? Tilak Jha: Beijing’s South Asia policy has two major aims, reinforced by the region’s role in China’s ambitious infrastructure and integration initiative […]

Trade is essential to every economy in the world. But policies to further liberalize trade are under attack. Both U.S. presidential candidates oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama with 11 other Pacific Rim countries, though Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has supported it in the past. The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has threatened to withdraw from the World Trade Organization and impose steep tariffs on imports from China and Mexico if they do not comply with his demands. In June, a majority in the United Kingdom—albeit a slim one—voted to leave the European Union, the world’s […]

As if there were any doubt, it is increasingly clear that Venezuela’s profound political and economic crisis is not confined to its borders. The repercussions of the country’s humanitarian disaster and creeping authoritarianism are spreading throughout Latin America, posing tough choices for its neighbors and straining hemispheric relations. How best to deal with the Venezuela question is also making it even more difficult to set common policies to address the region’s economic stagnation. Nowhere is this problem clearer than in Mercosur, the Common Market of the South, an integration mechanism founded in 1991 by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, which […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on countries’ risk exposure, contribution and response to climate change. An epic heat wave engulfed the Middle East this summer, with temperatures reaching as high as 129 degrees Fahrenheit in Kuwait in July, and climate experts warn the region could become too hot for human survival. In an email interview, Mohamed Abdel Raouf, a research fellow at the Gulf Research Center, discusses climate change’s impact on the Gulf. WPR: What are the Gulf countries’ risk exposure to climate change, what effects of climate change are already apparent, and what […]

During a visit to Washington in April, Qubad Talabani, the deputy prime minister of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, declared that “the real existential threat facing Kurdistan today is the state of [its] economy.” The KRG’s monthly deficit had risen above $100 million, adding more strains on an already-teetering economy. Four months later, the KRG continues to face a financial crisis as oil production slows amid attacks from the Islamic State, refineries fall offline, and export quality drops. Kurdish leaders consider their region’s oil fields to be the foundation for an envisaged state. But falling oil revenue leaves […]