Intermediate

The footballer Neymar has dismissed suggestions his world-record £198m move to Paris Saint-Germain was motivated by money and instead insisted he moved to the French capital for “a new challenge”.

“I wanted something bigger, a bigger challenge. This was about ambition,” Neymar said. “I was never motivated by money. I thought about the happiness of my family, regardless of money.”

Nasser al-Khelaifi, the PSG owner, said “For me Neymar is the best player in the world. With him our project will grow even stronger. Let’s enjoy Neymar.”

In America, on a unanimous voice vote, a Senate committee approved legislation that authorizes self-driving car makers to sell as many as 80,000 vehicles a year within three years that would be exempt from current safety standards as manufacturers develop technology for autonomous vehicles.

One of my favorite economists, Dan Ariely, tells this story about a locksmith. When the locksmith was new at his job, when he was an apprentice, he took a really long time to open a lock. And people saw him working away, struggling, really having a hard time. And often they'd end up giving him a tip. But then when the locksmith got better at his job, when he got so good at his job he could open pretty much any lock in just a minute or two, then his customers started complaining. They were like, you want $200 for that? This took you, like, 30 seconds. And you can see why, right?

In 2013, Volvo announced a potentially revolutionary approach to designing electric vehicles (EVs). It wanted to replace some of the steel body panels in its cars with carbon fiber composite materials that can store power like a battery.

The rechargeable panels would be composed of multiple layers of carbon fiber, which are insulated from each other by fiberglass inserts. The result is a structural component that can be charged like the battery.

Japanese automotive giant Toyota has made a strategic investment in South East Asia taxi-hailing service Grab.

Major Japanese agricultural machinery makers are developing self-driving tractors. The government plans to support the introduction of these  tractors amid growing hopes that such machines will help farmers cope with labor shortages at a time when many are aging and face difficulties finding successors.

In June 2017, Kubota Corp. started selling the country’s first tractors with autonomous driving functions on a trial basis. Utilizing the Global Positioning System (GPS), the tractors can keep tabs on where they are operating.

An amateur historian has unearthed compelling evidence that the first Australian maritime foray into Japanese waters was by convict pirates on an audacious escape from Tasmania almost two centuries ago.

Fresh translations of samurai accounts of a “barbarian” ship in 1830 give startling corroboration to a story modern scholars had long dismissed as convict fantasy: that a ragtag crew of criminals encountered a forbidden Japan at the height of its feudal isolation.

In 2030, there will be more jobs than workers able to fill them in many of the world's largest economies, according to Boston Consulting Group senior partner Rainer Strack.

Algorithms can learn to collude. 

Two law professors, Ariel Ezrachi of Oxford and Maurice E. Stucke of the University of Tennessee, have a working paper on how when computers get involved in pricing for goods and services (say, at Amazon or Uber), the potential for collusion is even greater than when humans are making the prices. 

Across Beijing's historic alleyways known as hutongs, construction workers are knocking down local restaurants and bars to make way for new, bigger developments. The historic alleyways are seeing more and more corporate ventures moving in. This is apparently to restore the city to a type of grandeur, but many residents say it is invading their lives and that the "soul" of their community is being lost.

In April 2017, economists at LSE looked at 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans, inside of companies. Here's what they said: "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance."

The renewable energy future will arrive when installing new solar panels is cheaper than a comparable investment in coal, natural gas or other options. If you ask the World Economic Forum (WEF), the day has arrived.