The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

Twenty years ago, I stepped off a train into the Colorado River Valley with nothing more than a backpack and a vague sense of curiosity. I was a young traveler from Australia, chasing open-ended ...

Robert Kelly is managing director of XTS Energy LLC, and has more than three decades of experience as a business executive. He is a professor of economics and has raised more than $4.5 billion in ...

An Innovative Governance Mechanism for Mega‑Project Delivery. Open Journal of Leadership, 14, 655-663. doi: ...

A final sweep of 60 years of evidence reveals durable truths about how development succeeds and fails.

Gaming economics just got real. Xbox Game Pass built its reputation on incredible value, but the latest price shake-up has sparked a gamer rebellion. Xbox users across the board have let it be known ...

Plus, the shifting politics of being pro-Israel ...

TAKAICHI SANAE was bound to rile China sooner rather than later. Japan’s new prime minister (pictured) is an outspoken nationalist with a reputation as a China hawk. As it turned out, it took less ...

Check our economic calendar for dates, times, estimates, actual results, and trading importance for major U.S. economic releases. See economic data for yesterday, today, tomorrow, and weekly up to six ...

The global community’s most authoritative estimates of how many people go hungry in places that are suffering food emergencies exhibit substantial and widespread undercounting. Given other ...

The Dark Forest theory is one proposed solution to the famed Fermi Paradox, which has bewitched astronomers for more than half a century. To put it concisely, the paradox asks if the cosmos is nearly ...