Think about it: You can call, e-mail and even watch your counterparty on FaceTime, Skype or GoToMeeting.So why do companies fork out more than $1.2 trillion a year — a full 1.5 per cent of the world’s GDP — for international business travel?The expense is not only huge; it is als

Should a country’s development strategy pay special attention to exports?After all, exports have nothing to do with satisfying their people’s basic needs, such as education, healthcare, housing, power, water, telecoms, security, the rule of law and recreation.So why give preceden

Capitalism gets blamed for many things nowadays: poverty, inequality, unemployment, even global warming.As Pope Francis said in a recent speech in Bolivia: “This system is by now intolerable: Farm workers find it intolerable, labourers find it intolerable, communities find it int

Countries are poor because governments are corrupt. And, unless they ensure that public resources are not stolen, and that public power is not used for private gain, they will remain poor, right?It certainly is tempting to believe so.

Many countries have substantial diasporas, but not many are proud of it.After all, people tend not to leave a country when it is doing well, so the diaspora is often a reminder of a country’s darker moments.El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba, to cite three examples, had more than 10

In an era characterised by political polarisation and policy paralysis, we should celebrate broad agreement on economic strategy wherever we find it.One such area of agreement is the idea that the key to inclusive growth is, as then-British prime minister Tony Blair put in his 20

At the recent Summit of the Americas in Panama, Cuban President Raúl Castro chose to break with the agreed protocol. Instead of speaking for eight minutes, he took six times longer to present a political history of his country that was only loosely based on fact. Why? A

The issue of rising income inequality loomed large at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. As is well known, the United States’ economy has grown significantly over the past three decades, but the median family’s income has not. The top 1 per cent (indee

The Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman once quipped that “Canada is essentially closer to the United States than it is to itself”. After all, most of its citizens live in a narrow band along the more than 4,800-kilometre-long border.