India’s economy surged by 7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2004-05, lifting the full-year growth to the 6.9 per cent predicted by the government, as strong manufacturing and services output compensated for a weak performance by the agricultural sector. The figures released Thursday provide the latest evidence of the weakening link between rural incomes and industrial activity thanks to the rise of a mass affluent middle class, a booming export sector and the growing availability of rural credit. The growing purchasing power of India’s expanding urban middle class is behind much of the shift. NCAER says 13 per cent of India’s population will have an annual income of £2,439-£12,500 by 2009-10, compared with 3 per cent in 1995-96.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s $18.5 billion offer for Unocal was "normal commercial activity between enterprises." Liu said "economic cooperation between China and the U.S. serves the interests of both sides and commercial activities should not be interfered in or disturbed by political elements."

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown turned up the moral pressure on European leaders to scrap the £33 billion-a-year Common Agricultural Policy yesterday by saying that over-generous subsidies paid to EU farmers were perpetuating mass poverty in Africa. As Britain’s prepares to take on the EU presidency tomorrow, and with the G8 summit at Gleneagles coming up next week, Mr Brown said developed countries could "no longer ignore" the "hypocrisy" of a regime that distorted world trade and held back Africa’s poorest nations.

Unfortunately he’s still got the wrong end of the stick. As has been noted elsewhere (in a comment here by Jarndyce, for example) the export subsidies are in fact a subsidy from the European taxpayer to the non-farming sector of the countries that consume the goods. They are not an unalloyed evil...the total effect on the recipient countries depends upon whether the benefits to that urban population are greater than the disbenefits to the farming sector. As they are largely rural and even peasant farming societies this may well be true but it is an empirical question, not a moral one.

There is a moral point to be made about CAP which is (that it) is bad for us. That 50 squillion (plus the further 100 odd squillion extracted in the form of higher prices) is the gang rape of the taxpayers by a small interest group, that 2-3% of the population of Europe that are farmers. We should simply stop it in the name of the 97 % that are not.

There is a reason why such logic is not used by a social democratic politician. If one set of subsidies are viewed in such terms, discussed as bieng simply morally wrong, then what happens to all of the other such subsidies? Those to other favoured industries, occupations, companies and individuals?

That there should be no such subsidies at all is obvious, but if we abolish them then what will politicians do if they don’t have sweeties to give out to those who support them? If by bribing being nice to politicians we get nothing back, why would anyone be nice to them?

Is de commissie Globalisering in het parlement een verzameling marxistische anders-globalisten? Het verslag van de commissie leest alvast als een merkwaardige ode aan een nieuwe linkse wereldorde. ,,De heersende liberale opvatting vertoont de bijzondere eigenschap anderen te doen geloven - en zelf te geloven - in het bestaan van een afzonderlijke wereld van de economie’, waarin ieder mens zijn menselijkeid verliest en alleen nog als koper of verkoper optreedt, waaruit ten slotte de Staat verbannen wordt omdat die zo niet te humanistisch dan toch te menselijk is.’’ Die stelling komt niet uit de stencilmachine van een schimmige extreem-linkse beweging, ze is het uitgangspunt van het parlementair verslag over de vergadering ,,Eerlijke handel’’, die de commissie Globalisering op 1 juli hield. Het document is van de senatoren Jacinta De Roeck (SP.A) en Olga Zrihen (PS) en het kamerlid Camille Dieu (PS), die verslaggever zijn. De commissie Globalisering is een buitenbeentje in het parlement. Naast senatoren en kamerleden zijn er ook steevast een heleboel vertegenwoordigers van ngo’s aanwezig. Eerst doen dan de parlementsleden hun zegje, daarna komen de ngo’s. De commissie is het jachtterrein van PS, Ecolo en SP.A, die alledrie affiniteit hebben met de anders-globalistische beweging. De drie rapporteurs leggen de commissie nu een aantal opmerkelijke stellingen in de mond. Onder de titel ,,Probleemschets’’ pakken ze uit met het ene pareltje na het andere. Zoals: ,,In plaats van te emanciperen, dient handel nu vaak om macht en winst te verwerven door speculatie op korte termijn.’’, en: ,,Tegenover het wereldvreemde en amorele monster dat de liberale economie is, biedt de eerlijke handel een alternatief dat steeds meer mensen aanspreekt.’’ Het verslag groeit naar een absoluut hoogtepunt als De Roeck en co uitpakken met de volgende stelling: ,,In zijn drang naar emancipatie is de mens met de hulp van Nietzsche erin geslaagd god te doden. Hij heeft echter onmiddellijk een vervanger gezocht. De liberale economie is ongetwijfeld een van die nieuwe goden waartegen de mens zich moet verzetten als hij niet gebukt wil gaan onder de illusie van een hogere macht die in leven wordt gehouden door diegenen die er individueel wel bij varen ten koste van het algemeen belang.’’ De verslaggevers hebben de tekst nu voorgelegd aan de andere commissieleden, ter goedkeuring. De liberalen in de commissie staan niet te trappelen.

Paul Krugman used to be a liberal economist; no longer. His abandonment of economics has long been plain, Krugman’s abandonment of liberalism was announced in yesterday’s commentary on China.

What really upset me about Krugman’s column is not the bizarre economics but the illiberal politics. In the last twenty years China’s economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and nearly unspeakable deprivation. China’s abandonment of communism is one of the great humanitarian events of all time. And what does Krugman have to say about this improvement in well being? (I paraphrase).

’Watch out. Now is the time to panic. Their gain is your loss.’

It’s hard to over-estimate how awful Krugman’s column is. Consider this:

China, unlike Japan, really does seem to be emerging as America’s strategic rival and a competitor for scarce resources...

’Strategic rival’ is the kind of term that would-be Metternichs throw about to impress their girlfriends but what does it mean? Everyone is a competitor for scarce resources. Even those nice Canadians compete with Americans for scarce resources. Are Canadians a strategic rival to be feared?

The real question is how do rivals compete? Do they compete with war or by trade? China is moving from the former to the latter but shockingly Krugman prefers the former. Exaggeration? Consider this statement:

...the Chinese government might want to control [Unocal] if it envisions a sort of "great game" in which major economic powers scramble for access to far-flung oil and natural gas reserves. (Buying a company is a lot cheaper, in lives and money, than invading an oil-producing country.

So what does Krugman recommend? Blocking the bid for Unocal. In other words, support China’s fear that they may be cut off from oil and encourage the invasion of an oil-producing country.

Nothing can harm the prospects for world peace more than the vicious idea that we do better when they do worse.

"Dit debat is een afgedane zaak. Een jaar geleden hebben alle betrokken partijen hierover op vraag van de federale regering samengezeten. Daar bleek dat uiteindelijk niemand vragende partij was voor langere openingstijden", zegt Luc Ardies, sectorverantwoordelijke distributie bij Unizo.

Western statesmen have every duty to remind Chinese leaders of their still appalling human rights record – from the Tiananmen Square massacre to the occupation of Tibet and the continued veneration of Chairman Mao, who has been exposed as a killer on the level of Hitler and Stalin. Unfortunately, they have gone quiet on these issues and have instead lectured the Chinese on the need to revalue the renminbi. It is not as if China were making a mess of its economy. On the contrary, it has a higher growth rate than any country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. And, far from appealing for handouts from the west, it is one of the main sources of the financial inflows sustaining the US economy.

Reducing corruption in developing countries by opening markets would be reason enough to liberalize, even if no other economic benefits materialized.

Is there any hope that the United States and developing countries can come together to sign an agreement that could stretch far beyond the horizon of Kyoto? There is still time, but we need a more compelling focal point for the negotiations.

Some economists (...) have suggested adopting the same political strategy as the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but they got the orders from Bush Sr.)did. That is, emulate the sulphur dioxide auctions by doing away with national quotas altogether and simply fixing a global supply of emissions permits which would be sold to the highest bidders. The overall emissions would be the same as with a quota system, but instead of giving the emissions permits away as quotas, every ton of carbon dioxide would have to be paid for.

A global auction of emissions permits would raise a lot of money. How would it be spent? It’s tempting to argue that it should fund the United Nations and global poverty relief. But a simpler option with some appealing moral intuition is that the money should simply be shared equally between every person on the planet. (It might have to flow through governments, but it would be much better if the grants, which might be around $100 per person per year at current prices, went straight to the people.)

Such a system would immediately meet the concerns of the United States Senate that developing countries like China have some incentive to reduce emissions. At the same time, the Chinese would want to be included, because the money they received from the permit auction would be substantially more than the money they would have to spend on permits. Even a country like Ethiopia would gain from joining the agreement, and Ethiopians would have an incentive to adopt more energy-efficient technologies.

Richer countries, of course, would tend to pay more, and countries growing quickly would tend to face an increasing bill in the auction – yet those are precisely the countries which would be most able to afford to pay. These effects would be automatic, not the result of Byzantine negotiations. Most importantly, by raising the price of any activity which required carbon-intensive energy, the system would give every citizen of every country an incentive to reduce his or her carbon footprint.

Remembering the lesson of the EPA’s sulphur dioxide auction, we might also discover that a low-carbon energy system isn’t quite as expensive as we feared. Environmentalists have been asserting this for a long time. It’s time we all proved it together.

De Waalse regering trekt de licentie voor de uitvoer van munitiemachines naar Tanzania in. Op vraag van minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Karel De Gucht (VLD) had de Waalse regering de licentie opnieuw bekeken. Begin dit jaar had het Luikse bedrijf New Lachaussée van de Waalse regering een vergunning gekregen om in Tanzania munitiemachines te bouwen. Maar de Waalse regering veranderde van mening. "Een dergelijke vergunning is niet te verzoenen met de Belgische vredesinspanningen in Centraal-Afrika", klinkt het nu. "Er ontbreken ook harde garanties dat de geproduceerde munitie niet zou worden gebruikt in conflicten in de buurlanden van Tanzania." De wapenhandel is een bevoegdheid van de gewesten geworden en dus niet meer van de federale regering. Minister De Gucht had de kwestie opnieuw op tafel gegooid. Hij vreesde, samen met premier Guy Verhofstadt (VLD), dat de munitie in het naburige Congo zou terechtkomen. Ook vanuit de Europese buurlanden en vanuit de Verenigde Naties kwamen signalen om de uitvoervergunning niet toe te kennen. Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken De Gucht is "verheugd" over het uitvoerverbod. "Het verbod ondersteunt de vredesinspanningen van België in het gebied van de Grote Meren. Zo blijft ons land ook geloofwaardig. België stond in dit dossier ook onder internationale druk", zegt De Gucht.

Otsuki et al. (2000) estimate that the implementation of a new aflatoxin standard in the European Union will have a very negative impact on African exports of cereals, dried fruits and nuts. On the basis of an econometric model, it is estimated that the EU standard, which would reduce health risks by approximately 1.4 deaths per billion a year, will decrease African exports of these products to the European Union by 64 per cent, or $670 million.

It is surely true that there was software innovation before software patents were widely used. As with all other technologies, it is unlikely that software development would grind to a halt without patent protection. And it is also true that software innovation is a highly cumulative process. But the reality is that virtually all innovation is a highly cumulative process, and the patent system has been struggling with the tradeoffs that implies for a long time. The relevant question is: on balance, would a properly administered regime of software patents foster innovation, by allowing parties that make true breakthroughs a measure of protection to reduce the risks of commercializing that development? As with business methods, we haven’t had a test of such a system because the PTO has failed to implement the requirements of novelty, nonobviousness and enablement. If the overall patent system were reformed as we have proposed, the only software that would be patentable would be that which truly represents a non-obvious step forward, and the implementation of which is laid out in some detail. Granting patents of this sort would not stop others who wish to work within the open-source paradigm from doing so, and would not prevent open-source advocates from arguing their case and trying to convince computer users not to buy patented software. It may be that the advantages of open-source development are sufficient that many or most software developers would choose to forego patents and work within the open-source paradigm instead. If the PTO were doing its job properly, any software that is developed and published freely by open-source advocates or other programmers could never itself be patented, because no one could ever claim novelty in having created it. So a properly functioning patent system is not inconsistent with a vibrant open-source software movement. The real enemy of open-source software—and software innovation more generally—is poor implementation of software patents, not the concept. The real question is whether a programmer who has a truly new software invention ought to have the option of patenting it rather than making it open-source. No one has put forth a convincing argument why that choice should not lie with the innovator, rather than being made for the entire industry as a matter of law or policy.

