The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index found that while Hong Kong and Singapore show strong economic fundamentals, in terms of noneconomic variables such as health, personal freedom, and social capital, these countries need improvement.

Is the "no excuses" approach to schooling sustainable, and can it be widely reproduced?

Dynamic new ventures like the KIPP Academies, Edison, or Green Dot Public Schools are increasingly being asked to stand in for failing district schools.

Obama should stop claiming that Bush policies created the mess that we are in. If they did, then Obama's policies will only make things worse.

The future is on the way.  Leading-edge innovators, we are assured, have already moved on, and are earnestly focusing on the just the sort of problems - manufacturing, energy, transportation (and I'd add healthcare) - that urgently require imaginative solutions.

Greater transparency in health-care financing and more skepticism regarding the purported rationales for hidden cross-subsidies and regulatory protections are sorely overdue.

The United States and its allies and partners must not only understand Iran’s regional strategy and influence but also develop a coherent strategy of their own with which to confront them. Considering the relative economic, political, and diplomatic power of the two sides, it is unacceptable for the United States and its allies to allow Iran even such progress as it has made in these realms.

In his new book, “Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines,” Roger Bate explores the underground trade in illegal medicines that kills over 100,000 people per year and supplants billions of dollars of real products.