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Europe risks 'significant' gas shortages this winter - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...2e-11e4-acd8-00144feab7de.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Europe risks ‘significant’ gas shortages this winter
  • Eastern European nations are working on ambitious plans to develop terminals to import liquefied natural gas but these will not be ready by the winter.
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15
       
      Dubious, given that the danger is not gas deliveries through Ukraine, but Russian reductions in total supply in hopes of cowing the EU...
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  • Still, Europe is in a stronger position now than in 2009. Five years ago, 80 per cent of Russian gas was piped across Ukraine, whereas now less than 50 per cent takes that route, thanks to the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic sea.
  • Total executives have predicted that Russia will be the largest contributor to the group’s oil production by 2020.
  • Total has also indicated that it intends to increase its stake in Novatek, one of whose major shareholders, Gennady Timchenko, is on the US blacklist.
  • “Novatek is not subject to sanctions. So we work with Novatek as before and we will continue.”
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U.S. Offshore Wind Farm, Made in Europe - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-wind-farm-made-in-europe.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • On Germany’s coast, for example, an estimated $1.3 billion went into revitalizing ports and factories to serve the industry, creating about 10,000 jobs. But demand frequently drops off when projects stall, at times leaving factories in coastal towns like Cuxhaven, on Germany’s North Sea, sitting idle with hundreds of workers laid off.
  • But a major setback came around 2009, when G.E. decided to back away from the offshore wind business, saying it was still too expensive to compete with land-based wind power.
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Russia pressures Moldova and Ukraine ahead of signing of E.U. Association Agreement - T... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-90f6-3073c03746b1_story.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Russia pressures Moldova and Ukraine ahead of signing of E.U. Association Agreement
  • And in September, Russia declared that Moldovan wines did not meet Russian food-safety standards, removing access to a major export market for a key Moldovan industry. (Wines from pro-Russian autonomous regions of Moldova have been deemed safe for Russian palates, however.) Many Moldovans are convinced that the apples and grapes that grow on their nation’s gently rolling hills are the next targets. Russia is their main export market, and E.U. regulations will keep most of the fruits out of Europe even after the agreement is signed
  • Overall, 26 percent of Moldova’s exports go to Russia and 47 percent to the E.U.
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  • As of mid-April, Moldovans can travel visa-free to the E.U. Transnistria residents who have Moldovan passports also will benefit.
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Learning about global value chains by looking beyond official trade data: Part 1 | vox - 0 views

www.voxeu.org/...ond-official-trade-data-part-1
shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Gross trade accounting: A transparent method to discover global value chain-related information behind official trade data: Part 1
  • With the rapid increase in intermediate trade flows, trade economists and policymakers have reached a near consensus that official trade statistics based on gross terms are deficient, often hiding the extent of global value chains. There is also widespread recognition among the official international statistics agencies that fragmentation of global production requires a new approach to measure trade, in particular the need to measure trade in value-added. This led the WTO and the OECD to launch a joint “Measuring Trade in Value-Added” initiative on 15 March 2012, which is designed to mainstream the production of trade in value-added statistics and make them a permanent part of the statistical landscape.
  • All the estimation methods used in recent efforts to measure trade in value-added are rooted in Leontief (1936). His work demonstrated that the amount and type of intermediate inputs needed in the production of one unit of output can be estimated based on the input-output structures across countries and industries.
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  • If one is only interested in estimating the domestic value-added embedded in a country’s or sector’s gross exports, applying Leontief’s insight is sufficient. However, for many economic and policy applications, one also needs to quantify other components in gross exports and their structures. In such circumstances Leontief’s original insight is not sufficient, as it does not provide a way to decompose intermediate trade flows across countries into various value-added terms according to their final absorption,
  • Our gross trade accounting framework in fact allows one to further decompose each of the four major parts of gross exports above into finer components with economic interpretations
  • By the gross statistics, presented in column 1 of Table 1, the trade is highly imbalanced – Chinese exports to the US ($176.9 billion in 2011) are five times that of US exports to China ($35.1 billion in 2011). If we separate exports of final goods and of intermediate goods (reported in columns 2a and 2b of Table 1), we see that most of the Chinese exports consist of final goods, whereas most of the US exports consist of intermediate goods.
  • In other words, the US exports rely overwhelmingly on its own value-added (only 2.1% from China and 5.8% from other countries in 2011), whereas the Chinese exports use more foreign value-added, especially value-added from third countries (with 3.2% from the US and 23.1% from Japan, Korea, and all other countries).
  • As a consequence of these differences in the structure of value-added composition, the China–US trade balance in this sector looks much smaller when computed in terms of domestic value-added than in terms of gross exports.
  • By identifying which parts of the official data are double counted and the sources of the double counting, our gross trade accounting method provides a transparent way to bridge official trade statistics (in gross terms) and national accounts (in value-added terms) consistent with the System of National Accounts standard.
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Educated in America: College graduates and high school dropouts | vox - 0 views

