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Gene Ellis

Hello, Young Workers: One Way to Reach the Top Is to Start There - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25scene.html

long-term effects of crisis

shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • is the mounting evidence produced by labor economists of just how important it is for current graduates to ignore the old-school advice of trying to get ahead by working one's way up the ladder. Instead, it seems, graduates should try to do exactly the thing the older generation bemoans — aim for the top.
  • starting at the bottom is a recipe for being underpaid for a long time to come.
  • A recent study, by the economists Philip Oreopoulos, Till Von Wachter and Andrew Heisz, "The Short- and Long-Term Career Effects of Graduating in a Recession" (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 12159, April 2006. http://www.columbia.edu/~vw2112/papers/nber_draft_1.pdf), finds that the setback in earnings for college students who graduate in a recession stays with them for the next 10 years.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • These data confirm that people essentially cannot close the wage gap by working their way up the company hierarchy.
Gene Ellis

At Anchor Off Lithuania, Its Own Energy Supply - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-for-energy-independence.html

gas Russia Lithuania

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The price of natural gas in Lithuania was 15 percent higher than the European average last year, according to the European Commission. Only Bulgaria, where Gazprom has a near monopoly, paid more. Gazprom also has an ownership stake in Lithuania’s natural gas distribution network. Part of Lithuania’s electrical infrastructure is still controlled from Moscow, too, and it is not yet possible to connect the country to the European grid.
  • Lithuania also does not use oil shale, which provides much of the electricity for Estonia, the third Baltic member of the European Union.
  • Lithuania used to rely on nuclear power to supply most of its electricity. But as a condition of joining the union in 2004, the country agreed to shut down its Chernobyl-style nuclear power station at Ignalina.
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  • Klaipedos Nafta, a state-controlled oil terminal operator, is leasing the ship, formally known as a floating gas storage and regasification unit, from a Norwegian company, Hoegh, in a 10-year deal for 430 million euros, or $560 million.
  • Lithuania would need to import L.N.G. at prices 5 to 10 percent less than Gazprom charges for its gas to ensure the project breaks even; Lithuanian officials said the price of L.N.G. imports could be as much as 20 percent less than Gazprom charges.
  • “We will be able for the first time in our history to negotiate, because we have alternative sources,”
  • But Mr. Masiulis said his greatest challenge was overcoming the Lithuanian bureaucracy and fending off attempts to give the project “a shade of corruption.”
Gene Ellis

BBC News - Battle of the knowledge superpowers - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...education-14949538

knowledge

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Instead of basking in the reflected glory of a prize winner funded by European grants, she said she had to listen to a speech attacking the red-tape and bureaucracy - and "generally embarrassing the hell out of me".
  • But the knowledge economy does not always scatter its seed widely. When the US is talked about as an innovation powerhouse, much of this activity is based in narrow strips on the east and west coasts. A map of Europe measuring the number of patent applications shows a similar pattern - with high concentrations in pockets of England, France, Germany and Finland.
  • Jan Muehlfeit, chairman of Microsoft Europe, explained what was profoundly different about these new digital industries - that they expand at a speed and scale that would have been impossible in the traditional manufacturing industries. Governments trying to respond to such quicksilver businesses needed to ensure that young people were well-educated, creative and adaptable, he said.
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  • There were 11 million jobs lost, half of them in the United States, and with low-skilled workers and manufacturing the hardest hit.
  • From a standing start, China now has 12% of graduates in the world's big economies - approaching the share of the UK, Germany and France put together. The incumbent superpower, the United States, still towers above with 26% of the graduates.
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Gene Ellis

Talking Troubled Turkey - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-talking-troubled-turkey.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Talking Troubled Turkey
  • probably because most countries placed restrictions on cross-border capital flows, so that international borrowing and lending were limited.
  • a bigger version of the same story unfolded in Asia: Huge money inflows followed by a sudden stop and economic implosion.
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  • And the same forces that sent money sloshing into Turkey also make the world economy as a whole highly vulnerable.
  • If this is a good description of our situation, and I believe it is, we now have a world economy destined to seesaw between bubbles and depression
Gene Ellis

Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System - 0 views

www.bls.gov/soc

shared by Gene Ellis on 03 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Standard Occupational Classification FONT SIZE: PRINT: SOC Standard Occupational Classification SOC Homepage 2018 SOC Revision Process 2010 SOC System Search 2010 SOC Materials Contact SOC SHARE ON:
Gene Ellis

A Mafia Legacy Taints the Earth in Southern Italy - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...italy-a-deadly-mob-legacy.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 30 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • A Mafia Legacy Taints the Earth in Southern Italy
  • Camorra
  • One environmental group estimates that 10 million tons of toxic garbage has been illegally buried here since the early 1990s, earning billions of dollars for the mafia even as toxic substances leached into the soil and the water table.
Gene Ellis

