Attention Economy


Sunday, February 28, 2021

The Pandemic’s Uneven Impact on Workers

They Were on Equal Footing. Then the Ground Shifted.
A year of pandemic restrictions has meant some friends are flush and others foundering.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/business/economy/unequal-economic-recovery.html
 
Pay Cuts, Taxes, Child Care: What Another Year of Remote Work Will Look Like
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pay-cuts-taxes-child-care-what-another-year-of-remote-work-will-look-like-11614508201 

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Saturday, February 27, 2021

Weekend Readings - 2/27/21

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India - Long-Term Economic Challenges and Growth Prospects

India’s Primary Economic Challenge: OVERREGULATION
https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey/doc/vol1chapter/echap06_vol1.pdf
“International comparisons show that the problems of India’s administrative processes derive less from lack of compliance to processes or regulatory standards, but from overregulation.
In this chapter, the issue of over-regulation is illustrated through a study of time and procedures taken for a company to undergo voluntary liquidation in India. Even when there is no dispute/ litigation and all paperwork is complete, it takes 1570 days to be stuck off from the records. This is an order of magnitude longer than what it takes in other countries”.

India’s farm sector reforms are a pathbreaking step forward
https://www.indiaglobalbusiness.com/the-big-story/indias-farm-sector-reforms-are-a-pathbreaking-step-forward
 
India offers investors golden chance to build the world’s classroom
 
India still has a few advantages –
Innovation: Trending Up but Needs Thrust, Especially from the Private Sector
https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey/doc/vol1chapter/echap08_vol1.pdf
 
How Did India Manage to Build an Advanced Fighter Jet Like the Tejas?
When it comes to sensitive industries like defense, democracy and the rule of law do matter.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/24/india-tejas-advanced-fighter-jet-defense-industry-intellectual-property-china/ 

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Asset Bubbles and Financial Stability

 


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The Need for Common Sense When Evaluating Covid-19 Risks

5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/how-public-health-messaging-backfired/618147/
“The problem is not that the good news isn’t being reported, or that we should throw caution to the wind just yet. It’s that neither the reporting nor the public-health messaging has reflected the truly amazing reality of these vaccines. There is nothing wrong with realism and caution, but effective communication requires a sense of proportion—distinguishing between due alarm and alarmism; warranted, measured caution and doombait; worst-case scenarios and claims of impending catastrophe. We need to be able to celebrate profoundly positive news while noting the work that still lies ahead. However, instead of balanced optimism since the launch of the vaccines, the public has been offered a lot of misguided fretting over new virus variants, subjected to misleading debates about the inferiority of certain vaccines, and presented with long lists of things vaccinated people still cannot do, while media outlets wonder whether the pandemic will ever end”.
 
Stop Worrying About Extremely Unlikely Covid Risks
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-24/can-you-get-covid-after-the-vaccine-officials-should-emphasize-optimism
Faye Flam notes:
It’s true that even 95% vaccine efficacy means a few people might still get the disease post-vaccination — and some might get a silent case and give it to someone else — but the vaccine is proving close to 100% effective at preventing the most severe and deadly cases. And as more people get vaccinated, incidence of the disease should plunge even lower. The risks will plunge with it.
 
Catching COVID from surfaces is very unlikely. So perhaps we can ease up on the disinfecting.
https://theconversation.com/catching-covid-from-surfaces-is-very-unlikely-so-perhaps-we-can-ease-up-on-the-disinfecting-155359  

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Friday, February 26, 2021

The Fed versus the Bond Market

The Fed is on a collision course with the $20 trillion Treasury market
https://qz.com/1977815/will-a-tantrum-in-the-treasury-bonds-force-the-fed-to-step-in/
 
Powell Is Patient but Markets Aren’t, Challenging New Fed Policy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-25/powell-is-patient-but-markets-aren-t-challenging-new-fed-policy 

The return of the bond vigilantes [restricted access]
https://www.ft.com/content/542d6127-11e7-47ff-86cb-dd7bd974cda3


Past Outperformance of Bonds (unlikely to be repeated over the coming decade):
Bonds Beat Stocks Over the Last 20 Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/business/bonds-beat-stocks-over-20-years.html

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Celebrating British Countryside


Related:

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A Forum for Top Economists

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What if America Actually Had Free Markets?

