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Posted on Mon, 19 Dec 2016: New banknotes arrive in Venezuela in currency crisis, Deutsche Welle, 19 Dec 16: Crates holding 50,000 new banknotes have arrived in Venezuela amid a currency crisis and growing social unrest. A delay last week, which Pres Maduro blamed on the US Treasury, had sparked protests (These Harvard economists offer differing views for how to save Venezuela) Amid Middle East gloom, Christmas brings some cheer in Bethlehem, Reuters, 19 Dec 16 [via Channel News Asia/Spore]: This Christmas, for once, Bethlehem really can boast again that there is no room at the inn, as relative calm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank brings pilgrims and tourists flocking to the town of Jesus's birth (A bleak Christmas in Bethlehem evokes the disaster that befell it) Martha Nussbaum: Anger, disgust, fear - Powerlessness and the politics of blame, Univ Chicago, 15 Nov 16: When people feel themselves powerless, out of control of their own lives, it is all too easy to convert that sense of panic and impotence into blame, and the "othering" of outsider groups, writes U Chicago law/ethics prof, who worked with Amartya Sen to develop the "capabilities approach" to human devt Posted on Fri, 16 Dec 2016:
Michael Boskin: Trump's victory - what can we learn?, Project Syndicate, 15 Dec 16 [via WEForum (blog)]: Trump's surprise election has spawned a "cottage industry" of post-mortems and predictions in America and abroad. There may be something to the explanations given, but there is more to the story, writes Pres GH Bush's Council Econ Advisers chair Tax havens - New report reveals dangerous race to the bottom on corporate tax, Oxfam, 12 Dec 16: Bermuda, Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg are among the world's 15 worst corporate tax havens, acc. to a new report. The report, "Tax Battles", reveals how these tax havens are leading a global race to the bottom on corporate tax that is depriving nations of billions of dollars Michael Lewis: How two trailblazing psychologists turned the world of decision science upside down, Vanity Fair, 14 Nov 16: The ways in which some baseball expert might misjudge baseball players - the ways in which any expert's judgments might be warped by the expert's own mind - had been described, years ago, by Kahneman & Tversky, writes author of The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds [Dec 2016]) {Powell's | Book Depository} Posted on Wed, 14 Dec 2016:
Poorest countries falling further behind - UN, AFP, 14 Dec 16 [via Yahoo]: Global poverty is increasingly concentrated among a group of 48 nations, which are falling further behind the rest of the world in terms of econ development, according to a new UN report (Poverty trap leaves least developed countries ever further behind) Who wins globalization?, Rand (blog), 14 Nov 16: "We are actually at the cusp of a whole new wave of domestic manufacturing again made possible by ... not making things as cheap as possible, but making things as smart as possible," says co-author of The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation (2016) {Kobo eBooks | Powell's} Tax havens should be 'quarantined' from global economy - Stiglitz, Pieth report, Reuters, 15 Nov 16: Countries that fail to clamp down on tax havens should be cut off from the global financial system, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz said, 4 months after quitting the panel set up to probe the Panama Papers scandal (Experts who quit Panama panel produce their own report)
Posted on Mon, 12 Dec 2016:
A paradigm shift in markets? Global bond yields have jumped sharply..., Bank Intl Settlements, 09 Dec 16 [PDF]: Are we facing a market overreaction or a paradigm shift? What is surprising is that it took just one political event to seemingly dispel, in one fell swoop, the market's belief in a future of persistently ultra-low interest rates and secularly low growth, note Borio and Shin New age of anxiety as Trump strikes security, trade deals. Straits T, by Quah & Crabtree, 12 Nov 16 [PDF, courtesy N U Spore]: It is a mistake to label Trump as a pure isolationist. As far as anyone can tell, the pres-elect has little desire to cede regional leadership to China. And a full-scale trade war with China is unlikely, writes NUS economist; & visiting senior res fellow How can countries take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?, World Bank (blog), by V Mulas, 13 Oct 16: The economy is in a restructuring process. Technology-led transformations are no longer limited to tech-related sectors and are beginning to affect structural sectors, including manufacturing, retailing, transportation and construction, writes WB trade/ competitiveness economist Posted on Fri, 09 Dec 2016:
