If you want to avoid Economist business practices, but still access the coverage, I found DiscountMags to be fairly pain-free experience. They manage the customer info and billing, and have a "rate protect" feature, where they promise to get you exact same (or lower) price next year, or cancel the subscription otherwise.

Their regular prices are somewhat inflated, but registering a deal alert on slickdeals/etc. would get you annual pricing similar to https://slickdeals.net/f/14599963-1-year-of-the-economist-ma...