How to Get Really Rich!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/inequality-medicine-law.html
An unusually sarcastic David Brooks notes:
“My main message is that if you want to get rich, don’t invent a new and useful product, start a company and try to sell it. That seems risky. Put the effort into entering a clubby line of work in which legislators and professional associations are working to make you rich. It’s easier!
The only problem would be if legislators undo rules that make the rich richer. For example, in California this week, the Berkeley City Council began dismantling the single-family zoning restrictions that keep the housing market tight. If that sort of thing continues, only people who win free and fair competitions will get rich. That’s not the American way!”
 
Related:
To make capitalism more attractive, policymakers must emphasize pro-market (not pro-business) policies.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/513956-to-make-capitalism-more-attractive-policymakers-must-emphasize-pro-market-not 

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The US Stimulus Debate - Will the Economy Overheat?


Emerging Signs of Supply Constraints:

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Thursday, February 25, 2021

Inequality and Consumption Patterns

$350,000 a Year, and Just Getting By
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/why-financial-confessionals-viral/600358/
Financial confessionals reveal that income inequality and geographic inequality have normalized absurd spending patterns. 

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A Great Pandemic Science Mystery

Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others? By Siddhartha Mukherjee
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem-to-be-hitting-some-countries-harder-than-others
While the virus has ravaged rich nations, reported death rates in poorer ones remain relatively low. What probing this epidemiological mystery can tell us about global health.

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The Reopening Trade is in Full Swing but Longer-Term Challenges Remain


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The Bitcoin-ARK-Tesla Connection

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Post-Pandemic Economic Trends and Policy Challenges

My Take: The economic trends that will create post-pandemic policy challenges

Future Returns: Why Investors Shouldn’t Tune Out to Inflation


Inflation - Is This Time Different?



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Frequency of Extreme Weather Events

Thomas Friedman notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/opinion/us-politics-texas-mars.html
“Although it is still too early to say for sure, the Texas freeze fits a recent pattern of increasingly destructive “global weirding.” I much prefer that term over “climate change” or “global warming.” Because what happens as average global temperatures rise, ice melts, jet streams shift and the climate changes is that the weather gets weird. The hots get hotter, the colds get colder, the wets get wetter, the dries get drier and the most violent storms get more frequent. Those once-in-100-years floods, droughts, heat waves or deep freezes start to happen every few years. That’s how we will experience climate change”. 

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Tuesday, February 23, 2021

How Public Universities Became So Expensive

 

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Negative Convexity and Bond Yields

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Worker Retraining and Skills Trade

With millions looking for work, stigmas create a dearth of skilled tradespeople


My Take:
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/540133-the-economic-trends-that-will-create-post-pandemic-policy-challenges
Long-term labor market challenges cannot be addressed by temporarily overheating the economy. We need to rethink our basic approach to worker training and provide direct support to those willing to undertake skill retraining/upgrading (there is currently a large-scale shortage of skilled tradespeople in the U.S. that is not being addressed). Policies aimed at encouraging every high school graduate to attend four-year colleges, regardless of their personal preferences/interests or academic preparedness, will prove to be counterproductive and lead to both grade and degree inflation. Creating German-style apprenticeship programs may offer a valuable alternative track for high school graduates.
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Do Central Bank Officials Have Access to Superior Economic Info?

Powell to lawmakers: Economic recovery still has a long way to go
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/02/23/powell-senate-stimulus/
 
It does not make sense in 2021 to assume that the Federal Reserve has access to better or superior information about underlying economic conditions. Frankly, real-time analysis and access to big data provide interested private parties with better access to information regarding short-term macroeconomic developments. Official pronouncements by central bankers no longer offer superior info on current economic conditions. See for instance:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-23/alternative-data-show-japan-leads-recovery-u-k-lags-chart

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Stock Markets and Bond Markets - Recent Developments

How Much Do Central Banks Fear the Bond Toddler?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-23/how-much-do-central-banks-fear-the-bond-toddler
 
Investors Are Too Exuberant
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-23/investors-are-too-exuberant
Great advice from Jared Dillian:
“The stock market is a game of “early bird,” in that if you buy before everyone else and sell before everyone else, you will generally make money -- aside from the stock market’s function of capital allocation and price discovery. Buying before everyone else usually means buying when a trade makes little to no sense or when the prospects of an idea are the bleakest. A good example is energy stocks back when oil prices briefly went negative last year. That turned out to be a great time to buy energy stocks, and all commodities generally. You also have to sell before everyone else, which usually means selling right when the bullish thesis is at its most compelling, which is at the highs”. 

