The Value of U.S. College Education in Global Labor
Markets: Experimental Evidence from China https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4745 Abstract One million international students study in the United
States each year, and the majority of them compete in global labor markets
after graduation. I conducted a large-scale field experiment and a companion
employer survey to study how employers in China value U.S. college education. I
sent more than 27,000 fictitious online applications to business and computer
science jobs in China, randomizing the country of college education. I find
that U.S.-educated applicants are on average 18% less likely to receive a
callback than applicants educated in China, with applicants from very selective
U.S. institutions underperforming those from the least selective Chinese
institutions. The United States-China callback gap is smaller at high-wage
jobs, consistent with employers fearing U.S.-educated applicants have better
outside options and would be harder to hire and retain. The gap is also smaller
at foreign-owned firms, consistent with Chinese-owned firms knowing less about
American education. Controlling for high school quality, test scores, or U.S. work
experiences does not attenuate the gap, suggesting that the gap is not driven
by employer perceptions of negative selection. A survey of 507 hiring managers
at college career fairs finds consistent and additional supporting evidence for
the experimental findings.
Can the Meritocracy Survive Without the SAT? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/sat-college.html “… it seems pretty clear that many schools are really
ditching the SAT in response to the following sequence of events: Asian
American SAT scores rose to the point where elite colleges were accused of
discriminating against Asian American applicants to maintain the racial balance
they desired, this led to lawsuits, and those lawsuits seem poised to yield a
Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action. So universities are
pre-emptively abandoning a metric that might be used against them in future
litigation, not for the sake of widening opportunity but just in the hopes of
sustaining the admissions status quo”.
Payoff-based College Admissions by Frederick M. Hess https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/63a/3c2/deb/63a3c2deb56fc934667451.pdf Elite universities present themselves as bastions of meritocracy. But they routinely offer the children and grandchildren of major donors an easy path to admission, even when those students wouldn't otherwise qualify. Worse yet, the donations that open these doors are tax-deductible, and therefore heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Some questions surrounding college-admissions policies are complex and profound, but this one is painfully simple: We should press college officials to mean what they say about opportunity and equity, and to spend less time strong-arming wealthy donors. But at a bare minimum, we should get taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing campus shakedown artists.
America Pays a High Price for Low Wages https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-pays-a-high-price-for-low-wages-d706894d For decades the U.S. has used wage subsidies to support the country’s lowest-paid workers—a welfare system that keeps the poor down, primarily benefits the wealthy and undermines technological innovation.
Can India unlock the potential of its youth? https://ig.ft.com/india-population/ The world’s most populous country could seize its demographic dividend — or squander it
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/04/new-age-tragedy-china-food-europe-energy-robert-kaplan-helen-thompson-john-gray The post-Cold War moment, a 30-year period when globalization and free trade were orchestrated under the aegis of American supremacy, is ending. As the historian Anders Stephanson has written, “One could not deny that geopolitics reduced to a set of mopping-up operations was a historic achievement of US power.” Today, great-power rivalry, war and the competition for diminishing resources are old realities reborn, revenants of history that now define a present of increasing peril and uncertainty. In The Tragic Mind (2023), the American correspondent, author and foreign policy adviser Robert D Kaplan argues that we must learn to think tragically to avoid tragedy. We need what he calls anxious foresight. The wisest among us fear disorder and anarchy as much as tyranny.
My take: https://www.ut.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Business/TBESpring2023_Final.pdf Rising geopolitical risks and ongoing climate change imply that the lengthy period of good luck may have run its course. We may no longer have the good fortune of experiencing shocks that are small and infrequent. Naturally, this raises the likelihood that both output growth and infation will become much more volatile and a return to the Great Moderation-type dynamic may not be on the cards for the foreseeable future.
Occupational Heterogeneity in Exposure to Generative AI https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4414065 Abstract Recent dramatic increases in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), including language modeling and image generation, has led to many questions about the effect of these technologies on the economy. We use a recently developed methodology to systematically assess which occupations are most exposed to advances in AI language modeling and image generation capabilities. We then characterize the profile of occupations that are more or less exposed based on characteristics of the occupation, suggesting that highly-educated, highly-paid, white-collar occupations may be most exposed to generative AI, and consider demographic variation in who will be most exposed to advances in generative AI. The range of occupations exposed to advances in generative AI, the rapidity with its spread, and the variation in which populations will be most exposed to such advances, suggest that government can play an important role in helping people adapt to how generative AI changes work.
