Isaiah Andrews wins the John Bates Clark Medal
Apr 22nd 2021WASHINGTON, DCECONOMISTS LIKE to crunch numbers and build models to guide policymakers. But who guides them in turn? Isaiah Andrews of Harvard University has been trying to help. On April 20th the American Economic Association awarded him the John Bates Clark Medal, a prize for leading economists under the age of 40, for…
Why Narendra Modi’s party is pulling out all the stops to win in West Bengal
FRESH FROM a rural helipad, Amit Shah climbed to the top of a motorised chariot under the blazing sun. As home minister and right-hand man to Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, Mr Shah is regarded with awe and fear by both allies and opponents in the national capital. But in the sleepy Bengali town of…
The pitfalls of trading geopolitical risk
Apr 24th 2021TALK TO THOSE who regularly buy and sell financial assets in the world’s trouble spots and you soon come across a perennial source of irritation. Everybody is an expert. The prospect of conflict turns every know-nothing spreadsheet jockey into a military strategist or Kremlin-watcher. Buttonwood shares this indignation on behalf of newspaper columnists…
How to think about vaccines and patents in a pandemic
Apr 22nd 2021WITH ANY luck, the world will be awash in covid-19 vaccines by the end of the year. For now, though, it is not, and of the billion or so doses that have been produced the vast majority have been administered in richer countries. Deaths, by contrast, are increasingly concentrated in poorer ones, like…
Kyrgyzstan votes for strongman rule
NO ONE CAN accuse Sadyr Japarov, the president of Kyrgyzstan, of lacking ambition. Sprung out of prison and into office during political unrest six months ago, he has now won a popular mandate to grant himself unchecked powers as he redesigns the Central Asian country’s political architecture. On April 11th, three months after his landslide…
Pakistan’s religious extremists are holding the government to ransom
WITHIN AN HOUR of hearing about the arrest of the leader of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a group that agitates against perceived insults to Islam, Rajab Ali had left his ironmonger’s shop in Rawalpindi’s China Market and joined thousands of protesters to denounce Imran Khan’s government. Mr Ali may have voted for the prime minister three…
Muhammad bin Salman’s risky bet in Saudi Arabia
SIX YEARS ago almost no one outside Saudi Arabia had heard of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), an entity that held government stakes in blue-chip firms and had fewer employees than a typical supermarket. Today it aspires to become the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund. It spent billions last year on foreign investments, buying stakes in…
Chad’s strongman president, Idriss Déby, is killed by rebels
HIS PRESIDENCY started with a rebellion. It also ended with one. On April 20th television stations in Chad interrupted their normal broadcasts to show a room full of men in uniform—medals gleaming and red berets neatly pressed—where an army spokesman announced the death of Idriss Déby, who had ruled Chad for 30 years. The announcement…
What’s Up With Duchess Catherine’s Funeral Fashion?
Published on Apr 19, 2021 by AnneKate Middleton’s funeral fashion had turned heads during the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. The Prince and the Duchess have been known to have a very close relationship over the years. They have been photographed laughing, and seemingly in great conversation, with each other. Surely, the…
How to save coffee from global warming
Apr 22nd 2021COFFEE IS A multi-billion dollar industry that supports the economies of several tropical countries. Roughly 100m farmers depend on it for their livelihoods. Unfortunately for them, and for the many other people around the world for whom coffee is a near-essential adjunct to life, coffee bushes grow best in a rather narrow range…