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Significance of Good Ventilation – Lessons from History

We’re Just Rediscovering a 19th-Century Pandemic Strategy
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/bad-air/618106/ 
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Monday, February 22, 2021

Signs of Rising Inflation


What the Bond Market Is Telling Us About the Biden Economy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/upshot/inflation-interest-rates-biden.html

Related:
The Money Boom Is Already Here
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-money-boom-is-already-here-11613944730 

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Pandemic Dents College Attendance


Related:

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Energy Consumption and Bitcoin Mining

Tesla's vow to promote sustainable energy undermined by cryptocurrency purchase
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Elon-Musk-is-the-Bitcoin-buying-hypocrite-we-deserve 

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Sunday, February 21, 2021

Macroeconomics is Essential


Related:
Post-Crisis Lessons for Macroeconomists
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-17/fixing-macroeconomics-will-be-really-hard
Noah Smith notes:
“If macroeconomists heed Blanchard and Summers’ advice, they will have to do harder math, and they will find better data to test their models. But their challenges won’t end there. If the economy can linger in a good or bad state for a long time, it’s almost certainly a chaotic system. Researchers have known for decades that unstable economies are very hard to work with or predict. In the past, economists have simply ignored this unsettling possibility and chosen to focus on models with only one possible long-term outcome. But if Blanchard and Summers are any indication, the Great Recession might mean that’s no longer an option.”

Blanchard and Summers on the future of Macroeconomics:
https://piie.com/system/files/documents/0-blanchard20171012ppt.pdf

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What Went Wrong in Texas?


Texas Is a Rich State in a Rich Country, and Look What Happened
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/texas-climate-change.html


The Market for Avocados versus the Market for Kilowatt-hours
Paul Krugman’s interesting take –
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/texas-electricity-storm.html
“Texas energy policy was based on the idea that you can treat electricity like avocados. Do people remember the great avocado shortage of 2019? Surging demand and a bad crop in California led to spiking prices; but nobody called for a special inquest and new regulations on avocado producers. …
But kilowatt-hours aren’t avocados, and there are at least three big reasons pretending that they are is a recipe for disaster” 

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Get Ready for a Post-Pandemic Economic Boom

On the Post-Pandemic Horizon, Could That Be … a Boom?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/business/economy/pandemic-economic-boom.html 
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India - Economic and Financial Developments

India's prosperity must not become hostage to European climate agenda
So-called border tax adjustments are really just a new generation of tariffs
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/India-s-prosperity-must-not-become-hostage-to-European-climate-agenda

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Saturday, February 20, 2021

Stock Market Bubbles - Interesting Insights

Bubble Warnings Go Unheeded as Everyone Is a Buyer in Stocks
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-20/bubble-warnings-go-unheeded-as-everyone-is-a-buyer-in-stocks
““It’s been truly amazing,” said Brian Culpepper, a money manager at James Investment Research. “Everyone just thinks the stock market is going to go, go, go,” he added. “Whether it’s herd mentality, or fear of being left behind, that’s what you’re seeing.”
Dated from the last bear-market bottom, the boom cycle is young -- 11 months, versus five years for the median bull market. But its velocity makes up for the age. The S&P 500’s current peak-to-trough gain already eclipses three other full bull markets. If history is any guide, this one is likely more than half done as the median return of the 13 previous bull cycles was 126%”.
 
Tech Valuations Are Getting Scary. Here’s How We Know.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tech-stocks-look-too-pricey-and-wall-street-analysts-dont-seem-to-care-51613782764 

Hey, GameStop Traders, Buying to Push the Price Doesn’t Work
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/hey-gamestop-traders-buying-to-push-the-price-doesn-t-work
“The investment newbies who lost money speculating on GameStop Corp. shares made a classic mistake: They tried to push up the share price through their own purchases.
That did not work and never has, says Lasse Pedersen, a finance professor at Copenhagen Business School and a principal at AQR Capital Management, the big Greenwich, Conn.-based investment manager. He spoke in his academic capacity on Feb. 19 in a webinar hosted by Princeton University economist Markus Brunnermeier.
By buying shares to make them go up, you’re acquiring them at steadily higher prices. When you start to sell and your selling inevitably pushes the shares back down, your average sales price will be lower than your average purchase price, which is a long way of saying you will lose money, Pedersen said”.