The ’New Left’ are worried about China’s growing income gap but without any solutions. Is the income gap worth worrying about? No, with a but. If you think of an economy as a pie, it doesn’t matter if the allocation of the pie is uneven, so long as the pie itself is growing. Is that true in China’s case? Clearly the answer is yes. Witness the massive rise in living standards for literally hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens. It is the most rapid poverty allieviation in history. Yes, there is still plenty of crushing poverty in China. But it is decreasing at a rapid rate, not thanks to trendy pop concerts or dollops of foreign aid, but thanks to a quasi-capitalist economic system.

China’s system is far from perfect. Cronyism and nepotism are rife. Government interference and direction in enterprise is rampant. Rule of law (in both enforcement and courts) is patchy at best. Unsurprisingly this has been China’s economic way for much of its history (...). But in terms of results, the current one is working, and working in spades.

Gedurende jaren heeft de export van textielmachines aan Chinese bedrijven een explosieve groei gekend. Een West-Vlaams bedrijf, dat trouwens tot de wereldmarktleiders behoort, heeft massaal toestellen naar China geëxporteerd. Blijkbaar zijn die machines, de echte en de ginds nagemaakte exemplaren, van goede kwaliteit.

I think it is fairly safe to say that not one detainee in Guantanamo is there because of an expression of opinion. (And those whose "opinion" is that all infidels must die are not exactly prisoners of conscience.) Morally neutral on this point, apparently, Amnesty nonetheless finds its voice by describing the prison itself as "the gulag of our times." No need to waste words here: Not everyone in the gulag was a "prisoner of conscience," either. But if an organization that ostensibly protects the rights of prisoners is unaware of the nature of a colossal system of forced labor and arbitrary detention—replete with physical torture, starvation, and brutal execution—then the moral compass has become disordered beyond repair. This is not even neutrality between the fireman and the fire. It surely expresses a covert sympathy with the aims and objectives of jihad and an overt, if witless and sinister, hatred of the United States. If only this were the only symptom of that tendency.

New World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday the key to helping Africa’s poor cotton growers was to cut the subsidies paid to U.S. and European agriculture producers. On a tour of a cotton-processing factory in Burkina Faso, Wolfowtiz said the World Bank would have a "strong voice" at the Doha trade talks to make a case for wealthy nations to reduce agricultural subsidies worldwide. The subsidies cut into revenues of impoverished countries like Burkina Faso, one of Africa’s biggest cotton growers.

Bosnia and Herzegovina..305.6%
Armenia.................145.6%
Belarus.................126.3%
Azerbaijan..............120.7%
China...................108.5%
Estonia.................102.6%
Latvia...................98.3%
Georgia..................97.5%
Turkmenistan.............92.9%
Kazakhstan...............89.1%

Wetgevend initiatief blijft dus verboden voor het parlement. Je kunt over veel punten onderhandelen, over dat ene punt niet. Nooit. Een parlement dat niet wetgevend is, is geen democratisch parlement. De Franse hoogleraar in de rechten Etienne Chouard zegt: als we dat laten gebeuren, zijn we gek. Welnu, het gebeurt. De Europese Unie legt uitvoerende én wetgevende macht bij het oncontroleerbare paar Ministerraad plus Commissie. Zodoende heft ze de scheiding der machten op en zonder scheiding der machten houdt geen enkele democratie stand. Professor Chouard gebruikt in dit verband zelfs het woord tirannie. Bij dit ontwerpverdrag keert de ouwe Montesquieu zich om in zijn graf.

Of deze: de Fransen waren slecht geïnformeerd. Dat is helemaal een loeier. Ik was vorige maand in Frankrijk. Op elke straathoek, in elk bistro, in iedere huiskamer werd gedebatteerd. Je kon geen radio of tv aanzetten of het ging over Europa. Iedere Fransman kreeg een exemplaar van het verdrag thuisbezorgd. De burger keerde zich helemaal niet af van Europa, integendeel. Ik zag een indrukwekkend voorbeeld van een democratisch debat. Maar het kan er bij de heilige Eurocratie nu eenmaal niet in dat iemand bij volle verstand en met kennis van zaken de euvele moed heeft nee te zeggen.

Boosting market liberalisation by reducing trade, investment and competition barriers to "best practice" levels could significantly raise GDP per head in the European Union and the United States, according to a new OECD working paper.

The paper estimates that reducing such barriers could increase GDP per head over the medium term by the following amounts:

* 2 to 3½ per cent in the European Union.
* 1¼ to 3 per cent in the OECD area as a whole.
* 1 to 3 per cent in the United States.
* ½ to 1½ per cent in the OECD area outside the United States and the European Union.

These higher levels of GDP, once in place, would have a cumulative effect on earnings. The study estimates that the benefit to workers in OECD countries could amount to the equivalent of a full year’s income across a working lifetime.

The study establishes benchmarks of best practice against which other OECD countries can be measured. Australia, for instance, has the least restrictive level of State control of business, it says, while Denmark and Ireland impose the lightest administrative procedures for start-ups. Ireland, alongside the UK, scores well in openness to competition while Canada has the clearest business regulations.

Matching the best practice benchmarks across a range of competition and trade regulations would require major reform efforts in all OECD countries. However, the need to ease competition restrictions is greater in the EU than in the US. Consequently, the economic benefits of reform would be greater in Europe, the paper adds. In most EU countries competition-restraining regulations need to be reformed in particular in the domestic air, rail and road transport and in the gas and electricity sectors. The US too needs to concentrate reform on its electricity and rail transport sectors.

The paper argues that reforming regulations restraining competition, especially in services, would contribute more to raising GDP than reducing barriers to trade and foreign direct investment.

Last Friday Eurostat released the 2004 data on comparative per capita PPP’s (purchasing power parities) across the EU. Perhaps the most surprising fact which emerges is that Ireland is now in second place (after Lu(x)embourg) with a PPP 40% above the EU average. For a country that not so long ago was considered one of the ’poorer’ EU members this is truly stunning.

The textile industry presented one of the best opportunities India ever had in recent years to create jobs on a massive scale. What was needed though was liberalisation of the labour laws that served to protect the trade-unionists, at the expense of workers. The direct result of these laws is that India lacks the economies of scale to effectively compete against China’s huge factories. Dr Manmohan Singh’s government failed to urgently invest in reforming the labour laws — the least it could do to assist Indian industry.

Het bedrijfs beslist wie aan de bak komt en wie niet

door met Clear Channel samen te werken, steun je een multinational die de campagne van Bush financierde.

One--accurate--path through the swamp is to distinguish between (i) productivity improvements abroad that make foreigners more efficient at producing what we import and (ii) productivity improvements abroad that make foreigners more efficient at producting what we export. The first set of productivity improvements is a boon for us: the prices of goods we import fall as foreigners become more efficient at producing them, and our standards of living rise. The second set of productivity improvements is a bane for us: as our exports face more competition, the prices we can charge for our exports fall, and so our exports buy less in the way of imports, and our standards of living fall. How bad can this second force be? Well, in the limit--in which foreigners become so good at making stuff that there’s nothing we make they want to buy at a price at which we are willing to sell--we are as badly off as if there were no international trade at all. The worst thing that engagement with the international economy can yield is the same as... the no-trade autarky outcome. What’s at stake isn’t our absolute impoverishment: it’s the loss of some (or most?) of what had been our gains from international trade.

Even America is not an optimal currency zone; its regions sometimes boom or shrink out of sync with the rest of the economy. But America has important features that temper the problems of unified monetary policy. Federal programmes act as automatic fiscal stabilisers, siphoning off tax revenues from booming areas and transferring them to ailing regions as unemployment insurance or health benefits for the poor. America’s labour market is also highly flexible. This allows wages and prices to adjust downward, giving depressed regions a competitive advantage that can attract new companies and thus smooth out regional disparities. And workers in declining industrial towns frequently pack up and move across the country to find work; capital flows freely as well. Without these mitigating factors, people in depressed areas could easily be trapped in a cycle of stagnation.

If Africa has already received the equivalent of six Marshall Plans in the last fifty years, how will it be saved by another one?

But while the OECD countries account for more than half of total world petroleum use, the explanation for surging world oil demand lies elsewhere. The world as a whole is consuming 82.5 million barrels a day today, which represents an increase of 4 million barrels a day over the level in 2002. Of the current 82.5 million total, China accounts for 6.5 million barrels a day, or 8% of world petroleum use. But in 2002, China was only using 5 million barrels a day. This increase of 1.5 million barrels a day from China in fact accounts for 36% of the total global increase over the last two years. The non-OECD countries combined account for 63% of the increase in global petroleum demand over the last two years. The increase in Chinese demand is primarily driven by the phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy,whose real output has increased 8% annually over the last two decades. China may or may not be able to sustain such incredible growth over the next decade. But what is abundantly clear is that world oil production can not continue to increase at the same pace. The geological and engineering realities of oil production guarantee that the rate of increase in Chinese oil demand will of necessity be restrained, through some combination of a slowing of Chinese economic growth and the energy conservation incentives that are an inevitable consequence of higher oil prices. How high do oil prices need to be in order to enforce this conservation on China and the rest of the world? That’s a hard question to answer, and its resolution by the market in part comes from a trial and error process, whose consequences we see in the high week-to-week volatility of oil prices, as the market searches for the price that equilibrates supply with demand. But there is no missing the fact that east Asia is the place to watch for what’s going to happen to oil prices over the next decade.

Throughout the conference, the participants, in addition to considering urgent immediate issues like the insurgency in Iraq, addressed underlying economic, demographic, and political developments that have important implications for the wider Middle East and the region’s relations with the West. When oil is factored out, the region has been in steady economic decline for the last 50 years, and there are few obvious prospects for reversing this trend. With women economically marginalized, half of the region’s human capital is largely unavailable for economically productive uses. During this period, the population has moved from rural to urban to “hyper-urban” settings, and there is little understanding of how this movement has contributed to social challenges or the emergence of radicalism. All of the countries in the region face the problem of how to employ university graduates, many of whom have received substandard educations. Across the region, there is a growing popular sense of despair, as reflected in a recent poll in which 50 percent of the respondents identified “migration” as their principal career objective. A backbone of resentment runs through these societies, whose populations have become more urban, more political, and more easily mobilized. As noted by several of the participants, countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Morocco have become stagnant, fragmented, and self-pitying. Each of these countries is made up of three parts: At the top, in the “palace,” a tiny group of rulers seeks closer ties with the West; in the basement, an equally small group of fanatics builds bombs and plots destruction; and finally, out in the street, society’s vast middle languishes. As for the future, it seems certain that the United States and Europe will continue to be engaged in the region, and at the same time, the West will continue to be resented. It is regrettable that the United States and Europe have done little to engage home-grown groups that are promoting democracy, transparency, and a freer political, economic, and social order, and for the time being, at least, the West—and in particular, the United States—will continue to be seen as the principal problem in the eyes of the Arab world.