Epic movie rekindles interest in ancient south
Indian empire https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Epic-movie-rekindles-interest-in-ancient-south-Indian-empire2 On the bank of the Cauvery River in southern India
stands the majestic Brihadeeswara Temple. It was built from granite quarried 48
kilometers away and hauled to the site by a thousand captive elephants before
deposing the heavy stones with the help of ramps. The temple, located in Tamil Nadu state's Thanjavur,
displays images of gods and goddesses, ancient inscriptions, carvings and
frescoes. It was constructed in the 11th century by one of the longest reigning
Indian dynasties, the Cholas, which existed for more than 1,500 years and
reached its peak between the 9th and 13th centuries, one of the three most
powerful kingdoms of the region. Chola Dynasty (9th-13th Century) https://asia.si.edu/learn/india-shiva-nataraja-lord-of-the-dance/chola-dynasty/
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.
She’s at risk of losing her Florida home over a violation she didn’t know existed https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article274552871.html Adair’s retirement plan was put in jeopardy, however, after the city filed suit against her last August to foreclose on the house over unpaid code enforcement fines. The fines stemmed from a 2014 code violation for “dirt, mold and mildew” and “chalking, chipped and peeling paint” on the exterior walls of her house, which Adair said was the result of algae from banyan trees in the front of her house and paint that was stripped when she removed a vine growing on the house… The lawsuit came as a shock. It was filed by a private attorney named Matt Weidner, who signed a contract with the city in 2020 to file foreclosure lawsuits against properties with unpaid code fines. Under the terms of the agreement, Weidner gets a portion of whatever the city recovers by foreclosing on homes and selling them at auction or reaching settlements with owners like Adair to pay some or all of what they owe. Related: https://www.yahoo.com/news/she-risk-losing-her-florida-120000617.html
Profit Margins Are Sliding for Americans Who Sell
Their Homes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-27/profit-margins-are-sliding-for-americans-who-sell-their-homes With the benefit of hindsight, millions of US
homeowners inclined to sell would have been better off doing it last spring. The average profit margin on the sale of median-priced
single-family homes and condos fell to 44% last quarter, from a peak of 56% in
the second quarter of 2022, according to data published Thursday by Attom, a
real estate analytics firm. The numbers cover homes in metro areas with a
population of 200,000 or more.
A series of financial scandals have rocked Italy’s
most glamorous club. But is the trouble at Juventus symptomatic of a deeper rot
in world football? https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/apr/25/inside-the-crisis-at-juventus-andrea-agnelli-fabio-paratici-plusvalenze “The biggest problem in football finances,” says Roger
Mitchell, founding CEO of the Scottish Professional Football League and now a
sports-brand consultant based in Italy, “isn’t the top line, it’s the cost
line, the player-wages line. And 92% is at least 20% higher than where it
should be.” With revenues bound to fluctuate according to results
and qualification for lucrative competitions like the Champions League, such a
high wage bill was an obvious hostage to fortune. And when the pandemic
arrived, Juventus was especially vulnerable.
Here’s How Supply Chains Are Being Reshaped for a
New Era of Global Trade https://www.wsj.com/articles/supply-chains-have-changed-forever-819d9afd Nearshoring. Automation. Supplier diversification.
Sustainability. Companies are adapting their operations to changing market
pressures and geopolitics.
If There Are No New Ideas, How Do We Keep
Innovating? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/opinion/sheena-iyengar-innovation.html Now comes a book by Sheena Iyengar, who is herself
blind, that I’m tempted to call original, except that she (like Twain) would
undoubtedly insist that there’s nothing new under the sun. In “Think Bigger:
How to Innovate,” Iyengar writes that thinking bigger is about assembling old
ideas in a new way. Sounding much like Twain in 1903, she writes that all
successful innovators are “strategic copiers,” who “learned from examples of
success, extracted the parts that worked well, imagined new ways of using those
pieces, and combined them to create something new and meaningful.”
