Scientists Finally Pinpoint the Pathogen That Caused the Irish Potato Famine Smithsonian. Caused?
Origins of Human Culture Linked to Rapid Climate Change Science Daily
Why Aren217;t There More Storm Cellars in Oklahoma? The Atlantic
The Four Charts That Really Matter Arctic Sea Ice Blog (SW)
Global inaction shows that the climate sceptics have already won Martin Wolf, FT
Federal COA Rulings Could Make 5 Years Of Non-Judicial Fannie/Freddie Foreclosures Unconstitutional MFI-Miami
Apple Avoids Paying $17 Million In Taxes Every Day Through A Ballsy But Genius Tax Avoidance Scheme Business Insider. Great headline. (Bloomberg; Reuters; Times, “unbelievable chutzpath”).
NYC Startup Scene Boosted by 50-Fold Tumblr Deal Return Bloomberg
The Former Flickr Emplo...more
By C.P. Chandrasekhar, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
In the desperate search for evidence that the global recession has bottomed out and the recovery has arrived, the story told by the long-term trend in unemployment levels and rates is being missed.
Early this year, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) had noted that the global unemployment rate was close to 6 per cent, implying that 197 million people were unemployed, even ignoring the 39 million who had dropped out of the workforce, discouraged by persistent failure in job search.
But that aggregate fi...more
There’s a surprising degree of blogosphere acceptance of JP Morgan’s messaging on the shareholder vote today regarding whether to split the CEO and Chairman roles, that this result was a vote of confidence in his prowess as CEO.
Yet New York Magazine described the extent to which Dimon had to call in the big guns like Warren Buffett, Hank Paulson, and Michael Bloomberg to press his cause, and added:
“It was very much an effort across the bank,” one person familiar with JPMorgan Chase’s lobbying efforts told Daily Intelligencer, adding that “Jamie was not the one making calls on this.”
So with that as background, still getting a 32% vote for splitting the chairman and CEO vote, while a noteworthy improvement over the 40% vote l...more
By Michael Pettis
One of the reasons that it is been so hard for a lot of analysts, even trained economists, to understand the imbalances that were at the root of the current crisis is that we too easily confuse national savings with household savings. By coincidence there was recently a very interesting debate on the subject involving several economists, and it is pretty clear from the debate that even accounting identities can lead to confusion.
The difference between household and national savings matters because of the impact of national savings on a country’s current account, as I discuss in a recent piece in Foreign Policy. In it I argue that we often and mistakenly think of nations as if they were simply very large households. Because we know that the more...more
The international tax principles underlying the taxation of corporate income are attracting more and more attention. Ireland, in particular, has come under the spotlight.0; There is merit to some of the complaints made but most of it is little more than political posturing. Few substantive proposals are being made.
The latest is a report prepared for US Senators Levin (D) and McCain (R) which includes a very interesting appendix on Apple. The appendix opens:
“The Apple case study examines how Apple Inc., a U.S. corporation, has used a variety of offshore structures, arrangements, and transactions to shift billions of dollars in profits away from the United States and into Ireland, where Apple has negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less th...more
La cancellazione o sospensione della rata IMU ha quasi monopolizzato il dibattito sull' attività del governo Letta. Ma il rinvio della rata avrà almeno l'effetto di stimolare i consumi?
La risposta è che l'impatto sulla domanda sarà trascurabile. Vediamo perché.
Qui faremo le seguenti ipotesi:
- il rinvio dell'IMU non viene accompagnato da una equivalente riduzione della spesa pubblica;
- viene rispettato il vincolo europeo di bilancio in pareggio entro la fine del 2013, e dunque
- la manovra sull'IMU viene compensata da un'aumento delle imposte sulla casa (o su altre imposte) a breve scadenza
- l'imposta sulla casa è una imposta non distorsiva che colpisce la ricchezza, ma non distorce l'allocazione delle risorse
F...more
Last year, we saw a sea change in official German policy regarding the euro crisis and inflation. The German government came out in favour of accepting higher inflation domestically in Germany as a sacrifice for eurozone wage and price adjustments to help alleviate crisis. The question is whether this matters. I believe it does, but only in part.
I am writing this in part because of a back and forth between Ryan Avent on Free Exchange and Paul Krugman at the New York Times and Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution where I think some of the assumptions made about German policy views on inflation are incorrect.
The general consensus about the euro crisis is that it involves three separate adjustments beyond bank and private sector balance sheets. And thes...more
The IMF has done a major review of recent experiences with non-orthodox monetary policies
Unconventional Monetary Policies - Recent Experiences and Prospects
May, 16 2013
IMF Policy Paper
Summary of Informal Discussions with Central Bankers and Other Officials on Unconventional Monetary Policies
May, 16 2013
IMF Policy Paper
...more
Editors note: Moody’s released the following press release yesterday in conjunction with a ratings action it took on Turkish sovereign debt.