De vraagelasticiteit naar arbeid is groot in België. Op lange termijn zal een vermindering in de lasten op arbeid van 1% aanleiding geven tot een toename in de vraag naar arbeid van 1%. In vergelijking met Nederland en Duitsland is dit effect bijna tweemaal groter in België. Dit suggereert dat vooral in België een lastenverlaging sterke effecten kan hebben op jobcreatie. Simulaties die in een aantal recente studies werden uitgevoerd, gebruiken doorgaans een elasticiteit die lager is en onderschatten bijgevolg de effecten van een lastenverlaging op de tewerkstelling.

De keerzijde van de medaille, echter, is dat de extra jobvacatures die tot stand kunnen komen ook dienen te worden opgevuld door de werknemers zonder dat de lastenverlaging zich volledig vertaalt in een verhoging van het brutoloon. Dit hangt ondermeer af van het onderhandelingsproces tussen de vakbonden en de werkgevers. Indien vakbonden een sterker belang hechten in onderhandelingen aan het loon dan aan tewerkstelling, kan een lastenverlaging resulteren in een sterke stijging van het bruto loon, eerder dan jobcreatie. Indien de vakbonden een relatief groter belang hechten aan jobs, dan kan een lastenverlaging resulteren in meer jobs. Het is echter moeilijk om hierover juiste empirische inschattingen te maken. Daarom werd als benchmark een eenvoudig arbeidsaanbodmodel geschat gebruik makend van individuele gegevens van arbeiders. De aanbodelasticiteit is niet groot en zelfs nul voor een aantal groepen. In het bijzonder is ze nul (inelastisch) voor mannen boven de 50 en voor hooggeschoolden. Dit suggereert dat een lastenverlaging voor deze categorie van arbeiders niet veel effect zal hebben, maar zich veeleer zal vertalen in hogere brutolonen dan meer jobs. Een lastenverlaging voor arbeiders onder de 50 en lager geschoolden lijkt het meeste effect te hebben.

Ten slotte werd onderzocht in welke mate de hoge loonkosten in België een bedreiging vormen voor het overleven van de Belgische industrie. De loonkosten in Centraal-Europa zijn gemiddeld 5 maal lager dan in België. Echter, de arbeidsproductiviteit is ook minstens 5 maal lager in Centraal-Europa dan in België. Dit suggereert dat de motieven van Belgische bedrijven om te verhuizen naar Centraal-Europa beperkt blijven. Een econometrische analyse van de effecten van loonkosten van dochterbedrijven van Belgische multinationale ondernemingen confirmeert dit beeld. Het gaat hier echter om een gemiddeld effect, wat betekent dat er ook wel bedrijven zijn die effectief verhuizen naar Centraal-Europa omwille van de lage loonkosten, echter het gaat hier om een kleine minderheid van bedrijven. Voor de grote meerderheid van de bedrijven is een delocalisatie omwille van lagere loonkosten niet aan de orde en dus gemiddeld genomen kan er geen effect worden gevonden van de lage-loonlanden op de locatiebeslissing van MNO’s. Verder dient te worden opgemerkt dat de problematiek van delocalisatie een dynamische problematiek is. De lage-loonlanden investeren in nieuwe technologie, waardoor ook de productiviteit in die regio toeneemt. Bijgevolg is het belangrijk aandacht te blijven besteden aan het verhogen van de efficiëntie door het inschakelen van betere productietechnieken om concurrentieel te blijven. In een open markteconomie werkt een dergelijke concurrentie de efficiëntie van de bedrijven met andere woorden in de hand. Het is dan ook niet verwonderlijk om vast te stellen dat delocalisatie vaker plaatsvindt naar de ons omringende landen zoals Frankrijk, Duitsland en Nederland, eerder dan naar de lageloonlanden. De reden is dat de efficiëntie van de bedrijven in de ons omringde landen vergelijkbaar is en zelfs geringe verschillen in loonkosten kunnen bijgevolg een reden zijn om bepaalde activiteiten te verhuizen. Waakzaamheid is dus geboden.

…McCain always enjoys setting off fireworks at the annual [Munich Conference on Security Policy], but his speech this year was especially incendiary. In the Republican foreign-policy divide between idealists and realists, McCain unequivocally identifies himself as an idealist. He appeared on the podium with the Russian Minister of Defense, the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for International and Legal Affairs-- and he did not spare any of them. First, he established his premise: September 11th made plain that the security of Europe and North America is dependent upon the promotion of democracy in the Middle East-- and, ultimately, in the world. "The security of New York or Madrid or Munich depends in part on the degree of freedom in Riyadh or Baghdad or Cairo," he declared. And, therefore, we can no longer afford the view that "a despotic ally [is] preferable to an unfriendly democracy," he said. "Russia is actually moving backward. Mr. Putin... is reasserting the Kremlin’s old-style central control." He also attacked Saudi Arabia, where "repression remains the norm." In Egypt, President Mubarak "has reigned as a dictator for almost twenty-four years, and he seeks yet another term, while grooming his son for what one newspaper described as a ’pharaonic succession.’" If these and other governments continued their anti democratic ways, he said, "we should reassess our relationships-- including the billions of dollars in bilateral aid that flows to them."

U.S. aid to Egypt, of course, has long been a buttress to the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace accords. Did he not worry that a cutoff of aid might be destabilizing? I asked. "Well, there wouldn’t be a war," McCain said. "You could make that argument fifteen or twenty years ago. But it’s no longer viable to prop up despotic regimes instead of democracies that may not be particularly on our side."…

American policy has come to adopt a position that post-Soviet states should be helped to overcome post-Soviet dictatorial malaise. The record here, in Georgia and Ukraine and Kyrgizstan and (soon, one hopes) Belarus, is not too discreditable. The president has changed the lazy manner in which he used to greet the appalling Vladimir Putin and has quite rightly criticized the post-Yalta settlement and its ancestry in the Hitler-Stalin pact. The defensible elements of this policy succeed only in making Uzbekistan an even more conspicuous and ugly exception. And one ought never to forget Chechnya, where the West in general has been amazingly supine in the face of Russian depredations.

According to the AFL-CIO, when it comes to issues affecting working people, he has voted "right" only 18 percent of the time.

In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation.

WHEREAS the Peoples of France and the Netherlands have voted "No" to further European integration; WHEREAS their Governments argued, throughout the referendum campaigns, that a "No" vote would amount to a rejection of the entire European project; and WHEREAS said Governments are determined to abide by their own logic; we, the 25 Member States of the EU, HAVE DECIDED to cancel the proposed Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe and, in doing so, to annul the Treaties establishing the EEC, the ECSC and Euratom, the Treaty on European Union and all consequent accords. In their place, we hereby ESTABLISH a European Commonwealth, to be based on the following principles.

I The European Commonwealth shall be an association of parliamentary democracies that collaborate one with another for mutual benefit.

II The jurisdiction of common European institutions shall be confined to cross-border matters: that is, fields of policy where the actions of one Member State impact directly upon the internal affairs of another. These include: commerce between Member States (but not trade with Third Countries); cross-border environmental pollution; and the maintenance of a free market in goods, services, people and capital.

III For the avoidance of doubt, and as a defence against creative interpretation by European judges, a list of national Reserve Powers shall be drawn up in the Member States’ constitutions (or by parliamentary statute in the United Kingdom). Such a list shall include: foreign affairs, defence, asylum and immigration, transport, energy, the powers of regional and local government, agriculture, fisheries, industry, social and employment policy, taxation, health, education, justice and home affairs. In these areas, the supremacy of national parliamentary and legal systems shall be guaranteed.

Common European policies shall come into effect only following a specific implementing decision by the national authorities.

IV Member States shall be free, if they wish, to adopt common policies in these areas. Such initiatives may happen bilaterally or multilaterally, without prejudice to the non-participating members.

V In order to give effect to these principles, the institutions of the old EU shall be reformed as follows:

1. The European Commission shall lose the right to initiate legislation. Such a right is incompatible with the principle of accountable democracy. The Commission shall instead fulfil the role of a neutral civil service, answerable to the elected governments of the Member States.

2. The European Parliament shall be replaced by an Assembly comprised of national deputies and senators, seconded from their home legislatures for a period of not more than four days a month. The Assembly shall not pretend to the role of a legislature. Its function, rather, shall be to oversee the Commission.

3. The European Court of Justice shall be comprised of judges, required as a condition of their appointment to have had experience on the bench in their home countries. It shall adjudicate disputes between the Member States as well as questions arising from the interpretation of this Treaty, but shall have no right to demarcate the border between national and European jurisdictions.

Any dispute over the location of power shall be referred to a European Tribunal, comprising the heads of national legal systems: the Master of the Rolls from the United Kingdom, the President of the Conseil d’Etat from France, the head of the Bundesverfassungsgericht from Germany and so on. These eminent jurists, retaining their national perspectives, shall adjudicate all questions touching on sovereignty.

4. The Council of Ministers shall be the supreme authority of the European Commonwealth. It shall propose common initiatives, open to such member states as choose to participate. Such initiatives should also be open to states from outside Europe.

5. The European Central Bank shall be abolished and member states shall be free to set their own interest rates or to combine their monetary policies bilaterally or multilaterally.

VI The European Commonwealth shall work towards international co-operation and the breaking down of global trade barriers.

VII The European Commonwealth shall encourage the progressive reduction of tariffs against produce from Third Countries, including in the fields of agriculture, textiles and raw materials.

VIII Any uncertainty arising from ambiguities in this Treaty shall be resolved in favour of the individual citizen rather than the state, and of national governments rather than European institutions.

IX Changes to this treaty shall take effect only following ratification by referendum in all signatory states.

Done at London on the Fifth Day of June in the year Two Thousand and Five.

Winst uit overzeese handel is zeer belangrijk. Als dit geld goed beheerd wordt, kan het miljoenen opleveren: is dat niet te verkiezen boven belastingen heffen bij het volk?

WATKINS: OK. Secretary Eagleburger, this is the million dollar question. I mean, folks have been waiting for three decades to know who Deep Throat was or is. Is Mark Felt, in your opinion, Deep Throat?

EAGLEBURGER: Probably.

WATKINS: Do you think he’s Deep Throat?

EAGLEBURGER: Probably. You know, President Nixon once suspected him. I’m surprised he didn’t end up dead somewhere because of that...

Steve Stevaert heeft veel gereist naar Cuba. Hij wordt nu de Fidel Castro van Limburg. Als Stevaert met Limburg het Cuba aan de Maas gaat opbouwen dan zal de Limburgers nog veel armoede wachten.

A glorified free-trade zone is just what Europe needs, and all it needs, not some Franco-German dominated statist conglomeration designed to stick it to the Americans. The recent enlargement of the EU was just what the doctor called for in this regard, bringing in fresh blood to shake up the cozy old French and German stitchup, as well as lots of healthy competition.

“The Chinese are born entrepreneurs.” Even in the 1980s, when private enterprise was only tentatively sanctioned, the entrepreneurial spirit was everywhere. Although it wasn’t clear what was permissible, roadside vendors appeared in droves, opening tiny market stalls right under the rifles of the Red Guard. By now, Chinese entrepreneurship is unstoppable. Last month I was walking beside a big apartment building in Beijing, idly looking at the iron grills installed over the ground floor window-wells. One window-well, however, had been completely boarded up, with only a small square opening. When I peered in, a weathered Chinese face looked back at me, in front of a tiny shelf of soda bottles, matches and soap. The proprietor had turned a three by five foot window-well into her own little market.

Another striking difference between Japan and China is the Chinese success in learning English. One of the eternal mysteries of Japan is why, in a country where the post-war constitution mandates English study, so few speak it well without overseas study. By contrast, lots of Chinese who have never left the mainland speak excellent English. In fact, it’s a national obsession. During my last visit to China, the second annual English Speaker competition was just ending: a nationwide event in which 6 million students compete to be finalists on a national primetime television special to choose the best English speaker in China. (Hey, we’ve got "American Idol.") But the drive for English is not just to chat with Americans — it’s because English is now the worldwide language of business.

