With the long Labor Day weekend upon us, tens of millions of Americans will hit the road in an annual rite. Along the way, drivers will fill up gas tanks, grab a bite to eat, stretch their legs and perhaps stay the night at a motel. Should autonomous, electric vehicles displace traditional automobiles, this roadside economy and ecosystem will be disrupted. How and when remains to be seen.Thanks to the construction of the interstate highway system decades ago, it’s relatively easy and affordable

China is increasingly desperate for foreign investment. Yet foreign companies are less and less interested in what it has to offer. How this problem gets resolved may be one of the most important questions facing China’s economy.After China joined the World Trade Organization, in 2000, overseas investors couldn’t wait to jump in. Foreign direct investment grew at an annualized rate of 10.8 percent from 2000 to 2008. Enticed by China’s market size and development capacity, companies were willing

The latest loop in the escalation of US-Russia hostilities is probably the dumbest and the most damaging: The two countries are introducing de facto travel restrictions for each other’s citizens, choking off the friendliest, most human channel of communication between them. It’s the biggest step back into the Cold War era that the two governments have taken yet.The State Department has stopped issuing visas in Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok and St. Petersburg, a response to Russian demands for drast

North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons program isn’t the only news to unnerve arms-control experts this summer. A new survey has revealed that Americans are surprisingly willing to make a first nuclear strike -- and kill millions of civilians abroad.The survey casts doubt on the power of what experts call the “nuclear taboo,” said Stanford University historian David Holloway, author of “Stalin and the Bomb.” The idea, or hope, behind the concept is that it’s not just luck that humans haven’t dr

China’s SUV specialist Great Wall Motor Co. may, in the end, never get its hands on Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s Jeep division. But expect more and more Chinese automakers to seek out foreign acquisitions. The Chinese government has long dreamed of creating a globally competitive car industry, and having Chinese automakers purchase established companies and brands would seem one obvious way to accomplish its goal.Unless the government rethinks its own industrial policies, however, the strategy

My heart goes out to the people who have borne the brunt of Hurricane Harvey and still face continued flooding and a long recovery. As a nation, we need to be better prepared for such catastrophic floods so as to mitigate their widespread damage and loss of life. Harvey’s 50 inches of rain in a few days might be unusual, but extensive flooding with its subsequent property damage and loss of life is not.It’s time to stop using the words “unprecedented” or “one in a pick-your-large-number-year flo

As summer reached the high Himalayas this past June, one corner of the mountains turned hotter than expected. On a small plateau called Doklam, close to where the India-China border meets the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, two of the largest armies in the world faced off against each other. Chinese soldiers, convinced they were on Chinese territory, had brought equipment to extend a road; Indian soldiers, who viewed the land as disputed, blocked the earth movers. For three months, the armies camped jus

When black-clad anti-fascist protesters broke through police barricades Sunday afternoon and swarmed a peaceful rally in Berkeley, California, law enforcement stood aside and let them. City police Chief Andrew Greenwood explained the decision with a rhetorical question: “Does it make sense,” he asked, “to get into a major use of force over a grassy area?”With all due deference to police expertise, things are not that simple. Violent protesters who cross barriers and disrupt peaceful protest are

“Two steps here, two steps there”: When storied singer Elis Regina purrs the honeyed Brazilian bolero, lovers tingle. When deft politicians take up their familiar two-step, voters know that democracy is in for a hit. So it has been in recent weeks as national lawmakers have finally begun to overhaul Brazil’s discredited political system.It’s about time. With 35 registered political parties -- 28 of them with seats in congress -- Brazil is home to one of the most convoluted and politically fragme

On Wednesday night, Mavis Wanczyk, a resident of Chicopee, Massachusetts, won the $759 million Powerball jackpot. Her first act was to call in to work to say she wouldn’t be coming in the next day. Or ever again.Before she starts celebrating beating those 292.2 million-to-1 odds, there are a few things Wanczyk needs to consider about her good fortune. If she learns these lessons quickly, then she and her heirs will be much happier and more satisfied with their lives.Lottery winnings are not what