The True Cost of a $12 T-Shirt https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/opinion/fast-fashion-apparel-worker-conditions-rana-plaza.html The apparel industry suffers from what economists call
an “agency problem.” Brands rely on auditors to uncover violations in factories
— then often require the factories to pay for their own audits. Unsurprisingly,
the typical audit is short, untrustworthy and, as Transparentem found at most
audited factories we investigated, easily gamed. Suppliers, already operating
on razor-thin margins, cannot afford to lose customers. Nor can the auditors,
who often show little interest in scrutinizing their clients to the point of
discomfort. The movement to strip child labor law protections
can be traced to one group https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/23/child-labor-lobbying-fga/ The Foundation for Government Accountability, a
Florida-based think tank and lobbying group, drafted state legislation to strip
child workplace protections, emails show.
The Crypto Collapse and the End of Magical Thinking That Infected Capitalism
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/opinion/the-crypto-collapse-magical-thinking-capitalism.html Harvard’s Mihir Desai notes: I have come to view cryptocurrencies not simply as exotic assets but as a manifestation of a magical thinking that had come to infect part of the generation who grew up in the aftermath of the Great Recession — and American capitalism, more broadly. For these purposes, magical thinking is the assumption that favored conditions will continue on forever without regard for history. It is the minimizing of constraints and trade-offs in favor of techno-utopianism and the exclusive emphasis on positive outcomes and novelty. It is the conflation of virtue with commerce.
Crypto Is Mostly Over. Its Carbon Emissions Are Not. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/crypto-bitcoin-mining-carbon-emissions-climate-change-impact/673468/ And it is America’s problem now. After China clamped down on crypto mining in 2021, such computing work increased in the United States. Miners set up shop in communities with low energy prices. And owners of unprofitable power-generation infrastructure, such as waste-coal-burning power plants, opened up crypto-mining operations to create another revenue stream. These companies have put a lot of money into their hardware and their physical space, and they will continue mining until they are actively losing money.
The best way to strengthen India’s democracy? Leave it to the Indians. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/20/india-democracy-indians-strengthen/ There are many reasons for this. The brutality of the British Empire birthed a reflexive anti-imperial instinct. Indians do not like being reprimanded by the West. Hypocrisy is another trigger. On the very day the State Department spokesman commented on Gandhi’s expulsion, the United States was grappling with a school shooting in Nashville in which seven people, three of them 9-year old children, were killed — including the perpetrator. A viral photo of a congressman from the area and his family posing with rifles in front of their Christmas tree made it even harder for Indians to see the United States as the global arbiter of democratic and civic values. Since then, there has been a shooting in Louisville and the attack on Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager. Yet 146 mass shootings this year (as of April 10) have not generated gratuitous opprobrium from the Indian government. Indian editorials on the United States are not all about gun violence, entrenched racism and the denial of reproductive autonomy to millions of American women. And if they were, they would hardly create a stir in Washington. So Indians wonder why we are expected to accept preaching or judgment in reverse.
There Are Better Ways to Study That Will Last You a Lifetime https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/opinion/studying-learning-students-teachers-school.html For example, student surveys show that rereading notes or textbooks is the most common way students prepare for a test. Rereading is easy because the mind can skitter along the surface of the material without closely considering its meaning, but that’s exactly why it’s a poor way to learn. If you want to learn the meaning — as most tests require you to — then you must think about meaning when you study... And so, as students reread their textbooks, the increasing familiarity makes them think they are learning. But because they are not thinking about the meaning of what they read, they aren’t improving the knowledge that actually builds understanding.
India is getting an eye-wateringly big transport upgrade https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/03/13/india-is-getting-an-eye-wateringly-big-transport-upgrade Long known for its interminable, rattling train journeys, snarled roads and grotty airports, the country is experiencing an infrastructural makeover on a scale unprecedented outside China. It will transform Indians’ ability to travel, by rail, road and air; and thus to intermingle and do business. The government of Narendra Modi hopes it will remove one of the biggest constraints on the rapid economic growth that India desperately needs in order to meet the aspirations of its young, fast-growing population.