Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

‘Employment Effects of International Trade’

Via Economist’s view: Mark Thoma writes:  This is a research summary from the NBER Digest. It discusses work from Autor, Dorn, Hanson, and Song that finds “Workers bear substantial costs as a result of the ‘shock’ of rising import competition”: Employment Effects of International Trade, by Claire Brunel, NBER Digest: In the past two decades, […]

Letter from an angry reader

From Stormy, who has written on global trade for over a decade, sends an e-mail on the discovery that we are losing competitive advantage: I find it absolutely stunning that the Yves post and MIT study below is considered big news. Four or five years ago, I saw the writing on the wall. Off-shoring, outsourcing…name […]

Innovation and production

 Yves Smith points to a MIT study on how much bigger the conversation should be than the political arguments of offshoring and outsourcing suggest.  And the complexities of applying ‘just in time’ sorts of global production systems through a complicated supply chain. From that post is this excerpt: And a new report by MIT on innovation […]

The Land Grabbers — the review

by David Zetland from Aguanomics The Land Grabbers — the review Fred Pearce sent me a review copy of his new book, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth, which I enjoyed very much for its detailed description of the pros and cons resulting from foreigners investing in land in developing countries. […]

The NY Times Is Misleading. And Who Is Correct? Eurostat or China Customs?

The NY Times Is Misleading. And Who Is Correct? Eurostat or China Customs? by Rebecca Wilder The NY Times reports quite a dire situation as regards the slump in the value of Chinese exports to the European Union in July: Data published this month showed that China’s exports to the European Union had sunk 16.2 percent […]

World Trade Turning Down

by Rebecca Wilder World Trade Turning Down Something different for today: world trade. Recently, South Korea and Taiwan released July 2012 trade statistics, where annual export growth was seen contracting at a 8.8% and 11.6% rate, respectively. The annual pace of export growth in Taiwan contracted for the fifth consecutive month, where that in South […]