Related:
Inflation Problems Depend on Where You Look for Them
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-depends-on-where-you-look-for-it-11613903414
If the Fed’s low interest rates lead to trouble, the reason might be climbing asset prices rather than consumer prices


If yields rise more quickly and unpredictably than expected, that would be disruptive to assets like shares, many analysts say.

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Pandemic's Uneven Impact on Higher Education

Interest Surges in Top Colleges, While Struggling Ones Scrape for Applicants
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/colleges-covid-applicants.html
“The nation’s most-selective four-year institutions, both public and private, saw a record-breaking 17 percent increase in applications this year, according to the Common App. Small liberal arts schools felt a boon, with applications to Haverford and Swarthmore increasing by 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively. So did large state schools like the University of California, Los Angeles, where freshman applications increased 28 percent.
Applications to the primary campus at Penn State, a Big Ten School, increased by 11 percent. Harvard saw a whopping 42 percent spike, while Colgate University in upstate New York received 103 percent more applications.
But smaller or less recognizable institutions, both public and private, saw precipitous declines”.
 
Related:
Does US higher education need fundamental reforms to survive and thrive?
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/534350-does-us-higher-education-need-fundamental-reforms-to-survive-and-thrive
Is there an economic case for saving regional public universities and mid-tier private colleges?
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/527722-is-there-an-economic-case-for-saving-regional-public-universities-and-mid
The COVID-19 shock may fundamentally alter the economics of private colleges
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/509101-the-covid-19-shock-may-fundamentally-alter-the-economics-of-private 

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Big Tech Dominates Silicon Valley

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The Boredom Economy

The Boredom Economy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/business/gamestop-investing-economy.html
The pandemic is terrible. It can also be tedious. And that tedium is shaping what people buy and how productive they are. 

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Friday, February 19, 2021

What is the Real Unemployment Rate?

The United States has not had reliable data during the pandemic to answer a very basic question: How many Americans are out of work?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/19/how-many-americans-unemployed/ 

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The Myth of the Himalayas

Himalaya: A Human History


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Do Stock Prices Reflect True Value? The Case of Disney

Disney took a hit during the pandemic. You wouldn’t know it from its stock price.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/19/disney-stock-price-pandemic/
Is the market overly optimistic? Or does it know the future better than we do? 

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Regime Changes in Macroeconomic Policymaking

Fretting About Inflation May Be Just the Cure We Need
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-18/larry-summers-s-inflation-fuss-is-the-cure-we-need
Noah Smith notes:
“Since 1980, federal debt has been on a rising path, but there were always political factors restraining it from growing too quickly. Though Republicans were willing to borrow to fund tax cuts under GOP presidents, they reliably turned into deficit scolds when a Democrat was in the White House. Democrats, in contrast, seemed generally biased toward restraining spending — Clinton balanced the budget in the 90s, and Obama was much more instinctively deficit-hawkish than people realize. This asymmetric, uneasy partisan equilibrium served to restrain the growth of debt somewhat.
But what if that’s all over? Democrats, perhaps realizing that an equilibrium in which only Democratic presidents are deficits hawks favors the GOP, have been signaling that they no longer worry about deficits nearly as much as they used to. Ideas like Modern Monetary Theory — which strongly downplays the risk of government debt — have grown in popularity on the political left. Meanwhile, even as debt has risen, popular concern about it has fallen”. 

In defense of concerns over the $1.9 trillion relief plan by Olivier Blanchard
https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/defense-concerns-over-19-trillion-relief-plan

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Thursday, February 18, 2021

Economic Reforms and Privatization – Challenges Facing India

An honest appraisal from India’s Finance Minister:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/India-s-state-run-companies-should-be-cut-to-bare-minimum-minister
“Most of India's more than 350 state-owned companies should be eliminated over the coming years, reducing them to the "bare minimum," Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Thursday.
"The rest should gradually find the way out," Sitharaman told international reporters.…
Sitharaman said the bare minimum refers to companies in "strategic" sectors including defense, power and mining.
"The idea of socialism, which has set up these state-run enterprises, did not help India," she said. State-owned companies have not been managed professionally enough, and some "do not even have valuation."
"As a result, even if you have political commitment to sell them off, you cannot move forward," the minister said.
"There is a lot of systemic due diligence [such as getting a fair valuation] to be done before I can even take them to the market. So the timeline may be a wishlist at this moment," she said, explaining the difficulties of charting a path to privatization”. 