Additionally, the Chinese track record for innovation dwarfs that of Japan. As Robert Templeton’s book "The Genius of China" sets out in detail, the country was centuries ahead of Europe in inventions ranging from the wheelbarrow and cast iron to matches, paper and the rocket. Chinese physicists developed a nuclear reactor in 1958, an atomic bomb in 1964, a long-range missile in 1966, and in 1970 orbited a satellite. Between 1991 and 2001, Chinese expenditures on research and development tripled, and that number continues to climb. The biggest investments are being made in such key areas such as advanced chip design, biotechnology and nanotechnology.

Finally, China brings an element to the table that few other nations can match: a sufficiently large domestic market such that it can actually create its own standards for technology — and make them stick. Traditionally, Europe, Japan and the United States have always created technology standards — how television or cell phone signals are broadcast, for example, or the formats for CDs and DVDs. But China is now developing its own standards for technologies such as digitized video and next-generation cell phones. Foreign manufacturers will have to adopt those standards if they wish to sell to the Chinese. Sooner or later, one of those home-grown standards may go international, giving Chinese companies even more power.

Ik wil de 1 miljoen mensen die op ons hebben gestemd, waarschuwen. De gratis CD met zogenaamd Vlaamse muziek als Soulwax, Daan, Arsenal en Millionaire, die bij het extreemlinkse blad Deng zit, bevat alleen maar subversief lawaai en elementen van vreemde origine die in plaats van op een gratis CD, beter op een C130 naar het land van herkomst worden gezet. Beste vrienden, laat u niet vangen.

The greatest geostrategic disaster of the 20th century

the worst day of my entire life

But if we wish to befriend Russia—and America has no more vital interest —we must try to see the world as Putin sees it. We must try to see Russia from the vantage point of a patriot son who joined his nation’s secret service at the apogee of its power, only to see his country collapse, crumble, and fall to pieces in two years.

At the most basic level, Black always insisted that the same forces of supply and demand that determine the price of risk must also determine the riskfree rate of interest. But if this rate clears credit markets, then what sense can we make of the neoKeynesian idea that the government sets the rate? No sense, says Black, at least not in a world of uncontrolled banking (Black 1970). Here we can locate the origin of finance as a field independent of 1965-style economics, and a field that embraces a worldview firmly centered in the private sector and free market exchange. Black achieved this worldview as early as 1968-1969, shortly after joining ADL himself and learning about CAPM from Treynor. The dates make clear that the worldview of finance is one of the legacies of the ferment of the 1960s. The libertarian political overtones of the finance field stem not from recrudescence of pre-Keynesian conservatism, but rather from generational revolt against a government intent on prosecuting an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, and against the parental generation that had elected that government. And they came from outside academia, not inside.

Today, opponents of evolutionary theory know that they can’t teach religion in public schools. If they’re going to smuggle religion in, they need to be sneakier. So they strip off any part of their "intelligent design" theory that might sound like it is religious and pose as simple scientists asking "hard" questions of narrow-minded evolutionists.

The anti-evolutionists affect not to know who or what the "intelligent designer" of their theory might be. He, she, it, or they could be little green men or purple space squid or a race of intelligent supercomputers—or maybe, just maybe, an omnipotent God. Who knows? We’re all just innocently asking "scientific" questions here.

But away from the glare of media attention, this pose of scientific objectivity cracks. "ID has theological implications. ID is not strictly Christian, but it is theistic," admitted board member Martin. The intelligent design proponents in Kansas ask: Why not let children in public schools hear arguments for intelligent design in biology classes? Schools could "teach the controversy."

Biologists retort by asking, "So it’s OK then for high schools to teach astrology, phrenology, mesmerism, tarot card reading, crystal healing, astral projection and water witching, too?"

Intelligent design theorists aside, the people who want intelligent design taught in public schools hope the theory will undercut the corrosive effects of evolutionary biology on the religious beliefs of their children. They don’t know and couldn’t care less about the scientific details of the evolution of species or the origin of life—they just want Darwinism kept away from their kids.

What they don’t understand, however, is that religious belief and evolution are compatible.

In 1996 no less a religious authority than Pope John Paul II declared, "New knowledge has led to the recognition in the theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis.

Germaine Greer - I thought we agreed that this war wasn’t fought for regime change but now it turns out that it was and you knew all along. Well, the rest of us are a bit surprised.

Christopher Hitchens – Well, the rest of you should have been paying more attention.

Over recent months, the political and economic rhetoric in these countries has betrayed a widespread belief in a wide range of economic fallacies: that there is a fixed supply of and demand for labor, that competition is a zero-sum game, that trade is a race to the bottom and that prosperity depends largely on the welfare of producers, not consumers. What’s particularly missing from the European economic debate is any appreciation of the centrality of innovation as the source of prosperity and growth.

Consider, for example, the European reaction to Google’s recent announcement that it would spend up to $200 million over the next decade to scan 15 million books from five leading academic libraries, putting all the contents online.

Within a month, the president of the French National Library complained that Google’s initiative would be the latest attempt at cultural hegemony by the Anglo-Saxon world. Jean-Noel Jeanneney was concerned not only that not enough non-English texts would be scanned, but also that Google’s method of ranking search results based on the frequency of customer visits would give an "American point of view" on every topic. So persuasive was Jeanneney that, with the backing of Chirac and other national leaders, the European Union committed $125 million last month to a project that will not only scan the books in Europe’s national libraries, but also develop a nonprofit search engine to rival Google.

Let’s put aside, for a moment, the cultural paranoia that drives this project, and consider merely the economic assumptions that lie behind it.

We could start, for example, by asking why the Google search engine has a bigger market share in many European countries than it does in the United States, even after the creation of the world’s largest free-trade zone and the launching of the euro, which were supposed to spur development of home-grown champions?

Why is the first reaction to a strong foreign competitor to launch a government-protected, taxpayer-subsidized rival?

And why would government officials assume that they have such exquisite instincts that they can identify a huge, untapped market for a European-oriented service that European companies have completely ignored?

The fact that those questions do not even occur to European leaders -- let alone their voters or their opposition parties -- goes a long way toward explaining why free market capitalism has yet to take root in Western Europe.

Whenever a politician talks abot the "national interest," he’s almost always talking rubbish. Amazingly, though, Peter Mandelson of all people has given us an exception to this rule. He says of the Boeing-Airbus dispute: "I can assure you, Europe’s interests will be fully defended." He’s right. Europe’s interests will be defended - by the Americans. The fact is, it’s in Europeans’ interests to get our imports as cheaply as possible. If some damn-fool American taxpayer wants to subsidize US exports of planes to us, we should let them. Put it this way. Imagine Americans were to give away all their exports to Europe. That would be fantastic news for us. So, our only complaint when they subsidize one or two exports is that their generosity doesn’t go far enough. Of course, cheap imports of US planes will put European plane makers out of business. But no matter. In getting cheap goods from the US, Europeans’ real incomes are higher than they would otherwise be. That stimulates demand for other goods, and so creates jobs. How, then, can Europeans possibly complain about American subsidies? One possibility is that they stop us exporting planes. This isn’t good enough. Imagine you’re a gardener. Your neighbour enjoys gardening himself, even though his best skills lie elsewhere. Can you really complain when your neighbour does his own gardening, thus stopping you exporting your skills? Your neighbour is, in a sense, subsidizing his taste for gardening - because in gardening himself he is sacrificing income that he could earn from his best profession. Airbus has as much right to compalin about subsidies to Boeing as gardeners or decorators have to compalin about DIY and gardening fanatics. Another complaint Europeans have is that American subsidies to Boeing are raising taxes for other Americans, which reduces their real incomes and hence demand for European goods. But this argument is as much a defence of Americans’ interests as European ones. But of course, what Peter Mandelson really means by "Europe’s interests" is something else completely. He means the interests of Europe’s producers - not of consumers. In the EU, it’s only producer interests that matter, isn’t it?

Words of wisdom from the Chinese commerce minister:

Bo Xilai, the commerce minister, said the EU and the US had not provided sufficient evidence that the flow of Chinese goods have damaged their local markets. Chinese textile exports to the US have swollen by 250 per cent in the last year, and by 83 per cent to Europe. However, Mr Bo said the price of a dozen T-shirts, one of the product lines cited by the EU, had risen from €97 (£67) to €101 between January and March. He said China had fought hard for its place in the World Trade Organisation and was determined to uphold its trade rights. "If you place limits on Chinese products, we will adjust our policies accordingly," he warned. "If you place five ounces of pressure on our businesses, we will remove eight ounces of their burdens." "The EU and the United States should spend more time on the development of high technology, rather than spending time quarrelling with us on issues like shirts, socks and trousers," he said. The EU said yesterday that it had provided three months of data to show European businesses were suffering. "We see there is irreparable damage and that is why we have launched a request for formal consultations," said commission spokesman Claude Veron-Reville. She warned that China had 15 days to limit its exports or face possible EU curbs.

The problem with Ms. Veron-Reville’s statement is that it is a lie. Flat out, complete and total and utter bollocks. I have repeatedly asked both her office and Eurostat for the figures. (Before anyone can actually decide what is going on we need the numbers not just for Chinese imports but for all imports by country of origin. Some countries will have seen falls in their exports....most probably as a result of Chinese companies moving production back to China as they no longer need to do the finishing elsewhere to gain quota share.)

Here is the answer I got from Eurostat on May 23 2005:

Thank you for your e-mail. There are still 5 Member States missing for March 2005: Belgium, Denmark, Cyprus, Portugal and Lithuania. We estimate to have them within 2-3 weeks, so I suggest you contact us again a bit later on, if it’s not too late for you to receive the data by then, and I hope that we then will be able to send the data to you.

The Commission cannot have provided the relevant data for the three month period as the relevant data does not yet exist. Lying bastards.

...mainland knitwear exports to the EU account for only 0.2 per cent of the EU’s imports and we are talking here of EU imports after eliminating trade between EU countries. Of course, knitwear exports also account for barely 25 per cent of the mainland’s exports of garments and textiles to the EU. They are the most egregious examples of the garment export boom to the EU. But I am only following the example of European trade negotiators in being selective in choosing my example. When they complain about China’s rag trade exports they invariably pick on women’s white silk ballroom gloves or floral handkerchiefs or similar minute categories. Very well, fellas, we will let you say what enormous increases in import growth you have seen in your own selective choices so long as you also tell us how tiny a proportion each of them constitutes of your import bill. But let us look at the bigger picture here. The red line in the second chart shows you what really irks Europeans in their trade with the mainland. It is that the mainland’s trade surplus with them has shot up to a level US$5 billion a month and it has all happened very recently. The figure three years ago was barely 10 per cent of what it is at present. And now look at the blue line. It represents a four-month average of the mainland’s trade surplus with the EU in textiles and garments. Up to 2002 this accounted for most of the overall surplus but now, even after having risen with the abolition of quotas, it accounts for barely 20 per cent. If the EU wants a culprit for its sudden trade imbalance, that culprit is not textiles and garments. Try the light green line on the chart instead. It represents the mainland’s trade surplus with the EU in machinery and electrical equipment. In deficit until 2003, this category is now running at a surplus of US$2 billion a month in the mainland’s favour. Yet I have not heard a peep from the EU about this one. The rag trade is an easier target. But let us be grateful that the attention of Europe’s politicians has now been focused inwards with France’s rejection of an EU constitution. They will have to start looking for their villains in their own countries again, which, fortunately, means less attention to pseudo-villains abroad.

Australian researchers are reviving a project to bring an extinct animal known as the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead through cloning.

