OPINION

NEW YORK – US President Donald Trump’s order to assassinate Iran’s General Qassem Suleimani while on an official mission to Iraq was widely hailed in Trump’s jingoistic Republican Party. Government-sanctioned murders of foreign officials, clerics, and journalists are commonplace nowadays. Yet there is something special about America’s bloodlust against Iran. …

MUMBAI – I write this not as a professional economist, nor as a policymaker, but as a citizen of a tiny planet that is spinning through a vast universe that we barely understand. I write this “As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade,” and as “Waves …

NEW DELHI – At a time when India’s major national priority ought to be creating economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has instead plunged the country into a new political crisis of its own making. With its penchant for shock-and-awe tactics, the government pushed through parliament a controversial Citizenship …

CAMBRIDGE – In little more than a generation, the Internet has become a vital substrate for economic, social, and political interactions, and it has unlocked enormous gains. Along with greater interdependence, however, come vulnerability and conflict. Attacks by states and non-state actors have increased, threatening the stability of cyberspace. In …

The civil service and public servants have had four pay hikes since 2009, but Bhutan’s weak private sector could not keep up and this has now created a parallel economy. One is for the public servants and the other is for the private sector and farmers. After the last pay …

NEW YORK – It was an extraordinary spectacle: Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a US military officer in full dress uniform decorated with a Purple Heart, testifying in the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings on November 19. Knowing that his testimony might well wreck his military career, Vindman believed it was …

A gush of gratitude, “Thank you Lonely Planet!”, and a rush of responsibility, “We need to make sure we are able to live up to the now sky-high expectations of visitors to our country!”, are the two emotions that reigned me when I first heard about this recognition. As a …

NEW DELHI – The dangers of environmental pollution receive a lot of attention nowadays, particularly in the developing world, and with good reason. Air quality indices are dismal and worsening in many places, with India, in particular, facing an acute public-health emergency. But as serious as the pollution problem is, it must …

ANN ARBOR – This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to poverty reduction. In the Nobel Committee’s view, the economists’ use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), a method adapted from medical sciences, to test whether specific …

WASHINGTON, DC – Almost everywhere one looks nowadays, the news media are in crisis. And unfortunately, although a robust free press is fundamental to a well-functioning democracy, the world’s democratic governments are doing too little to protect it. Media outlets worldwide are struggling to adapt their business models to the …