18 must-read stories for the weekend

1. The profitability of trust. Successful managers need to look beyond short-term profits and address global challenges, writes Professor Klaus Schwab.

2. The world’s top ten energy performers. Which countries are powering ahead with the shift to sustainable energy?

3. Three African leaders on what their countries need now to fight Ebola. The Presidents of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali on their most urgent priorities.

4. How to manage house price booms. The IMF’s Min Zhu asks if economic policy is on solid foundations.

5. As oil prices plunge, can we still burn fewer fossil fuels? How some countries, including Mexico, offer hope for the future.

6. Is quantitative easing creating a new currency war? As the US scales down, Japan ramps up. The economist Julia Leung on what this means for global markets.

7. The dark side of creativity. Or why the history of the Post-it note is surprisingly subversive.

8. How energy reforms will make it easier to slow global warming and the relation between climate change and energy architecture across the world. (Washington Post)

9. Energy reform in emerging economies. Uses Forum research, including comment from Roberto Bocca. (Global Post)

10. The gender gap in Asia Pacific: shrinking but not enough. (FT)

11. From bamboo bikes to renewables. A short profile of Bernice Dapaah, one of the Forum’s Young Global Leaders. (Guardian)

12. Social tensions should be a central theme at Davos. An interview with Professor Schwab. (Valor International)

13. Is the US ending its oil addiction? Oil is cheap, demand sluggish. How GDP growth and oil consumption have been decoupled.

14. “If there is no growth, there is nothing to trickle down.” Branko Milanovic unpicks the consequences if the rich invest less in GDP-boosting assets like factories, and more in Rothkos and Riviera real estate. Also: Rethinking Russian privatisation.

15. “Make no mistake: The machines are coming,” writes Nouriel Roubini. The question for us is what kind of welcome to prepare for them.

16. The Japanese town where scarecrows outnumber people. “First the jobs go. Then the schools. Eventually, the electricity meters stop.”

17. The widening wage gap. Does inequality prevent a shift to more productive organisational forms?

18. Can people have a good life without economic growth?  Does consuming more lead to happiness?

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Author: Adrian Monck is Managing Director of Public Engagement at the World Economic Forum.

Image: A general view shows a soon-to-be completed solucar solar park at Sanlucar La Mayor, near Seville, May 16, 2007. REUTERS/Javier Barbancho