It is too easy to demonize or scapegoat Saudi Arabia because of the differences between our societies. The relationship must turn on the way we see the future, based on mutual tolerance and mutual respect.

Americans are deeply bound up in the modern history of the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia developed its energy resources in close partnership with the United States. Thousands of Americans contributed to the development of the Kingdom’s energy and economic infrastructure, and thousands of Saudis came to the U.S. to take advantage of our worldclass education system. As the holder of approximately one-quarter of the world’s oil reserves, the Kingdom is obviously important to the United States, and the rest of the world.

These inconsistencies and the marginal nature of most reforms have significantly increased the institutional complexity of the European institutional landscape. In the field of employment protection, for instance, we have assisted to a multiplication of contractual types, with a number of fixed-term and unstable jobs going hand-in-hand with permanent and still heavily protected positions. All this has increased the dualism of European labor markets, making them more segmented not only between insiders and outsiders but also among various types of outsiders.

This involvement of supra-national authorities is not a viable reform strategy in the case of labor market reforms. The issue is that there ought to be sound economic arguments for having in this area supranational authorities in charge of policies. In the case of product markets, the externalities involved by greater competition are self-evident. In the case of labor market and social policies, the case is instead strong for keeping decentralized, countrylevel, decision-making in place. Public insurance schemes, for instance, can be better run at a decentralized level. There is also evidence of diseconomies scale in social security provisions as the most effective social security systems (those achieving more redistribution relative to the resources allocated to them) in Europe are those of the smallest EU Members. Finally, there are country-specific clusters of institutions and imposing the same approach to all may end up getting the worse of the various systems. It is much better to rely on competition among systems, forcing reforms which imitate the best practices.

Why is the world heating up so much faster than the US? Can it be because of globalization and economic development and URBANIZATION -- you know, all those good things that have already happened in the US but are only just now happening worldwide as well?

In 2003, more than half of the top 25 recipients of U.S. arms transfers in the developing world (13 of 25) were defined as undemocratic by the U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Report: in the sense that "citizens do not have the right to change their own government." These 13 nations received over $2.7 billion in U.S. arms transfers in 2003, with the top recipients including Saudi Arabia ($1.1 billion), Egypt ($1.0 billion), Kuwait ($153 million), the United Arab Emirates ($110 million) and Uzbekistan ($33 million). When countries designated by the State Department’s Human Rights Report to have poor human rights records or serious patterns of abuse are factored in, 20 of the top 25 U.S. arms clients in the developing world in 2003 -- a full 80% -- were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses.

1) I’m not sure why we care more about economic integration than other types of economic change. Every time there is a technological innovation, some people benefit but others lose. Every time a person decides to patronize one store over another, some people benefit but others lose. Every time any economic transaction happens, in fact, there are winners and losers. Why does it make a crucial difference whether or not that transaction happened to cross a national border? All economic transactions, whether domestic or international, involve a willing buyer and a willing seller... and all therefore (by definition) make the parties directly involve better off. But all also have negative repercussions on some people not involved in the transaction. Clearly, some would answer, crossing a national border makes a difference because different governments might influence economic decisions differently. True. But realistically, most economic integration is not taking advantage of differences in governmental regulations. The vast majority of international transactions simply take advantage of price differences: the price of labor, the price of capital, etc. Furthermore, governments interfere in other types of economic change, too. Governments may do research to encourage technological advances in one particular field, which makes an old industry obsolete and throws people out of work as a result... but does that mean that we should try to stop technological progress? Governments may enact policies that privilege one type of industry over others... but does that mean that we should try to forbid people from changing their spending behavior? I would argue no. Economic change happens, and will always happen, and will always create winners and losers. Why do some types of economic change seem okay to most people while economic integration does not?

2) When thinking about the costs and benefits of economic integration, why should we only consider those that apply to people in our own country? Is there any particular reason that I should care more about the welfare effects of economic integration on people in Lubbock, Santa Barbara, or Chattanooga than the effects on people in Lucknow, Sao Paolo, or Chongqing? Personally, I can’t think of any good reason why. I realize, however, that this is a matter of personal preference; others may indeed genuinely care more about people living in the US than people living in other countries. However, if one cares equally for people in other countries, then it is hard to think that economic integration is a bad thing. As I just reiterated, economic change – all types of economic change – generates both winners and losers. It is reasonable (and, I would argue, virtuous) to care about the losers from any type of economic change, including economic integration. But one should also be glad for those that have gained. I do not rejoice over the bad luck that displaced workers in the US have had to deal with. In fact, I see the horrible consequences of it every day, living in an old, depressed New England mill town that has had an unemployment rate far above the national average for nearly two decades. And every day I try to effect political and economic changes to help people who are economically disadvantaged through no fault of their own, but rather simply due to the never-ending process of economic change. But at the same time I recognize for every one of those mill workers who was laid off in my town, several people around the world were lifted out of abject poverty (and you don’t know what real poverty is until you’ve spent time in a developing country), and for the first time given the chance to feed, clothe, and educate their children so that they can be the first generation with a realistic chance of living a significantly better life than a medieval peasant.

Christopher Horner, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, reports 2010 projections (the source is Brussels, published in Washington Times, 16 May) How much will various countries be above their promised target levels?

Portugal: 77 pct. above

Spain: 61 pct. above (their greenhouse gas emissions have increased forty percent since 1990)

Greece: 51 pct. above

Ireland: 41 pct. above (NB: This number is where the U.S. will likely end up!)

Luxembourg: 31 pct. above

Finland: 26 pct. above

Italy: 13 to 23 pct. above (the number went up once Italy submitted its official estimate)

France: 19 pct. above, with Belgium at 16 pct. and Netherlands at 10 pct.

The bottom line is that few countries will adhere to this unworkable treaty.

A tape said to be recorded by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi condemns the new government in Baghdad and claims the killing of fellow Muslims is justified in attacks against U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces.

an analysis shows that the wages of native dropouts (people with less than a high school diploma) relative to native high school graduates have remained nearly constant since 1980, despite pressures from immigrant inflows that have increased the relative supply of dropout labor, and despite the rise in the wage gap between other education groups in the U.S. economy. While the counterfactual is unknown, it is hard to argue that the aggregate time series evidence points to a negative impact of immigration unless one starts from that position a priori. On the question of immigrant assimilation, a major constraint in the U.S. literature has been the absence of true longitudinal data. Nevertheless, a narrow focus on immigrant earnings is arguably misplaced. Few of the 40 percent of immigrants who come to the U.S. without completed high school education will ever catch up with the average earnings of natives. Most of their U.S.- born children, however, will catch up with the children of natives. Evidence on the intergenerational progress of immigrants’ children is now becoming available, and points to aboveaverage levels of educational attainment, even for children whose fathers had much lower schooling than native-born fathers. The relatively strong educational progress of second generation immigrants, together with the limited evidence of adverse effects on less skilled natives, suggest that the new immigration may not be so bad after all.

David Card has a higher IQ than me. He taught my graduate micro class, and put me in my place, fair and square. But taken together, I have to conclude that his research on immigration flatly contradicts his research on the minimum wage. His results for immigration imply that labor demand is infinitely responsive to price; his results for the minimum wage imply that labor demand is not responsive to price at all.

You could say that my former teacher has two sets of results for two different kinds of markets. But in both cases, he’s focused on markets for low-skill labor. Lots of immigrants from the Mariel boatlift presumably got jobs at McDonald’s. He’s not looking at two different markets; he’s looking at roughly the same market from two different angles.

What gives? I think Card’s work on immigration is closer to the truth than his work on the minimum wage. But it’s not because the immigration studies are well-done and the minimum wage studies are not. The quality of Card’s empirical work is uniformly high. I simply find his results for immigration more intrinsically plausible.

Why? As a theoretical matter, demand is highly inelastic under two main conditions:

1. Total expenditure on the good is a small fraction of one’s budget.
2. There are no good substitutes for the good.

In the market for low-skilled labor, neither assumption is credible. Labor expenses are usually the main cost of doing business. And you only have to peak over the counter at McDonald’s to see how easily machines can replace men.

These simple observations are the main reason why I think immigration does not reduce domestic wages much, and the minimum wage has a substantial employment cost. It would take pretty strong empirical evidence to change my mind. A bunch of studies finding that labor demand is either infinitely elastic or infinitely inelastic don’t come close.

It seems like everybody and their brother is heading down to Dubai this weekend for the Destiny’s Child concert Thursday night, and from what I gather from my friends in Dubai the majority of the tickets have been sold to people from Kuwait. The airlines are booked solid, and all the major hotels have been sold out. Which begs the question... if there’s such a huge Kuwaiti demand to see Destiny’s Child in concert, why couldn’t they come here and perform?

Several of the nation’s most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming. Their numbers are still small, but they represent growing cracks in what had been a virtually solid wall of opposition to nuclear power among most mainstream environmental groups. In recent statements, three top environmental experts - Fred Krupp, the executive director of Environmental Defense, and Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute and James Gustave Speth, the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies - have stopped well short of embracing nuclear power, but they have emphasized that it is worth trying to find solutions to the economic, safety and security, waste storage and proliferation issues rather than rejecting the whole technology.

The anger at the magazine articles advocating nuclear power was visceral. In the April edition of Wired, the editors wrote: "In February, we suggested it’s time to reconsider nuclear power; readers had a meltdown." They said, "Even onetime environmentalist-in-chief Al Gore chimed in at Davos, complaining directly to our editor in chief." One letter to the magazine called the article - "Nuclear Now!" by Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss - "right-leaning, Cheney-worshipping drivel about clean nuclear power" and said, "The bottom line is that nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and we have no way of disposing of the intensely radioactive trash it generates."

Kuwait’s parliament agreed on Monday to discuss a bill that would grant women the right to vote and stand in elections, after pressure from the pro-Western Gulf Arab state’s government. Analysts said the government, which hopes for success on the controversial issue before a likely trip by the prime minister to Washington next month, tempted lawmakers with a concession on a bill on salary hikes for most public and private employees. "They are facing strong American pressure. Kuwait’s leaders have promised the United States that they back women’s rights," said political analyst Jassem al-Saadoun. After the cabinet agreed on Monday to discuss the pay rises, a majority of parliament members agreed to debate the women’s suffrage bill -- a major shift in the long battle to get conservative MPs to grant women full political rights. It was not clear when they might pass the bill, but parliamentary sources said it could be soon.

Thailand and India illustrate the choices available to countries with weak institutions. While India followed a path of slow but steady growth, Thailand experienced high growth, lending booms and crisis. GDP per capita grew by only 99% between 1980 and 2001 in India, whereas Thailand’s GDP per capita grew by 148%, despite the effects of a major crisis.

This paper contributes to the discussion of whether financial liberalization should be implemented before other reforms have been implemented. While the first best is to implement judicial reform and improve the quality of institutions, if such reforms are not feasible, financial liberalization and an increase in risk taking appear to improve economic growth rates even after the effects of crises have been taken into account.

Workers in those shirt and sneaker factories are, inevitably, paid very little and expected to endure terrible working conditions. I say "inevitably" because their employers are not in business for their (or their workers’) health; they pay as little as possible, and that minimum is determined by the other opportunities available to workers. And these are still extremely poor countries, where living on a garbage heap is attractive compared with the alternatives. And yet, wherever the new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. Partly this is because a growing industry must offer a somewhat higher wage than workers could get elsewhere in order to get them to move. More importantly, however, the growth of manufacturing--and of the penumbra of other jobs that the new export sector creates--has a ripple effect throughout the economy. The pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to rise. Where the process has gone on long enough--say, in South Korea or Taiwan--average wages start to approach what an American teen-ager can earn at McDonald’s. And eventually people are no longer eager to live on garbage dumps.

