Soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. A country's soft power rests on its resources of culture, values, and policies. A smart power strategy combines hard and soft power resources. Public diplomacy has a...

Does democratic governance expand wealth and prosperity? There is no consensus about this issue despite the fact that for more than half a century, rival theories about the regime-growth relationship have been repeatedly tested against the empirical evidence, using a variety of cases, models and...

The report surveys the state of our knowledge regarding the effects of trade on the environment. A central question is whether globalization helps or hurts in achieving the best tradeoff between environmental and economic goals. Do international trade and investment allow countries to achieve...

Financial, managerial, and medical decisions often involve alternatives whose possible outcomes have uncertain probabilities. In contrast to alternatives whose probabilities are known, these uncertain alternatives offer the benefits of learning. In repeat-choice situations, such learning brings...

We describe three essential elements of an effective post-2012 international global climate policy architecture: a means to ensure that key industrialized and developing nations are involved in differentiated but meaningful ways; an emphasis on an extended time path of targets; and inclusion of...

In this article the author examines aspects of U.S. housing policy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The author notes that between the years 2000 and 2010 the U.S. housing market underwent extremes of prosperity and financial failure as home prices rose precipitously,...