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

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

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

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