The average full-time Wal-Mart employee is paid only about $17,000 a year. The company’s health care plan covers fewer than half of its workers. True, not everyone is badly paid. In 1968, the head of General Motors received about $4 million in today’s dollars - and that was considered extravagant. But last year Scott Lee Jr., Wal-Mart’s chief executive, was paid $17.5 million. That is, every two weeks Mr. Lee was paid about as much as his average employee will earn in a lifetime. Not that many of them will actually spend a lifetime at Wal-Mart: more than 40 percent of the company’s workers leave every year. I’m not trying either to romanticize the General Motors of yore or to portray Wal-Mart as the root of all evil. GM was , and Wal-Mart is, a product of its time. And there’s no easy way to reverse the changes. What should be clear, however, is that the public safety net F.D.R. and L.B.J. created is more important than ever, now that workers in the world’s richest nation can no longer count on the private sector to provide them with economic security.

Sugar is a prototypical case of a policy that favors the few at the expense of the many. Thanks to a government policy that supports prices by sharply restricting imports, a small number of American sugar cane and beet growers are enriched at the expense of US consumers and of more efficient foreign growers, most of whom are in poorer developing countries. In addition, in Florida, sugar cane production contributes to degradation of the Everglades and, before it was mechanized in the mid-1990s, allegations of abusive labor practices were rampant. Competitive US exporters also pay a price because such blatant trade protection undermines the position of US negotiators seeking trade liberalization abroad. Sugar was excluded entirely from the “free” trade agreement with Australia, and it is the only sector in the agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA) that will retain some protection when the agreement is fully implemented. Even so, US sugar producers adamantly oppose the agreement and have vowed to defeat it when it is presented to the US Congress for ratification this year. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, sugar receives proportionally more support from the US government than any other major crop. Yet, according to the US Trade Representative, “farms growing sugar account for less than one-half of one percent of all U.S. farms.”2 So why the special treatment? Although Hiassen denies it, many believe that the Rojo family featured in his novel of political corruption in south Florida is loosely based on the Fanjul family of Palm Beach, Florida. The Fanjuls‘ Florida Crystals Corporation produces sugar on nearly 200,000 acres in the Everglades Agricultural Area and sells it at roughly twice the world price thanks to government restrictions on imports. Special Prosecutor Ken Starr revealed the real-world influence of the Fanjuls when he reported that President Bill Clinton took a phone call from CEO Alfonso Fanjul during a late-night meeting with Monica Lewinsky.3 Fanjul, who had donated generously to Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, was angry over a proposed penny-per-pound tax on sugar to help fund Everglades restoration. Although both the federal and Florida state governments eventually passed legislation to partially restore the Everglades, neither included a tax on sugar; the cost to industry is estimated at just $300 million of the $8 billion, 20-year cost.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia is proving to the world that determined people can rise up and claim their freedom from oppressive rulers, U.S. President George W. Bush has told a crowd of tens of thousands. Bush’s speech in the capital Tblisi on Tuesday was the last event of his five-day, four-nation tour marking the end of World War II in Europe. "Your most important contribution is your example," Bush said. "Before there was a Purple Revolution in Iraq or an Orange Revolution in Ukraine or a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, there was a Rose Revolution in Georgia." Speaking in Freedom Square, the site of protests in November 2003 that formed the so-called Rose Revolution that put President Mikhail Saakashvili in power, he said: "You gathered here armed with nothing but roses and the power of your convictions and you claimed your liberty. "Because you acted, Georgia is today both sovereign and free and a beacon of liberty for this region and the world."

Not long after I published an article about media ownership I received an email from a stranger from Illinois. She was polite, but said she had to respond. She wrote that she was reading the book Fast Food Nation and

“[I] am appalled at how an industry that started with independent proprietors has, over the past century, turned into a monolith that has destroyed the independent farmer, trounced on its workers and became, basically, part of the political machine.”

She concluded

“The similarities between the fast-food and media industries may seem to be far-reaching, but I think a serious consideration of the two shows their frightening parallels.”

I responded in the context of who owns the media:
That book was published by Houghton-Mifflin--at the time owned by one of the biggest media companies, Vivendi (since divested and now controlled by a non-media group of investors). The paperback was published by Harper Collins, owned by none other than News Corp. So, here is a book that is highly critical of a major industry and for some confirms that Capitalism is bad. And it is published by the biggest of the big media companies. Why? Because that is the business they are in. They are not there to restrict the flow of ideas, but to promote as many as they can, the better for their bottom line. Win-Win.

But that was not the end. Several days later this email arrived from her:

Something happened late last night/early this morning that underscores my point--I feel as though I don’t need to respond to anything you say below because THIS IS WHY CONSOLIDATION IS TERRIFYING. Clear Channel pulled Howard Stern from the air. I am outraged. I am disgusted. I am affected because Clear Channel owns--thousands?--of radio stations throughout the country. And Clear Channel is conservative, and Clear Channel is TAKING AWAY MY RIGHT TO CHOOSE. Consolidation is not an issue we should be concerned about? How can you defend it now?

I pointed out that only about six of Clear Channel’s 1,200 stations carried Stern and that Clear Channel stations (and others) have been fined by the FCC for infractions of obscenity/indecency involving Stern’s programs.
But then this candid reply came back:

I must explain. Clear Channel is a sticking point in my side because of its political affiliations (read: Bush administration) and clear dominance in the industry. They use their stations to support their own agenda (I’m talking specifically of the many pro-war rallies Clear Channel sponsored via radio stations--I believe Clear Channel helped create the cultural climate of "If you are against the war, you are against America”).

So behind the concern about domination by Clear Channel, my now regular correspondent admitted that it was politics.

I wrote back: “Would you feel any differently about Clear Channel if their stations happened to have what appeared to be an anti--Bush political viewpoint? Would that make the situation better?”

To which she wrote back (in part):

“I respect liberal media (I admit, more so than their conservative brethren), but that should not be part of a company’s agenda--in a perfect world, I guess…. I have a mistrust of corporate America…. I understand that the market drives everything--but there’s a chicken or the egg scenario here, do you see that? Is the market created by the consumers’ ideals and desires, or is it prodded and persuaded by those who own the market? It’s a question I don’t know the answer to.”

One popular argument for the "made in the U.S.A." explanation of declining national saving and the rising current account deficit focuses on the burgeoning U.S. federal budget deficit, which in 2004 drained more than $400 billion from the national saving pool. (But N)ote that the so-called twin-deficits hypothesis, that government budget deficits cause current account deficits, does not account for the fact that the U.S. external deficit expanded by about $300 billion between 1996 and 2000, a period during which the federal budget was in surplus and projected to remain so. Nor, for that matter, does the twin-deficits hypothesis shed any light on why a number of major countries, including Germany and Japan, continue to run large current account surpluses despite government budget deficits that are similar in size (as a share of GDP) to that of the United States. It seems unlikely, therefore, that changes in the U.S. government budget position can entirely explain the behavior of the U.S. current account over the past decade.

most developing countries have younger and more-rapidly growing workforces, as well as relatively low ratios of capital to labor, conditions that imply that the returns to capital in those countries may potentially be quite high. Basic economic logic thus suggests that, in the longer term, the industrial countries as a group should be running current account surpluses and lending on net to the developing world, not the other way around. If financial capital were to flow in this "natural" direction, savers in the industrial countries would potentially earn higher returns and enjoy increased diversification, and borrowers in the developing world would have the funds to make the capital investments needed to promote growth and higher living standards.

Because investment by businesses in equipment and structures has been relatively low in recent years (for cyclical and other reasons) and because the tax and financial systems in the United States and many other countries are designed to promote homeownership, much of the recent capital inflow into the developed world has shown up in higher rates of home construction and in higher home prices. Higher home prices in turn have encouraged households to increase their consumption. Of course, increased rates of homeownership and household consumption are both good things. However, in the long run, productivity gains are more likely to be driven by nonresidential investment, such as business purchases of new machines. The greater the extent to which capital inflows act to augment residential construction and especially current consumption spending, the greater the future economic burden of repaying the foreign debt is likely to be.

In the United States, for example, the growth in export-oriented sectors such as manufacturing has been restrained by the U.S. trade imbalance (although the recent decline in the dollar has alleviated that pressure somewhat), while sectors producing nontraded goods and services, such as home construction, have grown rapidly. To repay foreign creditors, as it must someday, the United States will need large and healthy export industries. The relative shrinkage in those industries in the presence of current account deficits--a shrinkage that may well have to be reversed in the future--imposes real costs of adjustment on firms and workers in those industries.

With thousands of stations and more than 2.6 million listeners a month, Live365 is the world’s largest Internet radio network. The Company gives individuals and organizations a "voice" to be able to reach a global audience, while offering radio listeners an unparalleled choice in music and other audio content. Through easy-to-use tools and services, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can create his or her own Internet radio station. As a result, Live365 offers the most diverse array of high-quality radio available today, with thousands of stations spanning myriad genres and representing over 150 countries.

Launched in July 1999, Live365 is a two-time winner of the Best Radio Website Award from the Web Marketing Association, a two-time winner of the People’s Voice award for Best Music Site at the Webby Awards (2001, 2002), a winner of the Webby’s People’s Voice Award for Best Radio Site (2004), and has received Best-of-Web designations from Forbes.com and the San Francisco Chronicle.

It is completely legal to create, broadcast and listen to Live365 stations. All broadcasting stations adhere to rules set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA"). Live365 broadcasters are required to agree to and abide by these rules upon starting a station. Live365 also has licenses with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ("ASCAP"), Broadcast Music, Inc. ("BMI") and The Society of European Stage Authors and Composers ("SESAC"). These licenses allow broadcasters to stream licensed music on their stations.

there are now more Chinese restaurants in America than there are McDonald’s franchises—nearly three times as many in fact. In the 19th century, though, the Chinese were scorned as rat-eaters; nothing could have been more revolting than eating what they ate.

How "authentic" they are, though, depends on how you define "authentic." "It is and isn’t a return to the way things were at the beginning," says Lee. She points out that with globalization, food is changing quickly even in Asia; what constitutes Chinese food is evolving.

After the removal of quotas, textiles and clothing will still face formidable barriers to market access in both developed and developing country markets in the form of high tariffs and perhaps safeguard measures. For the Quad (except Japan), for example, average tariffs for textiles and clothing products are considerably higher than the overall simple average. Tariffs on textiles and clothing are even higher in major developing countries; in major textiles and clothing exporting countries, such as Bangladesh and India, tariffs on textiles and clothing imports are over 30 per cent. For some countries (notably South Africa and, to a lesser extent, Japan), tariffs on textiles and clothing tend to have a larger share of specific duty elements (including compound and alternate rates) than other products; (...) specific duties tend to conceal tariff "peaks".

