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More in Global Economy
A Timepass World
When enthusiasts talk about the merits of being connected to the internet, they often emphasize benefits involving access to economically relevant information, political empowerment, cultural links, and family ties. But in the real world, people are watching cat videos. The Economist magazine has an article discussing how the main use of the internet in low-income countries, as in high-income countries, is the leisure-time activities of "timepass"(June 8, 2019).
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Is Hydrogen the Storage and Carrying Technology for Carbon-Free Energy?
Fossil fuels store energy until they are burned. Solar and wind power generate electricity, but don't store it. As a result, they are intermittent sources of electricity, requiring back-up generation capacity that is typically still supplied by fossil fuel. Could hydrogen become a way of storing energy from renewable power sources? The International Energy Agency, in a report on The Future of Hydrogen, describes what would be needed to make this happen (June 14, 2019, accessing report requires free registration).
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Some Snapshots of the Global Energy Situation
"Global primary energy grew by 2.9% in 2018 – the fastest growth seen since 2010. This occurred despite a backdrop of modest GDP growth and strengthening energy prices. At the same time, carbon emissions from energy use grew by 2.0%, again the fastest expansion for many years, with emissions increasing by around 0.6 gigatonnes. That’s roughly equivalent to the carbon emissions associated with increasing the number of passenger cars on the planet by a third." Spencer Dale offers these and other insights in his introduction to the the 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. It's one of those books of charts and tables I try to check each year just to keep my personal perceptions of economic patterns connected to actual statistics. Here are a few figures that jumped out at me.
- 2
The Economic Value of Household Production: 1965-2017
Gross domestic product is not the total amount of output produced; instead, it is a a measure of what is bought and sold in markets. Pretty much every intro class in economics will point out to students that when I clean my own house, cook my own meals, look after my children, or or mow my lawn, that "household production" doesn't show up in GDP. But if I hire someone to do household production tasks, then that output gets counted as part of GDP.
- 3
The ECB’s Monetary Trap
The European Central Bank continues to disproportionately inflate the debt bubble of the Eurozone, while the economic slowdown of the main European economies worsens. What was designed as a tool for governments to buy time in order to carry out structural reforms and reduce imbalances, has become a dangerous incentive to perpetuate the excessive spending and increase debt under two very harmful and wrong excuses: That there is no problem as long as debt is cheap and that there’s no inflation.
- 3
Interview with Rachel Glennerster: Development and Aid
Rachel Glennester has her finger on the pulse of both development economics research and real-world development policy. She was the long-time Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab based at MIT, and now has taken a position as Chief Economist of the primary UK agency for development aid, the Department for International Development. She was interviewed by Robert Wiblin and Nathan Labenz at the 80,000 Hours website. You can listen to the 90-minute podcast or read a transcript at "A year’s worth of education for under a dollar and other‘ best buys’ in development, from the UK aid agency’s Chief Economist," by Robert Wiblin and Keiran Harris (December 20, 2018).
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