Danny Leipziger: Make globalization more inclusive or suffer the consequences, Vox EU, 08 Dec 16: My aim here is to examine what went wrong, what was swept under the rug, and where govts have failed in dealing with globalization, writes Growth Dialogue manag dir / George Washington U prof (Bourguignon: The Globalization of Inequality [2015]) {eBooks.com | Powell's} Kenneth Rogoff: Will Trump herald a US economic boom?, Project Syndicate, 07 Dec 16 [via Guardian]: Those who are wedded to the idea of “secular stagnation” would say high growth under Trump is impossible. But not if one believes, as I do, that the slow growth of the last 8 years was mainly due to the overhang of debt and fear from the crisis, writes recipient of 2011 Deutsche Bank prize in fin econ Gregory Mankiw: Seeing past the trade deficit threat, NYT, 04 Dec 16 [PDF, courtesy Harvard]: In recent years, US imports have exceeded exports by about $500 bil. a year. Trump's commerce secy-designate W Ross and U Calif-Irvine's P Navarro argue that if better policies eliminated this "trade deficit drag", more people would be employed, writes Pres GW Bush's Council Econ Advisers chair Posted on Wed, 07 Dec 2016:
Trumponomics 'bad for world economy,' 2016 Nobel Laureate warns, Bloomberg, 07 Dec 16: Harvard's Oliver Hart said a fiscal spending spree like the one Trump is proposing could be good for the economy, esp. if it focuses on infrastructure. But evidence to date suggests the real estate mogul is likely to make some unorthodox deals in an effort to achieve his goals Kemal Dervis: The win-win fantasy of liberal democracy, Project Syndicate, 05 Dec 16 [via Brookings Inst]: The current consensus blames the "elites" - in academia, media, and business – for becoming so caught up in their relatively cosmopolitan and connected world that they failed to listen carefully to less educated and connected groups, writes Inst vice pres Singapore tops latest global survey of school systems, OECD, 06 Dec 16: The PISA 2015 (Prog Intl Student Assessment) tested around 540,000 15-year-old students in 72 nations and economies on science, reading, maths and collaborative problem-solving. The main focus was on science, an increasingly important part of today's economy and society Posted on Mon, 05 Dec 2016:
Paul Krugman: Leave zombies be, Finance & Development, Dec '16: The march toward ever-more-liberal trade and investment policy seems to have stalled. In fact, it was losing momentum even before the Great Recession, let alone Donald Trump: the Doha Round has been a zombie for a long time, writes 2008 Nobel Laureate Mohamed El-Erian: Sustaining the Trump rally, Project Syndicate, 29 Nov 16 [via Mareeg/Somalia]: Before the election, most analysts predicted that a Trump win would trigger a large stock-market selloff and a rush into low-risk govt bonds. But market pessimism did not last long. Stocks then began to rally – and have ever since, writes Pres Obama's Global Development Council chair The Global Wealth Report 2016, Credit Suisse, 22 Nov 16: The report, now on its 7th ed., is the most comprehensive source of information on global household wealth. The report further establishes that wealth inequality, measured by the share of the wealthiest 1% and wealthiest 10% of adults, continues to rise Posted on Sat, 03 Dec 2016:
India takes a big step back from cash, New Yorker, by N Heller, 29 Nov 16 [PDF, courtesy Harvard]: A number of economists, led by Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff, are advocating phasing out big bills in the US and letting the remaining cash fall toward disuse. Rarely has an appealing hypothetical encountered so extreme a real-world test case, and so soon Alan Blinder: Upside, downside, Finance & Development, Dec '16: Are you for or against globalization? It's a silly question, really, rather like asking whether you favor or oppose the daily sunrise. It will happen anyway. Your choice is whether to make the most of it or emphasize the downsides, writes Princeton U economist / fmr Fed vice chair Maurice Obstfeld: Get on track with trade, Finance & Development, Dec '16: Trade enables a country to use its resources more efficiently. But the gains from that greater efficiency may be divided unevenly among a country's citizens, so that some of them lose out. The result can be greater income inequality and disrupted lives, writes IMF chief economist |