Total support to agriculture by OECD (2003) countries, as measured by the total support estimate (TSE), remains high, at US$318 billion in 2002, roughly the same amount as sub-Saharan Africa’s annual GDP. The EU, Japan and the US collectively account for over four-fifths of such support (although as a percentage of the value of gross farm receipts, support is highest in Switzerland, Norway, Korea, Iceland and Japan, respectively). Total support was the equivalent of 1.2 per cent of GDP in the OECD area, compared with an annual average of 2.3 per cent in the peak 1986-88 period, when the Uruguay Round negotiations were under way. Agriculture’s contribution to GDP in the OECD area is currently about 2 per cent. In Japan, the Republic of Korea, Norway, and Switzerland, total support to agriculture is close to, or even exceeds, the sector’s contribution to GDP. Nearly three quarters of total support is provided to farmers. Such support, as measured by the producer support estimate (PSE), represents 31 per cent of total farm receipts, down from 38 per cent in 1986-88. The corresponding PSEs for Japan, the EU, Canada and the United States were 59 per cent, 36 per cent, 20 per cent and 18 per cent. Thus, for every 100 yen a Japanese farmer earned in 2002, 59 came from support measures. Support levels in 2002 were the lowest in New Zealand (1 per cent) and Australia (5 per cent). Rice, sugar and milk are the most supported commodities, with transfers to producers close to, or exceeding, half of gross receipts for these products.The prices received by OECD farmers in 2002, were on average 31 per cent above world prices (compared with 57 per cent in the mid-1980s), thereby shielding farmers in many countries from world market signals. At the same time, the prices paid by OECD consumers in 2002 were on average 37 per cent higher than world prices. Whereas prices paid by consumers were, on average, the same as those at the border in Australia, they were 10 per cent higher in the United States, 42 per cent higher in the EU, and more than double in Japan, Korea, Norway and Switzerland.(...)(P)olicy measures linked to production and consumption are relatively inefficient instruments for delivering income support to rural households. According to OECD (2002b) estimates of income transfer efficiency, no policy measure linked to agricultural activity succeeds in delivering more than half of the monetary transfers from consumers and taxpayers as additional income to farm households. The proportion is one quarter or less in the cases of market price support and deficiency payments and less than one fifth for input subsidies. Notwithstanding its low income transfer efficiency, roughly two thirds of agricultural support in OECD countries involves measures that keep product prices above levels that would otherwise prevail. An intrinsic feature of measures based on agricultural activity is that they cannot be targeted at relatively poor households. In the case of open ended price support, the size of the transfer is directly proportional to the level of production. Consequently, the bulk of the support that does reach farmers goes not to the smaller farmers but to the larger ones, many of whom already have higher incomes. It is not surprising, therefore, that under the CAP, 70 per cent of support (that is, market price support plus payments to producers) is allocated to the largest 25 per cent of the EU’s farms; in the US, Canada and Japan, the corresponding amounts of support allocated to the largest 25 per cent of farms are 89 per cent, 75 per cent and 68 per cent, respectively. In contrast to the above measures, direct income payments are much more efficient in delivering income support, especially if they are de-coupled from agricultural activity; such payments can also be targeted more easily at those households felt to be most in need of assistance. It follows that if the current productionbased support measures were replaced by direct income payments, efficiency costs could be halved without reducing the incomes of farm households (...); the savings would be even greater if support were targeted at lower income farm households through the income tax system or social security programmes. The more a policy measure pays to domestic farmers without affecting their production decisions, the greater the share of income retained by farm households and the smaller the impact on production and trade.

liberalization of services has often been accompanied by increased, rather than decreased, regulation, especially where such liberalization includes privatisation. In particular, recent Trade Policy Reviews have found that most countries that have undertaken liberalization of telecommunications services tend to have a universal service obligation, often funded by contributions from all or the main telecommunication operators.

opinion polls consistently find that the economic attitudes of those groups are no more conservative than those of other Protestants. On several dimensions (income re-distributions, aid to the poor) they are significantly less conservative than the average American. Their conservatism is expressed in a set of theological, moral and social issues (school prayer, abortion, sexual conduct), but which are independent of their economic attitudes.

While the approval process was still ongoing, it was discovered in September 2001 that Bt cotton had been grown in Gujarat and several other States since at least 2000 (Pray et al., 2004). These varieties had been tested for several years by State seed authorities, found to be high yielding and pest resistant, and approved for cultivation in Gujarat. They were illegal because they were GM varieties and had not been tested as was mandated for all GM varieties in the 1986 Environmental Law. In September 2001 the GM varieties were discovered when a major attack of bollworm severely damaged all of the cotton hybrids in Gujarat except the GM cotton. MMB investigated and reported to the GEAC that the cotton was transgenic, violated the Environmental Act of 1986, and should be taken off the market.

The assessments concerning the benefits to the farmers differed widely. As an example of this struggle over scientific evidence, a publication in Science, which claimed that Bt cotton could offer an 80 percent economic advantage over non-Bt was criticized by a representative of the biotechnology industry itself as too exaggerated

In the 645 constituencies which have declared (South Staffordshire having been delayed), there was a total of 27,132,327 votes. Divide that by 645, it means an average of 42,066 votes per seat. Labour got 9,556,183 votes total throughout the UK. Divide that by 42,066, it translates to just 227 seats – opposed to the 356 they’ve actually got. A difference of 129. The Conservatives got 8,772,598 votes, which translates to 209 seats, rather than 197. Not much change – they’ve only been cheated out of 12 seats. The Lib Dems are the biggest losers from the current system with their 5,982,045 votes resulting in just 62 rather the 142 seats their share of the vote should net them – a difference of 80. Following the same (admittedly flawed) logic, the Scottish National Party would have 10 seats rather than 6, Plaid Cymru would have 4 rather than 3, Respect would still have 1 seat, while non-scorers UKIP (618,898 votes) would have 15, the Greens (257,758 votes) 6 and the BNP (192,850 votes) 4 or 5. With 43,514 votes, the Scottish Socialists would be the smallest party to get a seat.

President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn’t cut enough spending to change his place in history, either. Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush’s first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton’s last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush’s first term. The Republican Congress has enthusiastically assisted the budget bloat. Inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent. The GOP was once effective at controlling nondefense spending. The final nondefense budgets under Clinton were a combined $57 billion smaller than what he proposed from 1996 to 2001. Under Bush, Congress passed budgets that spent a total of $91 billion more than the president requested for domestic programs. Bush signed every one of those bills during his first term. Even if Congress passes Bush’s new budget exactly as proposed, not a single cabinet-level agency will be smaller than when Bush assumed office. Republicans could reform the budget rules that stack the deck in favor of more spending. Unfortunately, senior House Republicans are fighting the changes. The GOP establishment in Washington today has become a defender of big government.

Actually, the Iraqi resistance does not target its own civilians. But the people that are being fought by the resistance in Iraq are the people that are working for the occupation.

A thousand years back, the greater Middle East joined China as the world’s "globalizing" culture: ninth-century Viking chiefs in Sweden used coins minted in Baghdad; Abbasid shipping carried pepper and ginger from Indonesia to France; Tunisian mathematicians convinced Italy to drop the Roman numeral system and use modern numbers instead. To this era the English language owes such words as chemistry, algebra, tariff, and admiral.

In the modern world, the Middle East has in some ways been the "de-globalizer." Between 1980 and 2000, its share of exports, imports, and worldwide foreign direct investment fell by 75 percent. In sharp contrast to the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe; most of the big countries in the Middle East (and Central Asia) remain outside the WTO, unable to influence global trade talks or defend themselves against arbitrary trade discrimination. Together, the countries outside the system account for roughly 200 million of the Middle East’s 300 million people and all the Central Asian states but Kyrgyzstan.

Since 2001, three countries have emerged from international sanctions to reenter the global economy: Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, and Libya in 2004. Afghanistan now appears to be the fastest-growing exporter of carpets to the United States. Though totals are still quite low, Afghan artisans sent over 1,400 square meters of carpet in 2002, 37,000 in 2004, and may be headed for 100,000 or more in 2005. Two of the most populous and influential countries in the larger region -- Pakistan since the 1990s, and more recently Egypt -- have been energetically revising trade policies. Pakistani exports in particular have responded, jumping by almost 40 percent since the turn of the century. At the border of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Turkey has won approval for the opening of negotiations on membership in the European Union. And interest in WTO membership has grown, with six Arab League members, three Central Asian republics and Azerbaijan in the midst of negotiations on membership. In the past month, the United States and Saudi Arabia seem to have come close to finishing these talks.

Rather than acquiescing in Serb aggression, Mr Blair confronted it. Out of humanitarian obligation and an awareness that failed states breed fanaticism, he sent British troops to preserve Sierra Leone from hand-lopping rebels. Contrary to the Liberal Democrats’ depiction of it as the biggest foreign policy error since Suez, Iraq was the most far-sighted and noble act of British foreign policy since the founding of Nato. Mr Blair’s record exemplifies foreign policy “with an ethical dimension”. Bien-pensant academics assert that a vote for Blair is a vote for Bush. The reverse is true: President Bush, who as a candidate in 2000 denounced interventionist “nation-building”, has adopted Blairism. After 9/11, Mr Bush’s instinctive conservatism gave way to promoting global democracy as our defence against theocratic barbarism — a strategy that accords with traditional liberal-democratic internationalism.

The commonest liberal and Tory jeer against Tony Blair—that he is George Bush’s "poodle"—is self-evidently false. Far from being a ditto to Washington, it was Blair who leaned on Clinton and Albright to intervene in the Balkans, putting an end to the long and disgusting Tory appeasement of Slobodan Milosevic. Without asking for any American approval, Blair also decided to stand by Britain’s treaty with Sierra Leone and to send troops to put down the barbaric invasion of the hand-loppers and diamond-dealers, based in Charles Taylor’s Liberia, who were among other things the regional allies of al-Qaida. In 1999, when Bush was still an isolationist governor of Texas, Blair made a speech in Chicago pointing out that Saddam Hussein’s defiance of international law made a future confrontation with him inevitable. After Sept. 11, 2001, Blair told Bush that he would send ground troops to Afghanistan even if the United States would not.

Americans average 25.1 working hours per person in working age per week, but the Germans average 18.6 hours. The average American works 46.2 weeks per year, while the French average 40 weeks per year. Why do western Europeans work so much less than Americans? Recent work argues that these differences result from higher European tax rates, but the vast empirical labor supply literature suggests that tax rates can explain only a small amount of the differences in hours between the U.S. and Europe. Another popular view is that these differences are explained by long-standing European “culture,” but Europeans worked more than Americans as late as the 1960s. In this paper, we argue that European labor market regulations, advocated by unions in declining European industries who argued “work less, work all” explain the bulk of the difference between the U.S. and Europe. These policies do not seem to have increased employment, but they may have had a more society-wide influence on leisure patterns because of a social multiplier where the returns to leisure increase as more people are taking longer vacations.

A senior al-Qaida leader, described by U.S. counterterrorism officials as the group’s No. 3 man and a close confidant of Osama bin Laden, has been arrested after a firefight in northwestern Pakistan, officials said Wednesday. In Washington, President Bush said the capture of Abu Farraj al-Libbi ’’represents a critical victory in the war on terror,’’ and he praised the Pakistani government and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for the arrest.

the number and quality of the planned "targets" show clearly that, contrary to general understanding, striking Europe is still an objective for the Jihadists. And it is not only a question here of hitting European countries allied with the United States in Iraq, as too many Europeans think. The attacks of March 11 were already being prepared in 2000-2001: at that time, the war in Iraq had not started, and Spanish troops were not present on the ground. When the National Audience was targeted, Spain had already withdrawn from Iraq. Besides, France or Belgium are not in Iraq and both condemned American intervention. Attacks were nevertheless planned in those two countries. The "need" for the Jihadists to attack Europe is not innate in them, but it is bound to the essence of the old continent. Even if differences exist between the United States and Europe, these two entities, with some other countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea) belong to the same "camp" -- that of a "western world" (this qualifier having no ethnocentric character, which is why we can include Asian countries) which shares the same essential democratic values. It is these values which make us the "enemies" of the Islamists. Besides, even if not present militarily in Iraq, many European nations are or were in Afghanistan, and the European Union gave a political undertaking to the new Iraq to help in its reconstruction and stabilization.

This " new generation " of terrorism which we hinted at above has hardly begun to appear on the terrorist scene. Recruits come from the "Third generation" of immigration, who we know has identity problems and feels itself the victim of imperfect integration. These problems can push many young people towards violence. We are then confronted with a new situation where diffuse and informal networks of young people who were born in Europe, who know it well and who have scores to settle, could serve as a relay to more structured international organizations, or even try to lead its own "jihad" to take revenge for the real or supposed humiliations felt by these young people.