Moody’s Investors Service has today upgraded Turkey’s government bond ratings by one notch to Baa3 from Ba1, and has assigned a stable outlook.
The key drivers for today’s rating action are:
1. Recent and expected future improvements in key economic and public finance metrics.
2. Progress on structural and institutional reforms that Moody’s expects will reduce existing vulnerabilities to shocks to international capital flows over time.
Moody’s decision to assign a stable outlook on Turkey’s ratings reflects the rating agency’s expectation of continued prudence in the management of...more
Post interessante di Noah Smith. Tweets by @pmanasse
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Interessantissimi chart interattivi sulla diseguaglianza nei paesi OCSE. Interessanti anche i dati sul ruolo del sistema fiscale e sulla distribuzione per età del reddito.
Un must read per chi ne parla (a sproposito)Tweets by @pmanasse
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The future never resembles the past – as we well know. But, generally speaking, our imagination and our knowledge are too weak to tell us what particular changes to expect. We do not know what the future holds. Nevertheless, as living and moving beings, we are forced to act. – John Maynard Keynes
Discussions of the population problem have always had the capacity to stir up public sentiment much more than most other problems.
- Gunnar Myrdal
Last Thursday the yen broke through the psychological threshold of 100 to the US dollar. On Friday the slide continued (see chart), even dropping very close to 102 to the USD at one point before strengthening slightly on the run in to the G7 finance ministers meeting.
The ostensible source of the sudden shift was a ne...more
In a number of posts recently I have highlighted the impact of declining workforces on economic growth (here, for example, or here, or here) and the way the policies persued to address the Euro debt crisis are having the impact of accelerating the movement of young people away from the periphery and towards the core (here, or here) thus accelerating the decline in their working populations and exacerbating their growth problem. This issue has been already highlighted strongly in Japan’s ongoing crisis, and has to some extent come to be known as the “shortage of Japanese” problem following Paul Krugman’s memorable use of this expression to explain why Japan’s economic performance seemed so poor to so many.
Recently I ca...more
Introductory Statement by Jörg Asmussen, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, in exchange of views with the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament on financial assistance to Cyprus –
If the sovereign had shouldered these massive recapitalisation needs, debt would have risen to 145% of GDP. This would have critically endangered public debt sustainability. At the same time, traditional ways of burden sharing by the private sector bank creditors were limited, given little junior debt outstanding in banks.
The Eurozone has an effective* traditional way of burden-sharing with non-depositor creditors?
In particular, it was decided to cover the capital needs of the two largest banks exclusively through the own contributions of uninsured ...more
It is time to say goodbye... Well not really: Nouriel Roubini's new Economonitor site is up:http://www.economonitor.com/So are the new blog sites, including that of your friendly neighborhood economist:http://www.economonitor.com/emredeliveli/All my previous Roubini columns have been transferred there, and I set mobile blogging on my Bberry as well with Wordpress for Bberry....In short, I am all set to go. Therefore, starting today, this blog will no longer be active, as I will be blogging over at my new blog.Why did I decide to do that? Two reasons, mainly: First, I wanted to open myself up to new readers by joining forces with Roubini's Economonitor to satisfy my inflated ego. Second, I was sick of Blogger getting banned in Turkey from time to time. While I could easi...more
I learned this week that Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review's South Weekly, to which your friendly neighborhood economist was a regular contributor, is no more:( Monday's issue was the last. I learned this when I called in the editor on Wednesday to keep my promise of a column for next week...Anyway, I am listing below, along with hyperlinks, all my South Weekly editorials: What lies beneath Turkey’s stellar tourism statistics?Water Politics: What is so special about being near the water?The dismal science for a dismal sectorThe pursuit of happiness by economistsNothing quiet on the (south)western frontBut there is another end of an era, which is even more important, at least for me: Roubini's new Economonitor site, which will include outside bloggers, includin...more
Edwin G. Dolan is an economist and educator with a Ph.D. from Yale University. Early in his career, he was a member of the economics faculty at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and George Mason University. From 1990 to 2001, he taught in Moscow, Russia, where he and his wife founded the American Institute of Business and Economics (AIBEc), an independent, not-for-profit MBA program. Since 2001, he has taught at several universities in Europe, including Central European University in Budapest, the University of Economics in Prague, and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, where he has an ongoing annual visiting appointment. During breaks in his teaching career, he worked in Washington, D.C. as an economist for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and as a regulatory analyst for the Interstate Commerce Commission, and later served a stint in Almaty as an adviser to the National Bank of Kazakhstan. When not lecturing abroad, he makes his home in San Juan Islands, Washington.
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