What the New Chinese Consumer is Buying

Buying more yogurt, movie tickets and premium products instead of instant noodles, the consumer is a new focus for China’s statisticians.

Really Understanding the World

Seeing the world develop through bubble animation from Hans Rosling makes health and income statistics mesmerizingly enjoyable.

Why China Will Make a Better Ballpoint Pen

Until Chinese innovation produces better ballpoint pens, the tips for billions of exports will have to be imported from Germany, Switzerland and Japan.

Where Phones Pump Money

Kenya’s economic development has been fueled by a mobile banking system that makes it easy to save, send and spend money with a cell phone.

Street Grid Economics

More than we realize, our economic behavior in a city is shaped by the urban planning that created the shape, the length and the width of the streets.

Part 1: The Trap That China Wants to Avoid

Currently slowing down, China’s economic growth might be challenged by the middle income trap that has caught Brazil but not Taiwan or Malaysia.

The World’s Sanitation Gap

A production possibilities graph can display the land, labor and capital underutilization that inadequate sanitation creates and indicate a constrained GDP.

Part 2: What To Do When More People Are Old

Facing an aging population and more entitlements, countries that are encouraging more births to expand the labor force might be creating a bigger problem.

The Difference Between India's Stories and Statistics

There is a village in Southern India called Kadapakkam. It had been a home to farmers and fishermen whose thatched huts had no running water and no electrical appliances. At traditional tea shops located at the side of the local, narrow and potholed road, you could meet a friend. One 62…

How To Cope With (Water) Stress

Being water stressed means you are unusually vulnerable to a water shortage. Sort of like a household where one emergency can push it over the edge because it spends all it earns, so too with most water stressed nations. That one drought…