www.voxeu.org/...uates-and-high-school-dropouts
shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
  • Throughout the first half of the 20th century, each new cohort of Americans was more likely to graduate high school than the preceding one. This upward trend in secondary education increased worker productivity and fueled American economic growth (Goldin and Katz 2003)
  • Contrary to claims based on the official statistics, we find no evidence of convergence in minority-majority graduation rates over the past 35 years. (4) Exclusion of incarcerated populations from the official statistics greatly biases the reported high school graduation rate for blacks.
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  • The graduation rate issued by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) – widely regarded as the official rate – shows that U.S. students responded to the increasing demand for skill by completing high school at increasingly higher rates. By this measure, U.S. schools now graduate nearly 88 percent of students and black graduation rates have converged to those of non-Hispanic whites over the past four decades.
  • Depending on the data sources, definitions, and methods used, the U.S. graduation rate has been estimated to be anywhere from 66 to 88 percent in recent years—an astonishingly wide range for such a basic statistic. The range of estimated minority rates is even greater—from 50 to 85 percent.
  • After adjusting for multiple sources of bias and differences in sample construction, we establish that (1) the U.S. high school graduation rate peaked at around 80 percent in the late 1960s and then declined by 4-5 percentage points; (2) the actual high school graduation rate is substantially lower than the 88 percent official estimate; (3) about 65 percent of blacks and Hispanics leave school with a high school diploma and minority graduation rates are still substantially below the rates for non-Hispanic whites.
  • Heckman, Lochner, and Todd (2008) show that in recent decades, the internal rate of return to graduating high school compared to dropping out has increased dramatically and is now over 50 percent
  • These trends are for persons born in the United States and exclude immigrants. The recent growth in unskilled migration to the U.S. further increases the proportion of unskilled Americans in the workforce apart from the growth due to a rising high school dropout rate.
  • The most significant source of bias in the official statistics comes from including GED (General Educational Development) recipients as high school graduates.
  • A substantial body of scholarship summarised in Heckman and LaFontaine (2008) shows that the GED program does not benefit most participants, and that GEDs perform at the level of dropouts in the U.S. labour market.
  • Men now graduate from high school at significantly lower rates than women
  • A significant portion of the racial convergence reported in the official statistics is due to black males obtaining GED credentials in prison. Research by Tyler and Kling (2007) and Tyler and Lofstrom (2008) shows that, when released, prison GEDs earn at the same rate as non-prison GEDs, and the GED does not reduce recidivism.
  • Evidence suggests a powerful role of the family in shaping educational and adult outcomes. A growing proportion of American children are being raised in disadvantaged families.
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The Economist explains: Why airlines make such meagre profits | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...economist-explains-5
shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Why airlines make such meagre profits
  • In those six decades passenger kilometres (the number of flyers multiplied by the distance they travel) have gone from almost zero to more than 5 trillion a year. But though the industry has done much to connect the world, it has done little to line the pockets of the airlines themselves. Despite incredible growth, airlines have not come close to returning the cost of capital, with profit margins of less than 1% on average over that period. In 2012 they made profits of only $4 for every passenger carried. Why has a booming business failed to prosper?
  • Airlines were state-owned beasts in receipt of juicy handouts from state coffers. These “flag carriers” were regarded as important strategic businesses with monopoly powers that conferred national pride and international prestige. But they rapidly turned into bloated nationalised industries that regarded profit as a dirty word.
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  • Air travel was governed by inter-governmental deals that dictated which airlines could fly where, how many seats they could offer and, in many cases, what fares they could charge. The result was inefficiency and losses.
  • Low-cost carriers, such as SouthWest and Ryanair, introduced cut-throat rivalry on short-haul routes. Former flag-carriers struggled with the legacy of older fleets, large networks, uppity unionised workforces and vast pension liabilities. Low-cost carriers devastated their model of feeding short-haul passengers onto more lucrative long-haul services.
  • As well as stiff competition from their rivals, airlines face the problem that there is little competition in the industries that supply them. Two firms—Airbus and Boeing—provide the majority of the planes, and airports and air-traffic control are monopolies
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Arctic Shipping Soars, Led by Russia and Lured by Energy - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...c-shipping-soars-led-by-russia russia artic shipping
shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Although the Arctic provides a shorter route around the world than the traditional course through warmer waters, it is not necessarily cheaper.
  • The ships were expensive to build and operate,
  • 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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  • The Arctic Council's 2009 report estimated that the NSR offers from a 35 percent to 60 percent savings in distance for ships traveling between Europe and the Far East. Ships also can circumvent regional conflicts and the risk of piracy near the coast of Africa or in the Straits of Malacca off Malaysia.
  • Hiring charges for mandatory escort by Rosatomflot's icebreakers vary, but the average cost is about $200,000,
  • the cost of escort through the NSR is roughly equivalent to that of passage through the Suez Canal.
  • Because "container" shipping of goods, (as opposed to bulk shipping of raw commodities like ores and fuel), relies heavily on on-time delivery, Carmel thinks it unlikely the NSR ever will become a major pathway for this kind of global commerce.
  • primary focus on the 22 percent of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and natural gas resources to be found in the far north.
  • Just last month, Novatek signed a deal to supply China National Petroleum Corporation for 15 years with fuel sent from Yamal by tanker
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