Although the study uses some sophisticated statistical methods, its basic point is straightforward: in the long term, economic output (G.D.P.) is constrained by the quantity and the quality of economic inputs (labor, capital, and technology). If the growth rate and quality of these inputs decline, the potential growth rate of G.D.P. will fall, too—it’s just a matter of arithmetic.
Has the U.S. Economy Been Permanently Damaged? : The New Yorker - 0 views
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With hiring rates down, many workers have given up searching for jobs and have dropped out of the labor force.
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With budgets tight, corporations and government departments have cut back on investments in new plants and machinery, computer hardware and software, and research and development.
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Nouriel Roubini explains why many previously fast-growing economies suddenly find thems... - 0 views
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Nonetheless, the threat of a full-fledged currency, sovereign-debt, and banking crisis remains low, even in the Fragile Five, for several reasons
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Many also have sounder banking systems, while their public and private debt ratios, though rising, are still low
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a large war chest of reserves
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IBM to Announce More Powerful Watson via the Internet - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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On Tuesday, a company appearing at the Amazon conference said it had run in 18 hours a project on Amazon’s cloud of computer servers that would have taken 264 years on a single server. The project, related to finding better materials for solar panels, cost $33,000, compared with an estimated $68 million to build and run a similar computer just a few years ago.
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“It’s now $90 an hour to rent 10,000 computers,” the equivalent of a giant machine that would cost $4.4 million, said Jason Stowe, the chief executive of Cycle Computing, the company that did the Amazon supercomputing exercise, and whose clients include The Hartford, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson. “Soon smart people will be renting a conference room to do some supercomputing.”
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This year, Gartner calculated that A.W.S. had five times the computing power of 14 other cloud computing companies, including IBM, combined.
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Are Germans really poorer than Spaniards, Italians and Greeks? | vox - 0 views
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From this survey it appeared that the median German household had the lowest wealth of all Eurozone countries
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The median households in countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy appear to be three to four times wealthier than the median German household. Even the median Greek household is twice as wealthy as the German one.
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mean net wealth of households
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The euro crisis: Debtors' prison | The Economist - 0 views
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But the reforms often fail to work. The Spanish law is intended to promote restructuring of viable firms but in practice most insolvencies end in liquidation after lengthy court proceedings.
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High household debt helps explain why the Netherlands, along with Italy and Spain, remained in recession in the second quarter of 2013 even as the euro area in general embarked on recovery. Dutch GDP this year will be 2% lower than in 2011 and more than 3% below its previous peak, in 2008.
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it illustrates the malign effect of high debt when house prices fall
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Bershidsky on Europe: Euro Crisis Nations Turn Tax Havens - Bloomberg - 0 views
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Foreign dividends transferred to an ETVE are not taxed in Spain if their recipient paid corporate tax in the country of the dividends' origin, and the money can then be moved to the U.S. and many other countries without incurring withholding tax. ExxonMobil used its ETVE to receive dividends from its Luxembourg profit center and then transfer them tax-free to the U.S
Multinationals beach tax bills in Spanish shells - FT.com - 0 views
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From here a single employee presided over a company that from 2009 to 2011 made €9.9bn of net profits, all while earning an annual salary of only €55,000.
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Exxon’s Spanish subsidiary was structured as a so-called ETVE, a type of holding company used by many multinationals, including Hewlett-Packard, Pepsi, Eli Lilly, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Vodafone.
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According to the ETVE’s 2009 accounts, Exxon was able to transfer €3.6bn of dividends from its unit in Luxembourg to Spain. A dividend of €2.26bn was then paid on to its US parent without incurring withholding taxes that it would typically have to pay when moving money outside of the EU.
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An interview with Athanasios Orphanides: What happened in Cyprus | The Economist - 0 views
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Cyprus had developed its financial center over three decades ago by having double taxation treaties with a number of countries, the Soviet Union for example. That means if profits are booked and earned and taxed in Cyprus, they are not taxed again in the other country. Russian deposits are there because Cyprus has a low corporate tax rate, much like Malta and Luxembourg, which annoys some people in Europe.
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In addition, Cyprus has a legal system based on English law and follows English accounting rules
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This government took a country with excellent fiscal finances, a surplus in fiscal accounts, and a banking system that was in excellent health. They started overspending, not only for unproductive government expenditures but also they raised implicit liabilities by raising pension promises, and so forth.