American trade policy: How to make the world $600 billion poorer | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...pensive-mistake-how-make-world

american trade policy

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • American trade policy How to make the world $600 billion poorer
  • Reasonable estimates say that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could boost the world’s annual output by $600 billion—equivalent to adding another Saudi Arabia. Some $200 billion of that would accrue to America.
  • And the actual gains could be even larger. The agreements would clear the way for freer trade in services, which account for most of rich countries’ GDP but only a small share of trade. Opening up trade in services could help reduce the cost of everything from shipping to banking, education and health care. Exposing professional occupations to the same global competition that factory workers have faced for decades could even strike a blow against the income inequality that Mr Obama so often decries
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  • Why should Japanese politicians risk infuriating their farmers when any agreement can be torn up on Capitol Hill?
  • Europe’s leaders will now doubt America’s commitment, given how feebly Mr Obama has fought for fast-track. Trade sceptics, such as French farmers, are drooling. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who is already furious about American spying, may decide that a trade deal is not worth battling for.
  • He seldom mentions, for example, that cheap imports help the poor by cutting their shopping bills, and so reduce inequality of consumption.
Gene Ellis

John Boehner's misleading argument on natural gas and Ukraine - 0 views

knowmore.washingtonpost.com/...-connect-the-internet-globally

shared by Gene Ellis on 06 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The actual underwater cables that connect the Internet globally
Gene Ellis

Our Schumpeter columnist: What exactly is an entrepreneur? | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...our-schumpeter-columnist

shared by Gene Ellis on 07 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • What exactly is an entrepreneur?
  • Schumpeterians distinguish between “replicative” entrepreneurs (who set up small businesses much like other small businesses) and “innovative” entrepreneurs (who upset and disorganise the existing way of doing things). They also distinguish between “small businesses” and “high-growth businesses” (most small businesses stay small). Both sorts have an important role in a successful economy
  • In a new paper Magnus Henrekson and Tino Sanandaji argue that the number of self-made billionaires a country produces provides a much better measure of its entrepreneurial vigour than the number of small businesses.
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  • Countries with a lot of small companies are often stagnant
  • Who are the Schumpeterian entrepreneurs who dominate the modern economy? And how do you create more of them?
  • The bulk of American entrepreneurs come from just three clusters: Boston, New York and Silicon Valley.
  • Schumpeterian entrepreneurship is all about innovation and ambition to turn small businesses into big ones.
Gene Ellis

Young and Educated in Europe, but Desperate for Jobs - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...h-unemployement-in-europe.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Young and Educated in Europe, but Desperate for Jobs
  • It is not that Europe will never recover, but that the era of recession and austerity has persisted for so long that new growth, when it comes, will be enjoyed by the next generation, leaving this one out.
  • She spent two years bouncing between short-term contracts, which employers have sharply increased during the crisis to cut costs and avoid the expensive labor protections granted to permanent employees.
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  • In some countries, especially those with the highest youth unemployment rates, short-term contracts are nothing more than opportunities for employers to take advantage of the weak labor market.
  • But because of her work hours, she still does not qualify for the Netherlands’ monthly minimum wage of €1,477 (about $2,000), and her new career was a long way from where she had always hoped to end up.
  • An estimated 100,000 university graduates have left Spain, and hundreds of thousands more from Europe’s crisis-hit countries have gone to Germany, Britain, and the Nordic states for jobs in engineering, science and medicine. Many others have gone farther afield to Australia, Canada and the United States.
Gene Ellis

Postal Service Reports Improved $5 Billion Loss - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-service-trims-its-losses.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Postal Service Reports Improved $5 Billion Loss
  • It attributed the net loss mostly to a 2006 law that requires it to pay $5.5 billion annually into a health fund for its future retirees.
  • As a result of its financial troubles, the agency has defaulted on three annual payments into the fund. It has also exhausted its $15 billion borrowing limit from the Treasury Department. More recently the agency has asked for permission to
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  • raise its postage prices to help cover costs.
Gene Ellis

My grovelling apology to Herr Schäuble - Telegraph Blogs - 0 views

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/...lling-apology-to-herr-schauble

shared by Gene Ellis on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • It was unconscionable of me to say that Germany has locked in a semi-permanent trade advantage over Club Med, or for saying that the trying to close this gap by imposing deflation on the South is impossible because this will play havoc with debt dynamics.
Gene Ellis

Green growth is a worthwhile goal - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...e1-11e3-96f5-00144feabdc0.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 30 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Green growth is a worthwhile goal
  • A particularly important aspect of that uncertainty is tipping points
  • It is irrational to play in the climate casino without seeking to eliminate worst-case outcomes
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  • Externalities do not fix themselves. In the absence of effective individual property rights they require government action, in this case the action of close to 200 governments.
  • Why should they do this? The answer is: because a low-carbon atmosphere is a global public good.
  • It is by now impossible to be optimistic that anything like this will happen. This is partly because the needed agreement must be long-term and global. That, in turn, raises difficult questions of intragenerational and intergenerational equity.
  • Suppose that, despite all the logic, it proves impossible to achieve a relevant global agreement. Does it make sense for any country or group of countries to take determined action on their own? If the aim is to deal with climate change, the answer is: absolutely not, unless the countries are China or the US.
  • But it might be possible for a country to demonstrate proof of concept:
Gene Ellis

