From its beginnings in 1843, when The Economist newspaper was founded by a Scottish hat manufacturer to further the cause of free trade, The Economist Group has evolved into a staunchly independent global media and information-services company with intelligent brands for an international audience.
Will prolonged disruptions shift the pattern of trade? A giant ship wedged across the Suez canal, record-breaking shipping rates, armadas of vessels waiting outside ports, covid-induced shutdowns: container shipping has rarely been as dramatic as it has in 2021. The average cost of shipping a standard large container (a 40-foot-equivalent unit, or feu) has surpassed $10,000, some…
Resilience comes not from autarky but from diverse sources of supply For the best part of a week, the Suez canal was blocked by a 200,000-tonne metaphor. The Ever Given is not just one of the world’s biggest container ships, it is also the emblem of a backlash that accuses globalisation of going too far….
Despite a recent bout of weakness, the dollar still looks strong. Consider the Big Mac index, our lighthearted measure of currency valuation. Of the currencies of the 20 trading partners studied by America’s Treasury, our measure suggests that all have gained relative to the greenback since July, but that all apart from the Swiss franc…
The revolutionary theory of the nature of light which won Albert Einstein the 1921 Nobel prize for physics went on to remake the world. Oliver Morton surveys a century of innovation. Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel prize for physics in 1922. The temporal anomaly embodied in that sentence was not, alas, one of the…
Save for a few industries such as health care, it is safe to assume that investment in innovation will plummet during the covid-19 pandemic. It usually does in times of crisis. Venture capital (vc) will also dry up as everyone keeps their heads down and tries to preserve cash. In 2007-09, vc funding in America fell by…
The world has been turned on its head thanks to COVID19 and as with most negative things, such as wars and other pandemics, there is generally a hidden benefit that appears once the crisis is over. The fallout from the Coronavirus is already beginning to demonstrate new ways of working and bringing about changes to…
