It's not the total number of people that should be causing worry, but the number of retired people relative to those still working. Across the world, the ranks of retirees are swelling and the ranks of those working - and paying taxes to support retirees - are not keeping up.

The development of the microchip sparked another industrial revolution. But will this revolution yield the long-term surge in productivity that the First and Second industrial revolutions produced?

The U.S. economy turned in another solid performance during 1998, with faster real growth and employment gains, and lower inflation, than many observers had expected. From the standpoint of monetary policy, the year's pivotal point occurred in August, when the Russian government defaulted on its...