EZ crisis and historical trilemmas | vox - 0 views

www.voxeu.org/...risis-and-historical-trilemmas

shared by Gene Ellis on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The big difference in the EZ is that nations cannot go off the euro as they went off the gold standard
  • A major part of Lenin’s analysis, for instance, was devoted to the demonstration that Russia had become a quasi-colony as a result of the large scale capital imports, and that the foreign creditors in effect controlled Russia’s foreign policy.
  • The linkages of these issues can be summarized as a series of impossible trinities or trilemmas.
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  • The move in Europe to monetary union for weaker countries was a credibility enhancing mechanism that would lower borrowing costs. For countries that had strong creditor positions, the attractions of monetary union lay in the depoliticizing of the adjustment process (James 2012). The Eurozone worked quite well as a disciplining mechanism before it entered into effect, but much less well afterwards.
  • Banking expanded after the establishment of the euro (Shin 2012). No adequate provision on a European basis existed for banking supervision and regulation, which like fiscal policy, was left to rather diverse national authorities. An explosion of banking activity occurred simultaneously with the transition to monetary union and may well have been stimulated by the new single money.
  • The implicit national government backstop was really only credible because of the international commitment to the European integration project. It was that commitment that led markets to believe that – in spite of the no bailout provisions of the Maastricht Treaty – there were almost no limits to the amount to which debt levels could accumulate both in the private and the public sector.
  • When the democratic/popular backlash occurs, it takes the form of rejection of international/cross-border political commitment mechanism.
  • Opinion poll data shows a major increase in hostility to the EU in peripheral countries, but with no corresponding unpopularity of the common currency.
Gene Ellis

Are Germans really poorer than Spaniards, Italians and Greeks? | vox - 0 views

www.voxeu.org/...-spaniards-italians-and-greeks

shared by Gene Ellis on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • From this survey it appeared that the median German household had the lowest wealth of all Eurozone countries
  • 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.
  • mean net wealth of households
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  • A comparison of the median and mean wealth reveals something about the distribution of wealth in each country. If the largest difference is between the mean and the median, the greater is the inequality in the distribution of wealth.
  • In Germany the mean household wealth is almost four times larger than the median.
  • In most other countries this ratio is between 1.5 and 2.
  • We find that in Germany the median household in the top 20% of the income class has 74 times more wealth than the median household in the bottom 20% of the income class. Judged by this criterion Germany has the most unequal distribution of wealth in the Eurozone.
  • Wealth per capita is more than twice as high in northern European countries than in southern countries such as Greece and Portugal.
  • The facts are that Germany is significantly richer than southern Eurozone countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal. There does seem to be a problem of the distribution of wealth in Germany: First, wealth in Germany is highly concentrated in the upper part of the household-income distribution. Second, a large part of German wealth is not held by households and therefore must be held by the corporate sector or the government.
Gene Ellis

Tunisia's Government Mortgages Economic Future - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...onomy-crisis-foreign-debt.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The average cost of Tunisia's external debt is nearly 4%, and is mainly denominated in euros and US dollars.
  • Today, Tunisia’s situation under the troika comes down to the fact that the country is borrowing to consume and not to invest.
  • Another fact that will render paying off the debt more difficult is that the redeemable portion of the foreign debt within 10 to 20 years or more is 81.3 % of all loans taken from abroad.
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  • But where has the money gone? The answer is not difficult to guess. The debts were neither used for investment nor infrastructure or the creation of job opportunities. Instead, they were partly spent on reabsorbing the trade deficit and artificially replenishing reserve currencies.
  • This plan of action has been negative at all levels, to the extent that international financial institutions have already cut off their monetary support to Tunisia.
Gene Ellis

Optimism about an end to the euro crisis is wrong - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...9a-11e3-86ef-00144feab7de.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Adjustment is the key to ending the eurozone crisis. The optimists are saying that this process of regaining competitiveness is now taking place.
  • This judgment is profoundly wrong.
  • In other words, the eurozone is adjusting at the expense of the rest of the world.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But while the eurozone is a fixed-currency regime internally, it is nothing of the sort externally. The currency does exactly what textbooks say it should: it keeps on rising, thus offsetting the improvements in the current account. Last week the euro rose to more than $1.38 against the dollar.
  • The main problem with the rise in the euro’s external value is that it makes the internal adjustment harder. The crisis countries need to lower their export prices but the higher value of the euro raises the prices of exports to outside the eurozone.
  • It essentially says internal adjustment is not really happening.
  • Second, the prices of Spanish tradeable goods would have to fall against those of non-Spanish tradeable goods elsewhere in the eurozone.
  • Put bluntly: the scale of necessary adjustment is absolutely enormous. The IMF does not believe that this is going to happen.
  • In a monetary union adjustment is hard without any transfers and without a fiscal union.
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