In The News

The Danger of High Home Ownership: Greater Unemployment

David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald November 4, 2013
Home ownership is a common goal for societies and individuals. Yet statistical patterns suggest that a high rate of “home ownership weakens the vitality of the labour market and slowly grinds out greater rates of joblessness,” report economists David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald in a paper for Chatham House. Home ownership may disrupt efficient functioning of the labor market by reducing...

Why This Might Be the Model T of Workplace Robots

Tom Simonite October 31, 2013
New applications, innovation, competition and mass production drive down prices of most tech products over time while improving capability – and that is true of robots. A new startup company, Unbounded Robotics, is selling 3-foot robots for $35,000 to academic and industry researchers who currently would pay $100,000 plus for similar technology or build themselves. Now researchers can purchase...

Trade: Into Uncharted Waters

Shawn Donnan October 31, 2013
The pace of global trade has slowed. “For the past three decades, trade has regularly grown at twice the rate of world gross domestic product,” writes Shawn Donnan for the Financial Times. “This year, trade is expected to grow just 2.5 per cent, compared with GDP growth of 2.9 per cent.” Economists debate whether the dip is temporary or signals structural change in global trade and supply chains...

Labor Pains

Nayan Chanda September 30, 2013
Good intentions can go awry if they don’t tackle a problem’s roots and long-term conditions. India has launched an ambitious program to feed its poorest citizens, but the costly program will require tax revenue from working citizens, explains Nayan Chanda, YaleGlobal’s editor, in his column for Businessworld. Instead of developing intricate subsidy programs, he urges that India tackle inequality...

Singapore Foreigner Curbs Target Professionals

Sharon Chen September 27, 2013
Singapore’s unemployment rate is 2.1 percent, near full employment, according to economists, but that’s too high for some. The nation will set up a job bank and require companies to advertise jobs to Singaporeans before pursuing work visas for foreign professionals. Exempt are businesses with fewer than 25 employees and jobs that pay less than US$30,000 or more than $140,000. The move reflects...

US Textile Plants Return, With Floors Largely Empty of People

Stephanie Clifford September 23, 2013
Low-cost labor, first in the southern region of the United States and later in developing nations, lured textile mills away from manufacturing centers of New England. Globalization makes the industry turn full circle. Textile mills are up and running once again in the United States, but with fewer jobs because of automation. Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times writes about the return of the...

Russia Offers Fukushima Cleanup Help as Tepco Reaches Out

Yuriy Humber, Jacob Adelman September 5, 2013
More than two years after the earthquake-tsunami disaster in Japan that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power station, the power company and government still do not have radiation under control. Russia has repeated an offer to assist in the cleanup. In the globalized nuclear industry, all accidents are international, points out Vladimir Asmolov, of Rosenergoatom, Russia’s nuclear utility. “As...