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Federal Reserve is Starting to Face a Policy Dilemma

My Take: Have misguided policies led to recent asset bubbles and boom-bust cycles?
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Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Profiles of a New Generation of Star Economists

Seema Jayachandran interview: On deforestation, corruption, and the roots of gender inequality
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/seema-jayachandran-interview-on-deforestation-corruption-and-the-roots-of-gender-inequality
Seema Jayachandran planned a career in theoretical physics when she graduated from MIT in electrical engineering and finished her master’s in physics and philosophy at Oxford University. Harvard offered her a spot in its selective doctoral physics program. But coffee conversations with an acquaintance changed her life.
“What he was doing was really cool,” she recalls. His discipline, economics, offered an irresistible blend of high theory and hardheaded fieldwork. It was “quantitatively analytical,” like physics, “but with more of an application to society.” She applied to Harvard’s economics doctoral program. “I didn’t have much economics when I transferred,” she admits. “But it was a perfect fit.”
Indeed. Jayachandran, now a professor at Northwestern University, is a leading authority in development economics, with particular focus on women. Much of her research involves randomized, controlled trials to evaluate program interventions aimed at improving well-being. Many of her field experiments are in India, but she’s worked throughout the world, from Mexico to Burkina Faso to Zambia. 

Profiles of a New Generation of Star Economists
Emmanuel Farhi
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2019/q2-3/interview.pdf 
Susan Athey 
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/06/pdf/profile-stanford-economist-susan-athey-people.pdf
Mariana Mazzucato
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/business/mariana-mazzucato.html
Edward Glaeser
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/pdf/profile-of-harvard-economist-edward-glaeser.pdf
Enrico Moretti
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2019/q1/interview.pdf
Gabriel Zucman
https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2019/10/profiles-of-french-economist-gabriel.html
Antoinette Schoar
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2018/q3/interview.pdf
Gita Gopinath
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/interview-with-gita-gopinath
Raj Chetty
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/raj-chettys-american-dream/592804/

RISE OF THE TECHONOMIST (Economists in the Tech World):
https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2019/05/economists-in-tech-world.html
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Japan - Nikkei Reaches a Milestone

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EVs and Batteries

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Useful Financial Advice for Novice Traders

How to avoid losing all your money on investing apps
https://www.vox.com/recode/22277998/robinhood-investing-app-alternatives-betterment-stash-acorns-wealthfront
“Particularly worrisome are “herding events,” including those fomented in Reddit’s WallStreetBets community that encouraged hoards of people to invest in certain stocks, like GameStop and AMC. On Robinhood, people were already more likely than other retail investors — people who aren’t professionals — to invest in the same stocks as other users, according to Christopher Schwarz, faculty director of the University of California Irvine’s Center for Investment and Wealth Management and one of the authors of a paper looking at outcomes of investor behavior on Robinhood. When too many people crowd a stock, “the price of the stock overshoots what it should be and over subsequent days it corrects.”
The study, which was conducted using Robinhood trading data from 2018 to 2020, found that those who invested in the top 10 newly purchased stocks saw returns in the next month that were 5 percent lower than that of the S&P 500 index — a “pretty horrific” outcome, Schwarz said. Robinhood is the only trading app that’s disclosed user holdings so the researchers did not compare investors’ performance on its competitors”.


Related:

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Labor Market Dislocations

Millions of jobs probably aren’t coming back, even after pandemic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/02/17/unemployed-workers-retraining/
The United States needs to invest more in retraining workers, economists warn. 


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The Bitcoin Craze

Bitcoin Is a 'Self-Fulfilling Bubble,' Roubini Warns


A Fed president predicts the Bitcoin boom won’t last.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/business/rosengren-bitcoin.html

Schrödinger’s Bitcoin

With Bitcoin Breaking $50,000, Even Wall Street Skeptics Must Pay Attention
 
‘Digital tulip’ or new asset class? Bitcoin’s bid to go mainstream [Restricted Access]
https://www.ft.com/content/7ac6c3a6-3fed-4dd9-8a69-939ad6094933
The environmental idiocy of Tesla’s bitcoin bet [Restricted Access]
https://www.ft.com/content/a9bd5b42-272e-465c-9284-9fe2a7906f48 

