STANFORD ― The resignations of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have highlighted how Greece, Italy, and many other countries obscured for too long their bloated public sectors’ long-standing problems with unsustainable social-welfare benefits. Indeed, for many of these countries, meaningful reform has now become unavoidable.The social-insurance systems in Europe, as in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere, were designed under vastly different

CAIRO ― “The man who taught me to sacrifice my heart for Egypt is dead,” said Vivian Magdi, mourning her fiance. Michael Mosad was killed in the Maspiro area on Oct. 9, when an armored vehicle hit him during a protest called to condemn an attack on an Egyptian Church in the southern Aswan region. The protest left 24 dead and more than 200 injured ― a higher toll than that taken by the so-called “Battle of the Camels,” when former President Hosni Mubarak’s security forces and armed thugs attacked

As the world’s advanced economies continue to limp toward recovery from the global economic downturn, questions are again being raised about the need for ― and value of ― official development assistance. In these times of fiscal restraint, critics are increasingly asking: Is aid worth it? Does it make a positive difference in the lives of poor people in developing countries? Or does it merely line the pockets of corrupt officials and fuel the consultancy industry in donor countries?A very positi

CAMBRIDGE ― Greece and Italy, desperate after their gridlocked political systems left them mired in debt and crisis, have both chosen technocratic economists ― Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti, respectively ― rather than politicians to lead new governments. Both can be described as professors: Monti has been president of Milan’s Bocconi University as well as a European commissioner, and Papademos has been my colleague at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in the year since he finished his ter