Business

Robert M. Solow, who won a Nobel in economic science in 1987 for his theory that advances in technology, rather than increases in capital and labor, have been the primary drivers of economic growth in the United States, died on Thursday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 99.His son John confirmed the death.Professor Solow (pronounced solo) taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he and a fellow Nobel laureate, Paul A. Samuelson, forged the M.I.T. style of economic analysis, which emerged as a leading approach in the second half of the 20th century and played an important role in economic policymaking.His work demonstrated the power of bringing mathematics to bear on important economic debates and simplifying the analysis by focusing on a small number of variables at ...

Every day since the trees were planted has been a roll of the dice.Unlike commodities like corn and soybeans, which Mr. Wyckoff grows on another 90 acres he owns, there is no good way to insure Christmas trees against the harm caused by extreme weather, or the effects of an overseas war or a pandemic that freezes supply chains, he added.“Farmers are the biggest gamblers there are,” Mr. Wyckoff, 57, said. His family has been growing Christmas trees in Belvidere, N.J., about a 90-minute drive from Midtown Manhattan, since his grandfather started the business in the 1950s.Christmas trees grow slowly, about 12 to 14 inches a year, and can take 10 years to go from seed to harvest. Most trees he plants are 3 to 5 years old by the time he buys them from nurseries.To keep up with costs, Mr. Wyckof...

For decades, South Korea’s economy has been dominated by a handful of family-run conglomerates that hold outsize wealth and influence and factor into nearly every aspect of life in the country.Because of their political heft, the chaebol, as these families are known, have long been a matter of immense public interest. The marriages, deaths, estrangements and legal troubles of these families are chronicled in the South Korean press. Fictional chaebol families have been depicted in Korean dramas. The Lee family of Samsung, the Koos of LG, the Cheys of SK, the Shins of Lotte and the Chungs of Hyundai are household names that have tightly held the reins of the companies that are some of the country’s largest private sector employers.Their power has been increasingly scrutinized — both inside a...

Martin Guzman was a college freshman at La Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, in 2001 when a debt crisis prompted default, riots and a devastating depression. A dazed middle class suffered ruin, as the International Monetary Fund insisted that the government make misery-inducing budget cuts in exchange for a bailout.Watching Argentina unravel inspired Mr. Guzman to switch majors and study economics. Nearly two decades later, when the government was again bankrupt, it was Mr. Guzman as finance minister who negotiated with I.M.F. officials to restructure a $44 billion debt, the result of an earlier ill-conceived bailout.Today he is one of a number of prominent economists and world leaders who argue that the ambitious framework created at the end of World War II to safeguard economi...

In a faintly stilted tone and with slightly awkward grammar, the American-accented voice on YouTube last month ridiculed Washington’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, claiming that the United States was unable to “play its role as a mediator like China” and “now finds itself in a position of significant isolation.”The 10-minute post was one of more than 4,500 videos in an unusually large network of YouTube channels spreading pro-China and anti-U.S. narratives, according to a report this week from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a security-focused think tank.Some of the videos used artificially generated avatars or voice-overs, making the campaign the first influence operation known to the institute to pair A.I. voices with video essays.The campaign’s goal, according...

Federal Reserve officials will wrap up a year of aggressive inflation fighting on Wednesday afternoon, when they are expected to use their final policy decision of 2023 to leave interest rates at their highest level in 22 years.The Fed is finishing the year on pause after the most intense campaign of interest rate increases in decades, one meant to snuff out the rapid price gains that have been bedeviling consumers since 2021.Because inflation has now moderated substantially, central bankers have increasingly signaled that they may be done raising borrowing costs, which are set to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent. The question investors will be focused on Wednesday is how much rates are expected to come down in 2024 — and when those cuts might begin.The Fed will release its statement and a f...