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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)

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

Bennett Model helped pioneer the exporting of garments from China in 1975, the year before Mao Zedong died,

Western executives are checking on potential new suppliers in southern Vietnam, central Cambodia and the hinterlands of Java in Indonesia.

Intel to downsize Costa Rica operations, several media sources report

Intel reportedly plans to move its manufacturing operation to Asia and lay off 1,500 employees, according to “well-placed” sources in the company, reported the newspaper El Financiero.

Microprocessors are Costa Rica’s primary export. Over 20 percent of Costa Rica’s exports in 2013 were microprocessors, worth some $2.4 billion, according to statistics from the Foreign Trade Ministry (COMEX).

But an equally alarming source of the decline, both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Vidal said, is the explosive increase in American farmland planted in soybean and corn genetically modified to tolerate herbicides. The American Midwest’s corn belt is a critical feeding ground for monarchs, which once found a ready source of milkweed growing between the rows of millions of acres of soybean and corn. But the ubiquitous use of herbicide-tolerant crops has enabled farmers to wipe out the milkweed, and with it much of the butterflies’ food supply.

The clothing needs to be labeled correctly so that it travels smoothly through a large retailer’s distribution centers

The process requires formidable numbers of skilled workers who can oversee quality control as well as labeling and shipping of garments.

The strategic technologies that have repeatedly transformed the market economy – from railroads to the Internet – required the construction of networks whose value in use could not be known when they were first deployed.

Consequently, innovation at the frontier depends on funding sources that are decoupled from concern for economic value;

Financial speculation has been, and remains, one required source of funding. Financial bubbles emerge wherever liquid asset markets exist. Indeed, the objects of such speculation astound the imagination: tulip bulbs, gold and silver mines, real estate, the debt of new nations, corporate securities.

making it the only variety in existence to produce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice.”

And they have motivated similar attacks on trials of other genetically modified crops in recent years: grapes designed to fight off a deadly virus in France, wheat designed to have a lower glycemic index in Australia, sugar beets in Oregon designed to tolerate a herbicide, to name a few.

Not owned by any company, Golden Rice is being developed by a nonprofit group called the International Rice Research Institute with the aim of providing a new source of vitamin A to people both in the Philippines, where most households get most of their calories from rice,

The Tacit-Knowledge Economy

A European Energy Executive’s Delicate Dance Over Ukraine

Major Western oil companies like BP and Exxon Mobil have extensive exploration deals in Russia that they fear could be jeopardized if the United States and European Union impose stiffer sanctions on the Putin regime.

“This is by far the toughest time for European energy security that I have seen,” said Mr. Scaroni. “This issue might stop the supply of Russian gas.”

Now, the large 82.8% German government debt to GDP ratio is a source of shame for many because Germany was a driving force in enshrining the 60% government debt to GDP hurdle into the Maastricht Treaty that set out terms for the euro zone.

European Debt Crisis Navigator A list of resources from around the Web about the European debt crisis as selected by Journalist's Resource, a project of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard.

The Eurozone Crisis: How Banks and Sovereigns Came to Be Joined at the Hip International Monetary Fund, November 2011

Most European leaders have nothing against using the central bank's reserves as a source of financing, as became evident at the Cannes summit. Important politicians like European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and French President Sarkozy proposed making IMF "special drawing rights" available

It appears that the euro crisis is approaching its endgame. Many promises made when the common currency was introduced have already been broken. The initial stipulation that only stable countries be allowed in, for example, quickly proved illusory once Italy and Greece were accepted.

German taxpayers were also promised that they would never be held liable for the debts of other countries in the euro zone. But then came the first and second bailout packages for Greece and the European bailout fund.

Its full name is more than a mouthful. Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement System is better known as TARGET2 for short. It is the behind-the-scene payments system that conveniently enables citizens across the euro area to settle electronic transactions in euro. And at just over €500 billion, its TARGET2 claim on the Eurosystem is also the largest and fastest growing item on the Bundesbank’s balance sheet, as well as a source of much misunderstanding and debate.

The allocation of TARGET2 balances among the seventeen national central banks, which together with the ECB make up the Eurosystem, reflects where the market allocates the money created by the ECB. The fact that the Bundesbank has a large TARGET2 claim (asset) on the Eurosystem, while national central banks in southern Europe and Ireland together have an equally large TARGET2 liability, simply reflects that a lot of the ECB’s newly created money has ended up in Germany. Why? Because of capital flight.

Since the euro eliminated exchange rate risk among its member states, Germany has invested a substantial portion of its savings in Europe’s current account deficit countries. Some of those savings are now returning home. That’s the capital flight.

As a result, technocrat prime minister Mario Monti is considering cutting back on public holidays in a bid to increase growth after officials said even slashing days off by a working week would boost growth and raise GDP by as much as 1%.

Italy has a total of 11 recognised public holidays a year but unlike Britain these remain fixed and if they fall mid-week people traditionally take the days off either side as well in order to ''make a bridge'' until the weekend, which has drastic consequences on industrial output.

Sources say the Government will keep the ''main religious festivals such as Easter and Christmas'' but are looking at scrapping some of the secondary ones such as Boxing Day, Epiphany on January 6th and the Immaculate Conception on December 8th.

he world is now using a record amount of oil even though Europe and the United States are paring back.

Unless the factory captures the carbon dioxide created during the process of turning coal into diesel fuel, the global warming impact of driving a mile would double.

“Pretty much every human on earth can access all human knowledge,” said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist.

o how to measure the Internet’s contribution to our lives? A few years ago, Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago and Peter J. Klenow of Stanford gave it a shot. They estimated that the value consumers gained from the Internet amounted to about 2 percent of their income — an order of magnitude larger than what they spent to go online. Their trick was to measure not only how much money users spent on access but also how much of their leisure time they spent online.