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Trade and Climate Change

Trade and Climate Change
A Mutually Supportive Policy

Joshua Meltzer serves as a fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution where he focuses on international trade policy, including the implications of climate change and energy policy for the international trading system. Prior to Brookings Joshua Meltzer was a trade lawyer and trade negotiator at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC with responsibility for climate change and energy matters.

By Joshua Meltzer, Katherine Sierra  |  December 7, 2011
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Africa, Spotlight
Confidence in Institutions

MAGALI RHEAULT is a Senior Consultant in Gallup’s Social and Economic Analysis practice. BOB TORTORA is Gallup’s Regional Research Director for Sub-Saharan Africa.

By Bob Tortora, Magali Rheault  |  March 6, 2011  |  3
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Africa, Global, Spotlight
Looking to the Sky

SCOTT EDWARDS is Project Manager for the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights project at Amnesty International. CHRISTOPH KOETTL is the Project Manager for Amnesty International USA’s Science for Human Rights Project.

By Christoph Koettl, Scott Edwards  |  March 6, 2011  |  1
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Spotlight, Europe
The Decisive Factor

In 1956, Lord Ismay, Secretary General of NATO, formulated a task to “keep Russians out of Europe.” Today, such exclusion continues to be the main strategy of NATO countries. Many people who follow the state of affairs in post-Soviet countries may believe that residents’ perceptions of NATO are polarized, with Georgia and Ukraine—two countries where Western leaders came to power through “velvet revolutions”—on one side, and Russia and Belarus on the other.

By Julie Ray, Neli Esipova, Sergei Gradirovsky  |  February 1, 2010
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Spotlight, Europe
Buyer's Remorse?

The recent 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s collapse provided an opportunity for many to revisit the heady days of 1989—the era of Walesa, Havel, and jubilant crowds literally and figuratively smashing longstanding barriers between East and West. With communism in tatters, Eastern Europeans eagerly embraced democracy and capitalism.

By Andrew Kohut, Richard Wike  |  February 1, 2010
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Spotlight
China and the Internet

Although China is home to the largest population of internet users in the world and has witnessed increasing creativity and “pushback” from its netizens, the country’s internet environment remains one of the most controlled in the world. China’s 1.3 billion citizens have only a limited ability to access and circulate information that is vital to their well-being and important to the country’s future.

By Freedom House  |  October 26, 2009  |  1
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Spotlight
Technology and Education

In most cases, the assumption that wealthy countries tend to have better education systems than poorer countries is correct. However, the association between national wealth and educational achievement scores is far from perfect. The United States, for example, ranks near the top of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in GDP per capita, but it typically ranks closer to the middle of the pack in academic assessments. Studies have shown that factors other than the wealth of a country also matter for educational attainment; for instance, the degree to which the state prioritizes education and the level of the country’s income inequality both have significant effects on education.

By Zsolt Nyiri, Brett Pelham, Steve Crabtree  |  October 26, 2009
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Spotlight
Civil Society Under Threat

After several decades of consistent progress, the state of global freedom has entered a period of stagnation and possibly even decline. The reasons for recent setbacks to liberty are numerous and complex. However, to a significant degree, the reversal in freedom of association can be attributed to the emergence of a few large and assertive authoritarian states—countries that are geostrategically important, major participants in the world economy, militarily robust, and, in a number of cases, rich in energy and other natural resources.

By Arch Puddington  |  July 6, 2009
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Spotlight, Americas
An Outflow of Talent

As the world hurtles headlong into the deepest global recession since the Great Depression, the controversial cultural and economic tensions that have always existed around the sensitive topics of immigration and immigration policy are again coming to the surface in the United States. A land of immigrants, religious outcasts, and refugees fleeing wars, poverty, starvation, and oppression abroad, the United States has long been viewed as the most welcoming country in the world.

By Vivek Wadhwa  |  July 6, 2009
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Spotlight, Americas
Positive Aspects of US Image

There is no doubt that the global image of the United States is not what it once was. Over the past eight years, the Bush Administration’s foreign policies—Iraq, the war on terror, perceived US unilateralism—have been widely opposed, and the United States’s reputation has suffered as a consequence. But there is hope for a revival of the United States’s standing in the world.

By Andrew Kohut, Richard Wike  |  March 21, 2009
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