Hong Kong may be back in the hands of mainland China, but direct government spending in Hong Kong remains less than 15 percent of national income--versus some 40 or 50 percent here in the United States. Hoover fellow and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman considers these facts worth pondering.

The gap between rich and poor is neither as large nor as ominous as many would have us believe. By Hoover fellow David R. Henderson.

The more democracy the better? According to Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell, not necessarily. An argument for restricting the franchise.

The regents of the University of California voted in 1995 to end affirmative action on all nine UC campuses. Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell has looked at the results, and he concludes that the educational climate for minorities has gotten better, not worse.

Attempting to develop new standards for its public schools, California has formed an Academic Standards Commission. One of its members is Hoover fellow Williamson Evers, and he's not altogether happy about the commission's work.

Global warming is too serious to be left to the politicians. Hoover fellow Edward Teller suggests a scientific solution to the problem. (If there is a problem, that is.)

Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration is pushing up the price of medicine and delaying the introduction of new drugs. Think the era of big government is over? Look in your medicine cabinet. By Hoover fellow Henry I. Miller, M.D.

Computers have made the entire economy vastly more productive--a fact that government accounting happens to have missed. By Hoover fellow David R. Henderson.

If Germany's first attempt at democracy, the Weimar Republic, had proved successful, the Second World War would never have taken place. Now Russia has embarked on its own first attempt at democracy. We dare not let it fail. By Hoover fellow and former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry.

Despite looming troubles--a divided Korea and a divided China--the United States has only two military treaties in Asia, one with Japan, one with South Korea. Hoover fellows Ramon H. Myers and Robert J. Myers make the case for collective security agreements in the Pacific.

Care for definitive proof that supply-side policies spur economic growth? Take a look at communist China. By Hoover fellow Alvin Rabushka.

How many nations possess nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons--or might soon do so? Hoover fellow and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Henry S. Rowen knows the answer. It isn't particularly reassuring.

After more than six decades as a one-party state, Russia today has in effect become . . . a one-party state. Hoover fellow Michael A. McFaul explains why the Yeltsin government lacks an opposition--and why the lack is so dangerous.

The currency crisis in Thailand showed how irresponsible government policy could thwart an economic boom. Hoover fellow and Nobel Prize winner Gary S. Becker argues that developing nations can avoid such economic shocks by abandoning free-floating exchange rates.

Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman examines one of the darker corners of Soviet history, describing how the Communists "annexed the written word--fiction, nonfiction, plays, essays, short stories, everything--to the party apparat."

Two years after Congress passed welfare reform, are we any nearer to seeing the end of welfare as we knew it? Hoover fellow Thomas MaCurdy recently gave Hoover fellow Peter Robinson an early assessment.