Computing IT's give-and-take role in sustainability — part one

The dramatic growth of the past half-century has led to higher living standards in much of the world, but has also resulted in urban sprawl, choking pollution and global warming.

Fugitive Denim: Globalization tales of the traveling pants

What do you look for when you buy a pair of jeans? Color? Cut? Designer label? Price tag? One thing is certain: Even if you buy what you think is the same make/label/origin, year after year, it is an entirely different item with a brand-new geographic story.

Taking a cue from the business world: What the public sector could learn about influencing behavior

What's the best way to convince a 40-year-old to stop smoking? Tell him that he'll get lung cancer and die? Not necessarily.

William Polk: What Is the true cost of the Iraq War?

William Polk has an impressive resume as a historian, policy adviser and diplomat.

Richard Kovacevich: Seeing the half-full glass in the U.S. economy

It's understandable that some economic forecasters, spooked by gloomy indicators, say the U.S. is heading into or already in a recession — but they may be overlooking key factors that buffer negative forces, according to Richard Kovacevich, chairman of Wells Fargo & Co.

Ivan Makil: Understanding 'seven-generation thinking' key to developing Indian land

Drive around the biggest cities in Arizona and you'll see an interesting contrast in land usage: packed-full swaths of retail, residential, business and industrial buildings bellied up to vast fields pockmarked with weeds and here and there, a house or two, or even a shiny new casino.

Evaluating environmental regulations outside the box

Maricopa County, Arizona is proposing to implement 53 measures to cut pollution from tiny particles (PM-10) that are small enough to be inhaled.

Podcast: Lee McPheters checks the vital signs of the economy

Consumers are worried, and that's a bad sign for the economy. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economy; these days people appear reluctant to buy big-ticket items like cars and major appliances.

Rendering authenticity: How to succeed in the experience economy

The new consumer sensibility, widely heralded in the business press, is the Experience Economy. Our world of mediated, staged and multi-sensory experience — an increasingly unreal world — gives rise to people desiring authentic or "real" experiences. But what is authenticity?

From pork bellies to pigskin: An online futures market for sports tickets

W. P. Carey professors Stephen Happel and Marianne Jennings are free-market defenders. For almost two decades they have evangelized the fundamentals of supply and demand, specifically in the secondary market for event tickets.