After a decade when most Americans saw their incomes decline, the latest Census Bureau income data contain very good news: A majority of U.S. households racked up healthy income gains in 2013 and 2014. The facts may not fit the narratives of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Bernie Sanders.  But they do help explain why President Obama’s job approval and favorability ratings have passed 50 percent.

This article originally published in South China Morning Post.

The ranking of the world's leading economists has remained essentially unchanged since 2006. Post-2008, we are hearing from the same people, mostly white males now in their 60's. Federico Fubini asks, "Might the world’s leading economists be so keen to protect their own ideas that they ignore (or, worse, stifle) innovation from unexpected quarters?"

The following remarks with subsequent modification were delivered at the November 6-8 convening of the International Finance Forum, headquartered in Beijing. IFF’s mission is to facilitate high-level, multilateral dialogue and promote insights about current issued defining the international economy. The writer is a member of the IFF Academic Committee.

Recent actions by Chinese authorities to rein in stock market volatility, depreciate the RMB and generally arrest actions they view as adverse to achieving requisite GDP growth raise questions that may end up overshadowing the worry about the economy’s fundamentals.

Authorities’ actions are giving rise to questions about the credibility of those who make the decisions and the capacity of those who advocate reforms to withstand pressures to achieve 7% GDP growth at all costs.

Economist Anotole Kaletsky has not joined the Greek chorus bemoaning the recent deal between Athens and the EU.  He is instead refreshingly optimistic that it was a good deal for both sides, and is sustainable.

...the main conditions now seem to be in place for a sustainable recovery in Greece. Conventional wisdom among economists and investors has a long record of failing to spot major turning points; so the near-universal belief today that Greece faces permanent depression is no reason to despair.

“Foreign Affairs” ran a commentary by me on TPP, whose main message is that getting TPP right is better than getting it fast, for both economic and geopolitical reasons. But that will be very hard to do with the Obama administration’s current negotiating stance. Here is the URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2015-05-12/trade-trials.