MILAN — Just before the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers triggered a financial crisis that would engulf the world economy, the Commission on Growth and Development published an assessment of emerging-economy growth strategies, aimed at drawing lessons from previ

Successful economic globalisation requires reasonably successful growth patterns in individual countries.That dynamic characterised the 30 years or so after World War II: growth rates were relatively high across a wide range of countries; their benefits were broadly shared within

I do not believe that foreigners contribute usefully by issuing strong opinions about how a country’s citizens, or those of a larger unit like the European Union, should decide when faced with an important political choice.

When Amazon was founded in 1994, and eBay the following year, they harnessed the connectivity of the Internet to create new, more efficient markets.In the beginning, that meant new ways of buying and selling books and collectibles; but now e-commerce is everywhere, offering custo

It seems obvious that if a business invests in automation, its workforce — though possibly reduced — will be more productive.So why do the statistics tell a different story?In advanced economies, where plenty of sectors have both the money and the will to invest in automation, gr

When World War II ended 70 years ago, much of the world — including industrialised Europe, Japan and other countries that had been occupied — was left geopolitically riven and burdened by heavy sovereign debt, with many major economies in ruins.One might have expected a long peri

The world is facing the prospect of an extended period of weak economic growth.

At a time of lackluster economic growth, countries around the world are attempting to devise and implement strategies to spur and sustain recovery. The key word is strategy: To succeed, policy makers must ensure that measures to open the economy, boost public investment, enhance

A remarkable pattern has emerged since the 2008 global financial crisis: Governments, central banks and international financial institutions have consistently had to revise their growth forecasts downward. With very few exceptions, this has been true of projections for the globa