The United Nations’ latest population projections suggest that Japan’s population could fall from 127 million today to 83 million by 2100, with 35 per cent of the population then over 65 years old.Europe and other developed economies are ageing as well, owing to low fertility rat

Greece and its European partners may have agreed on a new bailout provision, but how the Greek economic tragedy will actually end remains a mystery. One thing, however, is certain: eurozone governments will end up writing off a large proportion of their loans to Greece.

Over the next few years, it will become obvious that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has monetised several trillion dollars of government debt. The orthodox fear is that printing money to fund current and past fiscal deficits inevitably leads to dangerous inflation. The result in Japan

As 2015 began, the reality of deficient global demand and deflationary risks in the world’s major economies is starkly apparent. In the eurozone, GDP growth is slowing and inflation has turned negative. Japan’s progress towards its 2 per cent inflation target has st

With just days left to go, 2014 seems certain to be the warmest year on record, or at least the runner-up. International agreement on robust action to limit global warming remains inadequate: the just-completed Lima climate change conference delivered some progress, but no major

With recent data showing that German exports fell 5.8 per cent from July to August, and that industrial production shrank by 4 per cent, it has become clear that the country’s unsustainable credit-fuelled expansion is ending. But frugal Germans typically do not see it that

Before the financial crisis erupted in 2008, private credit in most developed economies grew faster than GDP. Then credit growth collapsed. Whether that fall reflected low demand for credit or constrained supply may seem like a technical issue.

A recent report revealed that the five richest families in Britain are worth more than the country’s poorest 20 per cent combined. Some of the wealth comes from new business ventures, but two of the five are a duke and an earl whose ancestors owned the fields across w

Now that the pace of the US Federal Reserve’s “tapering” of its asset-purchase programme has been debated to death, attention will increasingly turn to prospects for interest-rate increases. But another question looms: How will central banks achieve a final &ld