Joseph Turow— “Bricks and mortar is dead; long live bricks and mortar!” This was the surprising theme that emerged from the sprawling 2014 Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, reported Laura Heller, editor in chief of the online trade magazine FierceRetail. Everybody in retail had previously been emphasizing only the tremendous advantage that
Fredrik Erixon and Björn Weigel— Now, however, capitalism seems to have lost its founding spirit of enterprise. Four forces that guided the economy from the 1970s assisted in reducing the scope for experimentation and innovation. They are not the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, nor were they all undesirable, but
Tamim Bayoumi— US financial reformers faced a fundamentally different issue from those in Europe. Banks in Europe were under a flawed single system. The issues in the United States, on the other hand, centered on the dual nature of the pre-crisis banking system that contained a relatively tightly regulated core and
Nick Yee— Gender is a hotly contested topic in gaming. There is a lot of noise and vitriol, but at its core, much of the debate revolves around the shifting demographics of gaming due to its mainstreaming, and the resulting tension over who gets to be a real “gamer” and
Philip N. Howard— The internet of things will help bring structure to global politics, but we must work for a structure we want. This is a challenging project, but if we don’t take it on our political lives will become fully structured by algorithms we don’t understand, data flows we
Dieter Helm— When the Saudis decided to draw a halt to the great shale oil boom in the United States at the end of 2014, they thought they could administer a short, sharp shock of lower prices that would kill off this threat, and then the market would rebalance again
Fiona Stafford– When Jane Austen spoke of being “in love with” Clarkson, in a private letter of 1813, she was referring to the indefatigable antislavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson and his splendid History, which charted the progress of the abolitionist movement. Two hundred years later, the name of Clarkson would be
Brooke Erin Duffy— With the skyrocketing growth of the independent employment economy, entrepreneurialism has emerged as a profoundly romanticized ideal for workers and career aspirants alike. A survey published last year by the Economic Innovation Group reported that sixty-two percent of eighteen to thirty-four year olds have considered launching their
Fredrik Erixon & Björn Weigel— What’s ailing Western economies? They are suffering from multiple problems: declining growth in GDP per capita; a slower pace of productivity and corporate investment growth; a workforce that is generally unhappy with their jobs; and a general reduction of economic opportunity. However, there is one factor that
Meghnad Desai— The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed one of the many episodes of globalization. This one was built on the industrial and financial revolutions. The new inventions in transport and communications – railroads, steamships and the introduction of the telegraph – had connected the many parts of