With gross government debt of 219% of GDP in 2016, Japan’s fiscal situation is in uncharted territory and puts the economy at risk. In addition to raising productivity and growth, Japan needs a more detailed and credible fiscal consolidation path, including specific revenue increases and...

Never in the past 30 years has productivity growth been lower than since the 2008 global financial crisis, and never has income inequality been higher than it is today in Japan, and in the OECD area. The two challenges have some common origins, including a widening productivity and wage gap...

Reconstruction and development. The Bretton Woods conference of 1944 gave rise to a set of global economic institutions - the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or World Bank) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),...

This paper provides perspectives on patterns of public-private partnerships in infrastructure across time and space. Public-private partnerships are a new term for old concepts. Much infrastructure started under private auspices. Then many governments nationalized the ventures. Governments often...

Social impact investors, philanthropists, or corporations pursuing social responsibility try to demonstrate that they are indeed "doing good." This essay classifies the various types of measures that currently exist to capture social and environmental impact in a simple scheme. It argues that...