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Edmund S. Phelps
For Edmund S. Phelps's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2020
The costs and benefits of artificial intelligence
It is not so much the economics of new technologies that should worry us, but rather the politics and ethics.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 14, 2018
How a global patent market could spur growth
A rules-based global trade system for intellectual property could help reinvigorate it by driving more specialization and cross-border cooperation among the world's inventors.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2016
China well-positioned to create a 'good economy'
Optimizing its resource allocation is far from all that China must do to boost prosperity. It is time to focus on workers and elevating the experience of their labor.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2015
What Greece needs to prosper
The remedy for Greece lies in adopting the right structural reforms, including dismantling corporatist arrangements and practices that obstruct innovation and entrepreneurship.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2013
Love your job? Then thank the country where you live
It is assumed that people in economically 'advanced' countries do not differ significantly in job satisfaction scores. Yet, there are striking differences within the West.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2006
The false hopes of tax cuts
NEW YORK -- There is a movement in medicine to require that applications for licenses to sell a new drug be "evidence-based." By contrast, trained economists view their discipline as having already achieved this scientific standard. After all, they express their ideas with mathematics and arrive at quantitative estimates of implied relationships from empirical data.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2006
France on the mark with hiring subsidies
NEW YORK -- Was France's recent wave of protests against an amendment that would have increased employers' freedom to fire young workers a blessing in disguise? To defuse the protests, President Jacques Chirac was forced to withdraw the provision, and instead has proposed hiring subsidies as a way to reduce youth joblessness. A related proposal for targeted wage subsidies is being floated in Germany.

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores