China and India Build Internal Supply Chains
One of the key questions in the escalating US trade disputes with China and other countries is how much the economy of other countries depends on trade. The answer helps to determine how much leverage the US has in trade disputes. Thus, it's interesting to note that starting about a decade ago, both India and China started reducing their dependence on exports as a source of growth, while doing more to build internal supply chains and relying more on domestic products.
- 09/09/2019
- 6
US Multinationals Bring Foreign Earnings Back Home
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 largely eliminated taxes on US multinational corporations when they bring profits earned in other countries back to the use. As a result, there has been a dramatic rise in the dividends that U.S. parent companies received from their their foreign affiliates. Sarah A. Atkinson and Jessica McCloskey of the US Census Bureau offer some striking illustrations of this change, along with other data on international flows of investment in and out of the US economy, in "Direct Investment Positions for 2018: Country and Industry Detail," published in the August 2019 Survey of Current Business.
- 07/09/2019
- 5
Satellite Data Economics, Night Lights, and More
The dark area outlined in red is North Korea. The rest of the peninsula below, illuminated, is South Korea.
- 06/09/2019
- 3
Nonrenewable Resources: The Pattern of Higher Extraction, Falling Prices
Here's an economic puzzle about non-renewable resources, including energy resources but also minerals. One might expect that the least expensive locations for these resources would be exploited first. Thus, one might expect production costs for such resources to rise over time. If demand for such resources is also rising over time, intuition suggests that this combination should tend to raise prices for non-renewable.
- 05/09/2019
- 5
Marge Piercy on Why Work Matters
I sometimes struggle, when teaching about unemployment, to explain just why work matters. It's straightforward enough to note that elevated unemployment leads to loss of economic output, lower tax payments, and greater need for government welfare benefits. I can refer to evidence on how unemployment is connected to social ills like bankruptcy, divorce, depression, and even suicide. But this listing of consequences, while a necessary part of teaching the economics of unemployment, doesn't quite touch the human heart of the issue. The poet Marge Piercy, in her 1973 poem "To be of use," gives a more concise and powerful sense of why useful work matters so much.
- 04/09/2019
- 9
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