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Volatility Strikes Back May 3, 2018  The bouts of volatility in early February and late March that spooked investors were confined to equity markets. Nevertheless, they illustrate the potential for sudden market moves to expose fragilities in the financial system more broadly. With central banks in advanced economies set to normalize their monetary policies just as trade and geopolitical tensions flare up, economic and policy uncertainty may rise and financial conditions may tighten abruptly.  Malta’s Good Bet May 7, 2018 Known mostly for its azure seas and spectacular old towns, Malta has also become a hub for gambling and betting companies: nowhere else in the European Union does this sector account for such a large part of the economy as on the island south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. While the gambling and betting boom contributes to the country’s trade balance and job creation, it also draws attention to a skills shortage and infrastructure gaps the sector is grappling with, a recent IMF papershows. Trust and the Future of Multilateralism May 10, 2018 We live in an era of doubts and questions about the global order.  We have seen an erosion of trust in bedrock institutions—political parties, national governments, regional authorities, and among international trade and investment partners. We often throw around the word trust rather loosely. But serious and careful work by Luigi Zingales and several others has defined trust as “civic capital”, meaning “those persistent and shared beliefs and values that help a group overcome the free rider problem in the pursuit of socially valuable activity.”