Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense.

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.

If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.

Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.

Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.

In American politics, 'Europe' is usually a code word for 'big government.'