TR EMERITUS

An ‘optimum’ population', in dictionary terms, is the ‘best or most favourable’ population. But a dictionary cannot tell the whole story. Best for what purpose, and best according to which criteria? For OPT, a green think tank, an optimum population means, at its simplest, a population size which is environmentally sustainable... 

A pile of bags and clothing on an old shop front verandah on Cuff Road in Singapore's Little India is "home" to a group of about 50 migrant workers who have been spat out by an economy that relies heavily on so-called "guest workers." All are men from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, lured to Singapore by shady labor agents who... 

IN RECENT months several countries have experimented with measures to cool bubbly property markets. Yet since The Economist’s global round-up of housing markets was last published in April, house-price inflation has accelerated in some of the very countries where the authorities have intervened to slow its rise. Asia has been...