After nearly two years of low consumer prices and falling producer prices, their steady rise in the first quarter of this year suggests that higher inflation and price shocks will once again test the resilience of households, businesses and the overall economy.
Continue reading “Inflation dynamics and its effects on economy” →
While the recent surge in exports and strengthening demand across most economies have buoyed expectations that the global economy is on an upward growth trajectory this year, the external environment of emerging market and developing (EMD) economies is set to become more challenging in the medium term. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its latest outlook publication has described it as a “less travelled and complicated” external environment for the EMD economies.
Continue reading “EMD economies bracing for more challenges” →
A think tank has advocated the strengthening of Asean’s unity and economy with the aim of placing the bloc at par with global superpowers.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ascension to power in 2014 could be the beginning of his country’s rise towards becoming an economic superpower equal to China, according to Woo Wing Thye, president of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia.
While United States President Donald Trump’s threats of border taxes, immigration curbs and America First policies are seen as a roll-back of globalisation, the digital revolution is redefining and reinvigorating globalisation in several ways.
Having grown in scope, scale and quality over the past five years, this year’s Asia Public Policy Forum (APPF) of the Ash Centre on Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University was held in Malaysia for the first time in collaboration with the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia at Sunway University.
Continue reading “Education access for all” →
Last year, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called Thank You For
Being Late examines how much the world has been transformed since the dawn of the new millennium but also reassures that it is possible for everyone to catch up in this “age of accelerations”.
Continue reading “Balancing access, quality in tertiary education” →
The planned launch of the world’s first Digital Free Trade Zone in Malaysia in March this year has sparked interest not only among the wider public as consumers but also among technopreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) interested to tap the domestic and international e-commerce opportunities.
Continue reading “Embracing automation, innovation and disruptive technologies” →
The Education Ministry has expressed regret over how the opinions of Harvard researcher Prof Lant Pritchett, on the state of higher education in Malaysia, was wrongly characterised in the headline of a news portal recently.
Prof Pritchett says he only talks about what he knows.
Continue reading “Harvard professor clarifies report on local grads” →