In The News

Harvard Business Review: One Cost of Increased Globalization – More Industrial Accidents

Robert G. Blanton and Dursun Peksen April 27, 2017
Economic globalization— trade, foreign direct investment and low tariffs—has a twofold effect in making costly, environmentally harmful and deadly industrial accidents more probable, according to professors Robert G. Blanton and Dursun Peksen in a discussion of their study in Harvard Business Review. First, there is more room for error as byzantine international supply chains straddle countries...

Bloomberg: Jack Ma Sees Decades of Pain as Internet Upends Old Economy

April 24, 2017
The internet and automation are not through disrupting the economy, warns Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba, and “society should prepare for decades of pain” – or expect conflict. In a speech to an entrepreneurship conference in China, Ma expressed frustration that no one listened to his warnings issued long before his online company became famous. “Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce operator,...

Barron’s: Don’t Give Up on Globalization

Joseph Quinlan April 20, 2017
Much of the world no longer trusts “the unfettered cross-border flows of goods, services, people” of globalization anymore,” explains Joseph Quinlan for Barron’s. “Without access to the world’s resources, capital, and labor, many U.S. firms would be shadows of their current selves in terms of market capitalization and earnings. That would endanger the whole U.S. economy.” Quinlan also expresses...

Wall Street Journal: China Draws More Students Back From Abroad

Te-Ping Chen March 2, 2017
More than 500,000 Chinese students studied at foreign universities in 2015 with the United States as the most popular destination followed by the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. “A rise in incomes and frustration with China’s ultracompetitive education system produced a study-abroad fervor of historic proportions,” reports Te-Ping Chen for the Wall Street Journal. “In recent years, around...

Financial Times: Vancouver Seizes Chance to Lure Silicon Valley Tech Talent

Leslie Hook February 21, 2017
Vancouver, a beautiful city with mild weather on the Pacific coast, is fast-growing technology hub in need of skilled workers. A US crackdown on immigration has made the job of recruiting skilled immigrant workers from Seattle, San Francisco and Silicon Valley much easier. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook oppose an executive order banning travelers from seven nations...

Wired: The AI Threat – End of the Middle Class

Cade Metz February 12, 2017
Researchers of artificial intelligence recognize their work is capable of disrupting the global economy. Automation and computers have already supplanted many jobs that will never return. “In the US, the number of manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 and has steadily decreased ever since,” explains Cade Metz for Wired. “At the same time, manufacturing has steadily increased, with the US now...

Rethinking Labor Mobility

Harold James January 4, 2017
Trade, automation and other facets of globalization have eliminated some careers. One solution is for government to provide an unconditional basic income, but that may not eliminate resentment. Historian Harold James examines how artisans recovered after losing work during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries: “many displaced workers emigrated – often long distances across...