Charles Wolf Jr. was a senior economic adviser and corporate fellow in international economics at the RAND Corporation, where he spent decades analyzing economic policy and international affairs. He contributed articles to The Weekly Standard from 2011 to 2016, writing on topics including fiscal policy, China's economy, global trade, and macroeconomic theory. Wolf passed away in 2016 and was widely regarded as a leading voice on defense economics and Asian economic development.
Despite innumerable and sharp disagreements between them, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have surprisingly congruent positions on free trade, both suggesting it has adversely affected jobs and wages in the United States.
Despite innumerable and sharp disagreements between them, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have surprisingly congruent positions on free trade, both suggesting it has adversely affected jobs and wages in the United States.
A casual glance at Bourgeois Equality could convey a mistaken impression that the book is for coffee-table display, for show rather than serious perusal. The volume is large (three pounds, 768 pages) and its dust jacket features a colorful painting by the 16th-century Flemish artist Joachim…
The International Monetary Fund designated China’s yuan—also called renminbi (RMB), or "People's Currency"—an IMF-accepted reserve currency in November. So holdings of yuan (along with previously designated holdings of dollars, euros, yen, and sterling) enable IMF-members to access special drawing…
Between the middle of 2014 and early 2016, oil prices tumbled from $110 to between $30 and $35 per barrel, a drop of 70 percent. The change represents an enormous shift of income from oil-exporting countries to oil-importing countries: $1.6 trillion annually, slightly more than 2 percent of the…
China’s foreign aid programs are distinguished by size (much larger than those of other countries), breadth (encompassing 92 emerging-market countries in six geographic regions), and composition (focused on mining and exports of natural resources and supporting infrastructure). They are also unique…
After China supplanted Japan in 2011 as the world’s second-largest economy, some China scholars, as well as pundits and economists, began forecasting when it would supplant the United States as the largest. Extrapolating China’s remarkable 9-10 percent average annual growth in the prior three…
President Obama can’t run again, as he noted in the State of the Union last month, but he sought to use his address to set the tone for the 2016 campaign. His repeated references to “middle-class economics” were tactful code, speaking in front of a Republican-controlled Congress, for that perennial…
Many of the world’s most serious security threats are enabled—directly or indirectly—by revenues from the high oil prices (about $100 per barrel) prevalent in world markets in recent years. If these prices were reduced substantially (e.g., by 20-30 percent), the liquidity that fuels the threats…
Tokyo
Nonprofit organizations (NPO), often referred to as the “independent sector,” are an essential part of America’s vibrant, pluralistic civil society. Their activities span a wide range of public and private purposes—philanthropic, cultural, religious, professional, educational, scientific. The…
Austerity and growth are increasingly viewed as opposites: If one is selected, the other must be sacrificed. Policies to promote growth require that austerity in government spending be forgone, while policies that impose austerity in government spending do so at the cost of growth.
It is generally recognized that the conceptual underpinnings for so-called stimulus programs lie in the theory developed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. That the practical results of these programs in recent years have been negligible, if not negative, while their costs have been high, may be…