For all the angst about America falling behind China, Dallas Fed Chairman Robert Kaplan offers a powerful and timely reminder of an American competitive advantage. One of the biggest things the US has going for it is immigration. Try making a case for that in, say, China or Japan, and you will quickly run into a brick wall. Japan’s demographic challenges have been well documented. And far from being a bottomless pool of cheap labor, China’s workforce is starting to shrink -- and become more expe

For decades in Japan, the world’s fourth-largest electricity market, just 10 utilities met the country’s power demand. Today these “vertically integrated regional utilities” -- each one owns its own construction firms and even equipment manufacturers -- face significant and growing competition.A bit of context: Power demand from Japan’s 10 big utilities peaked a decade ago, as it did in the US and many other developed markets. Today’s demand is down 15 percent from 2007.Part of that decline is d

Symbolic struggles over the Confederacy are uniquely American. But fierce battles over public spaces and monuments, and the values they elevate and enshrine, are not.“The French have their own versions of these battles,” said Peter Brooks, a professor of literature who has taught at Yale and Princeton. In such battles for cultural and political supremacy, history is a weapon. And in France, there is plenty of history to fight over.Like the American chasm opened between the Confederacy and the eg

Speak to China experts these days and you typically get one of two contrasting views on its outlook. The prevailing wisdom is that an unreformed state industrial sector and rising debt mean it is on an unsustainable path, with a financial crisis on the not too distant horizon. The optimists acknowledge that debt is too high, but hold out hope that a growing services sector will fuel stronger consumption, reducing the need for credit-fueled investment and putting the economy on a sustainable path

This past weekend, the economics world was roiled by a controversy over sexism in the profession. A new paper by an undergraduate econ major revealed that an anonymous online forum called Economics Job Market Rumors is a hostile environment for women.The paper, by Alice Wu of the University of California-Berkeley, was a clever one. First it used text mining to identify which forum posts talked about women and which talked about men. Then, using cutting-edge statistical techniques, it found which

Japan’s next boom may be at hand, driven by the very thing that is supposed to be bad for its economy. Japan’s aging and shrinking population has been partly blamed for the on-again, off-again nature of growth and deflation the past three decades. Lately, it’s been driving a different and just as powerful idea: In the absence of large-scale immigration, the only viable solution for many domestic industries is to plow money into robots and information technology more generally.Humans will still b

David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, could safely be called a minimum-wage skeptic. Neumark has written a number of papers on the topic, all of which have found that minimum wages reduce employment by substantial amounts. This makes him a bit of an outlier in terms of the overall research consensus, which tends to find modest or no employment effects.But unlike many researchers, who maintain a laser-like focus on the question of whether minimum wage cuts jobs in th

“Strategic patience” is out as the US approach to North Korea, and “strategic accountability” is the new term of art. That’s according to an op-ed article by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “The object of our peaceful pressure campaign,” they write, “is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”While I heartedly approve of finally providing clarity beyond President Donald Trump’s bombastic statements, we should be realistic. I understand the reasons fo

The circumstances of the crash of the USS John S. McCain near Singapore, which killed at least one US sailor and has left nine missing, remain unclear pending a Navy investigation. The bigger picture, however, is already in focus: Four major accidents this year involving ships of the 7th Fleet highlight a systemic problem that imperils American dominance on the high seas.At any given time, about 100 of the Navy’s roughly 275 ships are deployed. Yet the fleet is half the size it was 30 years ago,

China is the largest market for General Motors, but there is no GM China. Instead, there is SAIC-GM, a joint venture between China’s largest state-owned auto company and GM.All auto companies operating in China have a similar partner, such as SAIC-Volkswagen, GAC-Toyota and Changan-Ford. And the partners are typically state-owned companies, and their names come first.Doing business in China requires such joint ventures in several other industries as well, including finance and telecommunications