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Europe's Rising Public Debt

Europe’s Pandemic Debt Is Dizzying. Who Will Pay?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/business/europe-pandemic-debt.html

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Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Asset Bubbles - Interesting Items

Citi Strategist Says 10% Correction in U.S. Stocks Is ‘Very Plausible’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/citi-strategist-says-10-u-s-equity-correction-very-plausible

This Is Where the Real Stock Market Bubble Is
My Take: Have misguided policies led to recent asset bubbles and boom-bust cycles?
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Macro Policy, Inflation, Risk Tolerance, and Asset Prices

My Take: Have misguided policies led to recent asset bubbles and boom-bust cycles?
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/538921-have-misguided-policies-led-to-recent-asset-bubbles-and-boom-bust-cycles

The Debate About Stimulus Is Missing the Point

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Monday, February 15, 2021

Human Advancement is Non-Linear

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India's Economic Recovery Gathers Pace

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India’s Attempt to Reform its Agricultural Sector - Historical Perspective

The Shadow of England in India’s Farm Protests
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-10/india-s-farm-protests-have-parallels-in-18th-century-england-for-better-or-worse
Faster urbanization and quicker economic growth await. But, first, New Delhi has to make agricultural reforms palatable to farmers.
David Fickling and Andy Mukherjee:
“Where is it cheaper to buy rice? At a village market in India, a country where 377 million people live below the poverty line? Or on the trading screens of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange?
Shockingly, it’s often the latter. Rough rice futures on the CME averaged $12.63 per hundredweight since the start of September and traded as low as $11.85, equivalent to about $233 a metric ton. Meanwhile, the minimum support price at which India’s government buys unmilled rice from farmers has been fixed at 1,868 rupees per quintal in the same marketing year, or $254 a ton at average exchange rates.
The gap is even wider for wheat, whose minimum support price has averaged a 25% premium to soft winter wheat futures in Chicago in the current marketing year” 

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Extremism and Politics

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Economics of Vaccine Manufacturing

'We took a huge risk': the Indian firm making more Covid jabs than anyone
Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, on vaccines, regulation and what comes next
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/14/we-took-a-huge-risk-the-indian-firm-making-more-covid-jabs-than-anyone 

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The Rise of Amazon and its Impact on the US Economy

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America’s Foreign Policy Tactics – In Need of Fundamental Reform

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Budgetary Woes of Local and State Governments

Why some state and local governments are desperate for more stimulus aid
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/15/biden-stimulus-state-local-aid/

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Saturday, February 13, 2021

Post-Brexit Britain

With Britain out of the European Union, companies that trade with the continent are contending with expensive disruptions to their businesses and a plunge in exports.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/world/europe/brexit-britain-trade.html 

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Gates on Climate Change

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Friday, February 12, 2021

US K-12 Curriculum and College Preparedness

Why are so many 12th graders not proficient in reading and math?
https://theconversation.com/why-are-so-many-12th-graders-not-proficient-in-reading-and-math-149514 

Stanford’s Eric A. Hanushek - United States: The Uphill Schools’ Struggle
http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek%202021%20Uphill%20Struggle.pdf
 
What 2018 PISA international rankings tell us about U.S. schools
https://hechingerreport.org/what-2018-pisa-international-rankings-tell-us-about-u-s-schools/
 
Math scores stink in America. Other countries teach it differently - and see higher achievement.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/02/28/math-scores-high-school-lessons-freakonomics-pisa-algebra-geometry/4835742002/
“Classes here often focus on formulas and procedures rather than teaching students to think creatively about solving complex problems involving all sorts of mathematics, experts said. That makes it harder for students to compete globally, be it on an international exam or in colleges and careers that value sophisticated thinking and data science”.

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Substack and the Future of the News Media

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China and Tech Supply Chains

The Long Hack: How China Exploited a U.S. Tech Supplier
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro/ 

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Risk of a Stock Market Correction

Is the Stock Market About to Crash?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/02/12/is-the-stock-market-about-to-crash/
'Very, very concerning' echoes of the 90s dot-com bubble are being heard loud and clear by nervous market experts.

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Reviving US Manufacturing

 In public and private, Biden and his advisers have signaled some dramatic interventions to revive U.S. manufacturing. Will they actually happen?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/magazine/biden-economy.html

Heartland factories losing ground as Biden readies manufacturing push
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/indiana-manufacturing-biden/

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