One thing almost all economic studies agree on these days is that higher minimum wages don’t throw many people out of work. A recent study of Seattle’s high-profile plan to raise minimum pay to $15 an hour by three University of California Berkeley economists found no drop in employment in the food-services industry as a result of the new higher wage. And a parallel study by the Seattle Minimum Wage Study Team at the University of Washington also estimated that the effect of the higher minimum w

April is the cruelest month, so said poet TS Eliot. But one wit remarked that June marks the end of May. Who would have expected that British Prime Minister Theresa May would lose her majority in Parliament in the June election, which was supposed to strengthen her hand in negotiating Brexit with the European Union? This expectation reversal was as big a shock as Brexit or Trumpism. May may have found her Ides of March in June. In sharp contrast, unlike earlier in the year when everyone was worr

The German economy is in a remarkably rosy phase. According to data published Monday by the Ifo Institute, business confidence is at a record high since 1991. The Bundesbank has raised its growth forecasts through 2019. One of the reasons for this surge of optimism is that the German labor market is performing well. At 3.9 percent, the unemployment rate is lower than it has been since the country’s reunification.It‘s often said that to achieve the same kind of economic buoyancy, France needs to

Expanding mass transit systems is a pillar of green and “new urbanist” thinking, but with few exceptions, the idea of ever-larger numbers of people commuting into an urban core ignores a major shift in the labor economy: More people are working from home.True, in a handful of large metropolitan regions — what we might call “legacy cities” — trains and buses remain essential. This is particularly true of New York, which accounts for a remarkable 43 percent of the US’ mass transit commuters, and o

This is the National Assembly Hearing season in Korea for Cabinet minister-designates proposed by the new administration. Every day, newspaper reporters thoroughly examine every nook and cranny of the candidate’s past life to find skeletons in his or her closet. Meanwhile, the readers enjoy watching a prominent personality publicly humiliated and feel catharsis as he or she desperately struggles in the quagmire and hopelessly sinks into the pit. Of course, it is necessary to screen our future mi