More in Global Economy


6 years

The Truce is over in Argentina: The Peso cannot Survive a Destructive Monetary Policy

The government of Mauricio Macri lived a week of apparent tranquillity, but the resignation of Luis Caputo as President of the Central Bank and a new IMF deal triggered the end of calm.

6 years

Taking the Medal Through Fargo Airport Security

Brian Schmidt was a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize for "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae." This is the discovery that leads physicists to infer the existence of "dark energy," which although we have no direct way to measure or observe it is apparently causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. At the Scientific American blog, Clara Moskowitz reports the story recently told by Schmidt about ttaking his Nobel medal to show his grandmother in Fargo, North Dakota -- a city on the eastern edge of North Dakota, on the border with my home state of Minnesota. Fargo has a little more than 100,000 people, which makes it the largest population city in North Dakota. Here's how Schmidt tells the story:

6 years

When Hayek Opposed the Nobel Prize in Economics

As the pedants among us never tire of pointing out, the so-called "Nobel Prize in economics" is not literally a "Nobel prize." It was not established by the original bequest from Alfred Nobel, but instead was first given in 1969, with the prize money provided by a grant from Sweden's central bank as part of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the bank. Thus, the award is officially "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." (Justin Fox gives a nice brief overview of the history here.) Although I am pedantic in many matters, this doesn't happen to be one of them, so I will continue following the conventional usage in calling it the "Nobel prize in economics."

6 years

Black & White Racial Inequality: A Place-Based Look

The black population is not equally distributed across the United States: not equally across regions of the country, nor within metropolitan areas. This unequal distribution is in substantial part a result of historical event and policy decisions, many of them rooted in racism. As a result, policies that certain regions of the country more than others, or certain parts of metropolitan areas more than others, will inevitably have disparate racial effects.

6 years

Biggest US Export to China? Spending by Chinese Tourists

International tourism is counted in the official economic statistics as an export industry. We don't always think about it that way. But when, say, Chinese tourists in the US purchase goods and services, then Chinese consumers are buying goods and services produced in the United States--which is what "exports" means.

6 years

The Eurozone Slowdown: Five Charts And A Warning

1. Manufacturing PMI fell to the lowest level since December

6 years

When Information Flows Became Fast: The Trans-Atlantic Telegraph

When the first trans-Atlantic telegraph message was sent in 1858, the tough question was how to follow up on the famous terse line that Samuel Morse had sent in 1844 over the telegraph between Baltimore and Washington: "What hath God wrought?"