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Crisis Swirls in Kenya, and Politicians Reward Themselves - New York Times - 0 views
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Still, some say legislators have lost touch with the poor districts they represent. Per capita income is about $463 a year, which nobody here would expect a lawmaker to survive on. Minimum wage is $924 a year, still far too little, in most Kenyans' view, for someone taking care of the nation's business. But the base compensation that legislators earn is about $81,000 a year, tax free, plus a variety of allowances and perks, which can effectively double their take-home pay. That means those public servants earn more than most Kenyan corporate executives and outstrip the salaries of many of their counterparts in the developed world.
Italy Falls Back Into Recession, Raising Concern for Eurozone Economy - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Italy Falls Back Into Recession, Raising Concern for Eurozone Economy
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Some economists argue that the region is already well into a so-called lost decade.
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Analysts surmised that the strained relations with Russia as well as turmoil in the Middle East had undercut demand for Italian exports, in particular fashion and other luxury goods.
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Tax Breaks for Companies Like Apple Investigated by E.U. - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The subcommittee said that Apple had “exploited a difference between Irish and American tax residency rules” but had not broken any laws.
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Among the ideas under consideration are strict rules for defining where a company has a permanent presence and measures to limit the practice of so-called transfer pricing — the shunting of profits and losses between subsidiaries by disguising them as internal corporate payments for goods or, as is increasingly common, for copyright or patent royalties.
Profits Vanish in Venezuela After Currency Devaluation - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Profits Vanish in Venezuela After Currency Devaluation
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The country’s high inflation — currently around 60 percent a year — has also meant that the prices in bolívares that companies charge for many goods and services have risen sharply.
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Now companies are feeling the pain from a series of currency devaluations over the last year and a half. Photo
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No Big Deal - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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No Big Deal
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Basically, old-fashioned trade deals are a victim of their own success: there just isn’t much more protectionism to eliminate.
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Implicit protection of services — rules and regulations that have the effect of, say, blocking foreign competition in insurance — surely impose additional costs.
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To Lower Tariffs, Vietnam Pushes for Easing Trade Rules - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Europe generally requires what is known as a “double transformation” in goods for them to be considered made in a certain region. In the case of clothing, one step, or “transformation,” would be weaving yarn into a fabric. A second transformation would be assembling the fabric into a garment. The United States requires a “triple transformation” that extends back to the production of yarn from synthetic or natural fibers, like cotton.
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Lien Phat Ltd.'s factory,
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Its supplies are imported. “I mainly take orders from international corporations, who give us materials and designs,” said Truong Thi Thuy Lien, the owner of Lien Phat. “Usually the clients will designate us to certain suppliers, most of them are in China.”
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Arctic Shipping Soars, Led by Russia and Lured by Energy - 0 views
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Although the Arctic provides a shorter route around the world than the traditional course through warmer waters, it is not necessarily cheaper.
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The ships were expensive to build and operate,
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The first commercial Chinese vessel and first container ship to transit the NSR, the Yong Sheng, commissioned by state-owned Cosco shipping, arrived in Rotterdam on September 10 laden with steel and industrial machinery. Its 33-day journey from the Chinese port of Dailan was nine days and 2,800 nautical miles shorter than the conventional voyage through the Suez Canal
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Irish Charm With Germans Leads Nation Out of Bailout Wilderness - Bloomberg - 0 views
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Before the new government could go on the offensive, it needed to play defense. It fended off an attack on Ireland’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, the cornerstone of an economic policy that transformed Ireland from a financial backwater into a European hub for companies such as Pfizer Inc., the maker of Viagra, and Google Inc.
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Two days after commencing his premiership, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, 62, became embroiled in what he called a Gallic spat with French President Nicolas Sarkozy after refusing to raise the tax rate in return for an interest-rate cut on aid.
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“The attitude was: ‘You misbehaved and here’s what you have to do’,’”
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Midsize Cities in Poland Develop as Service Hubs for Outsourcing Industry - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Midsize Cities in Poland Develop as Service Hubs for Outsourcing Industry
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Part of Poland’s edge derives from the fact that it has yet to join the euro currency union. Its currency, the zloty, has been relatively stable against the world’s reserve currencies in the last year.
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(The public sector, employing about a quarter of Poland’s 15.7 million workers, is still the country’s largest source of jobs.)
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