Al Qaeda had an “historical role” to play: to build an international terrorist coalition uniting dozens of organisations. Now that this has been achieved, an “International Islamist Terror” exists. And it is very effective. Information, arms and funds are exchanged among groups Moroccan, Algerian, Chechen, Pakistani, Saudi, Iraqi and other organisations. Often these organisations collaborate in very sophisticated projects. The only role of Al Qaeda is to set the general framework of the Jihad, designate targets and give lawful authorization (Fatwa) to act. Of course all those organisations or most of them are or were linked to Al Qaeda at one time or another. They take part in the global Jihad “against the Jews and the Crusaders” but they concentrate also on their own local problems – just as Al Qaeda concentrates mainly for the moment on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and, of course, the United States.

Industry is preparing for Tony Blair to launch a new nuclear power programme if Labour wins a third term this week. Downing Street policy advisers, with Mr Blair’s blessing, have been taking the lead in encouraging major industrial users, including chemical companies, glassmakers and brickmakers, and investment bankers to start discussions on building atomic plants in anticipation of a post-election change in energy policy. One senior Government adviser has advanced the case for nuclear power accounting for 35pc of electricity generation, against 23pc currently.

Reports that there will be an announcement after the election to expand nuclear power. Good, it’s long been obvious that this is the only way to reduce CO2 emissions. It will also cause various greenies and lefty types to explode which is an added bonus.

You see, America is ruled by conservatives, and they have a private obsession: they believe that more privatization, not less, is always the answer. And their faith persists even when the evidence clearly points to a private sector gone bad. I could cite many examples of this obsession at work.

You see, Europe is ruled by liberals, and they have a private obsession: they believe that more government intervention, not less, is always the answer. And their faith persists even when the evidence clearly points to a public sector gone bad. I could cite many examples of this obsession at work.

Europa moet niet altijd synoniem zijn voor nachtelijke ruzies over grondwetten of voor koehandel tussen grote lidstaten. De ‘maiden flight’ van de nieuwe Airbus A380 die gisteren enkele rondjes draaide boven de Pyreneeën en de Golf van Biskaje, bewijst dat Europa ook het symbool kan zijn van technologische vernieuwing en internationale samenwerking. Om te vermijden dat dit reuzenvliegtuig net als de Concorde in het Europese vergeetboek terecht komt, moeten nu de marketingspecialisten aan de slag om van de A380 een commercieel succes te maken. En dat ligt niet meteen voor de hand. Op de markt van de grote vliegtuigen blijven nog maar twee grote spelers over. Naast het Europese consortium is dit de Amerikaanse vliegtuigbouwer Boeing. Tot grote afgunst van de Amerikanen, stak Airbus twee jaar geleden Boeing voorbij als bouwer van grote vliegtuigen, een markt waarin Boeing met zijn paradepaard de 747 Jumbo Jet lange tijd dominant was. Het Amerikaanse concern heeft in de concurrentiestrijd met Airbus de volle steun van Washington gekregen.

THE JOSTLING among Asia’s powers is heating up at a time when the Bush administration’s ability to manage the tensions is complicated by trade friction. It’s hard to send clear signals on the geopolitical front when the administration is also anxious to pry open Japan’s beef market, coax China into revaluing its currency and contain tensions with India on high-tech "off-shoring." Some of this complexity may be impossible to escape. But the administration and other power centers in Washington need to avoid loading up the Asian agenda with more distractions than necessary. This is the context for a decision that the International Trade Commission is expected to issue today. The ITC has to decide whether to stick to its January decision to impose punitive tariffs on India’s shrimp fishermen or to consider reversing itself in light of the December tsunami. In a narrow legal sense, the case turns on whether the destruction of 88,000 Indian fishing boats and 200,000 nets vitiates the threat to U.S. shrimpers posed by Indian "dumping." But the narrow issue is not the only one that ought to count. It would be nice if the court felt able to recognize that cheap imports are a boon to U.S. consumers and that one of the rules under which Indians are said to be dumping has been pronounced illegal by the World Trade Organization. It would be even better if the dumping statute allowed the court to recognize the broader ramifications of penalizing India’s fishermen. After years of protectionism and anti-Americanism, India has opened its economy since 1991 and grown friendlier to this country. But its market reforms are frequently criticized at home for not helping the rural poor. Even though the countryside has done better in the reform era than in the past, some areas have inevitably fared poorly. If the United States is seen to be hitting tsunami-affected fishing villages with punitive tariffs, it will harm the cause of pro-American market reformers, complicating the Bush team’s efforts to get India’s help in handling a rising China. And all of that, for what? For the victory of imposing a quasi-tax on U.S. consumers that the WTO may rule illegal anyway?

Inequality in income and other measures of human well-being has increased over the past decade.

This paper takes a broader range of quality of life variables covering health, education, rights and infrastructure and examines if they are converging across countries. It finds that these measures are converging as a rule and (where we have data) that they have been converging for some time.

- Refrigeration keeps our food free of bacterial pollution;
- indoor plumbing immediately whisks away our own waste;
- household detergents clean our homes of germs and grime;
- automobiles keep our streets clean of horse manure and the swarms of flies it attracts;
- antibiotics and other medicines protect our bodies from many diseases, such as tuberculosis, that were major killers just a century ago.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep.
Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend.

"Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

"I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes" replies Watson.

"And what do you deduce from that?"

Watson ponders for a minute.

"Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe. What does it tell you, Holmes?"

Holmes is silent for a moment. "Watson, you idiot!" he says. "Someone has stolen our tent!"

While most countries are committed to increasing access to safe water and thereby reducing child mortality, there is little consensus on how to actually improve water services. One important proposal under discussion is whether to privatize water provision. In the 1990s Argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world, including the privatization of local water companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country’s municipalities. Using the variation in ownership of water provision across time and space generated by the privatization process, we find that child mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was largest (26 percent) in the poorest areas. We check the robustness of these estimates using cause-specific mortality. While privatization is associated with significant reductions in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases, it is uncorrelated with deaths from causes unrelated to water conditions.

If knowledge is not about power, and therefore change (though Brand suggests that government-sought expertise must necessarily gravitate between helping crush insurgencies and preparing for other types of conflict), then what is it about? In remaining so ambiguous about power in general and its uses and practitioners, many of those studying and teaching about the Middle East have written themselves out of the discourse on the region’s future, failing even to find effective ways to oppose policies they dislike. In the past, Said as well as Khalidi, Brand, and others have come to implicitly embrace the Middle Eastern status quo by condemning a great deal in American behavior but almost never proposing something in exchange—creating an intellectual climate where any such proposal would be tantamount to advancing an "imperial" project. They do so not because they like what’s in place, nor even because they hate the U.S.; they embrace the status quo because it gives value to their static paradigms and expertise. They know they cannot be acknowledged as experts in a dynamic situation that challenges all their previous assumptions and, worse, one engineered by an administration they regard as unschooled, misinformed, and immersed in pseudo-intellectualism. The irony, of course, is that a similar attitude was palpable in Israel, which has always prided itself on "knowing" the Middle East in a way the U.S. could not. No less ironic was that many of the experts in the U.S. considered, and still consider, Iraq a grand project planned by Bush administration neocons and Israel’s Likud (though they provide little evidence beyond a document written by American neocons for former Israeli candidate and later prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in 1996). The reality was that Israelis were divided on the Iraq war, with half the population opposing it. The hardnosed Ariel Sharon, while he backed the Bush administration for reasons of convenience, was never taken by the neocons’ democratization zeal, always preferring to deal with the Arabs in a far blunter way. Indeed, even the more recent U.S.-supported Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon was received remarkably coolly by the Israeli leadership, with National Security Advisor Giora Eiland warning that once the Syrians were gone, there would be no one left to control Hezbollah. Eiland was told to pipe down, but it was clear that his anxiety reflected that of others in the Israeli leadership. Back in America, the Middle East experts would surely dislike being placed in the same boat as the Israelis (albeit pursuing entirely different ends) when it comes to recoiling at fundamental regional change. One difference between the two, however, is that opposition to the Bush administration’s goals in the academy is shot through with bitterness, which perhaps comes from the failure of the grand transformational schemes many of the experts once believed in. It could have been Arab nationalism, Nasserism, the Palestinian "revolution" (which was regarded by many as a hook for regional metamorphoses), communism, a more consensual version of Arab socialism, or any variation of the above. Having seen all disintegrate, having read their own failures in those myriad fiascos, the experts could only fall back on a reassuring belief that, by virtue of their training, they at least held the keys unlocking the East’s dark mysteries. When the Bush administration failed to respect that, the priesthood revolted without ever offering a credible alternative.

China is not currently subject to America’s anti-subsidy law as it is deemed a “non-market economy” (which makes it easier for American firms to file anti-dumping cases against it). But declaring China a market economy for the purposes of subsidies, and a non-market economy for the purposes of anti-dumping, is against WTO rules. Nobody in Congress, alas, seems to care about breaking WTO rules. The aim is to be seen to be bashing China loudly.

Another powerful southern lobby, the sugar industry, is proving even harder to placate. Outrageous import quotas keep the domestic price of sugar at double that of the world price. CAFTA would allow more imports in from Central American countries, but still less than 2% of US sugar production. For the sugar lobby—and the 15 or so Republican politicians who follow its bidding—that is still too much.

If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.

Globalization is not new. It is a modern word describing an ancient human movement—a word for humankind’s search for betterment through exchange, and the worldwide expansion of resource specialization

1. Using the labor market as an indicator, overall economic performance in the U.S. is subpar. Apparently, Labor Force Capacity Utilization is still below what it was in November 2001, when the recession supposedly ended. Earlier, I used the expression "between booms," which might be considered a polite way of describing an economy that has remained close to recession since early in 2000.

2. Given this subpar performance, the headwind of high oil prices is most unwelcome.

3. Government spending priorities and deficit projections are not what one would like to see in terms of promoting long-term growth and restraining the burden on future generations. The Bush administration’s fiscal policy appears to owe more to following a path of least political resistance than to any coherent economic strategy.

4. The foreign sector is out of balance, but that owes something to peculiarly high net savings abroad. It probably would be better if other countries found more productive uses of savings than funding the U.S. housing boom or our budget deficit, but that is something largely beyond our control.

5. The best economic performance comes from investment in productive new technologies. We can be optimistic that our labs and entrepreneurs will eventually provide us with an exciting new field of innovation, but right now there is nothing that is obviously poised to play the role of a leading sector.

6. If there is a Keynesian fiscal stimulus card in the deck, then we have already played it. (We don’t) want to see another round of spending increases or tax cuts, even if the economy worsens.

7. It is unreasonable to hope that monetary policy can "fine tune" this economy, particularly given oil prices and the possibility of a housing bubble.

Perhaps the Next Big Thing is not another general-purpose technology invented in the U.S. The Next Big Thing could be developing-country expansion. I say that not so much because I can picture it occurring but because it would be a neat resolution to a number of vexing issues. As Bernanke put it (a recent restatement of his thesis is here), the U.S. trade merchandise trade picture would improve if "developing countries [were] to re-enter international capital markets in their more natural role as borrowers, rather than as lenders." Imagine that barriers to entrepreneurship and foreign investment in Asia, Africa, and Latin America suddenly went away. Regulations were eased, processes for licensing and incorporation were streamlined, bribery of and extortion by government officials eliminated, etc. In that case, world savings would be diverted toward financing an investment boom. Some of the equipment and services used by new and expanding foreign businesses would be imported from the U.S. Our trade deficit would decline, and the employment picture might finally show some meaningful improvement.

China’s economy is still highly inefficient. The voracious maw of China’s state-owned enterprises accounts for much of this drag. Between 1993 and 2000, more than 60 percent of all loans went to these state-owned behemoths. The country’s notoriously high level of bad loans tells you how good an investment they have been: The Standard & Poor’s rating agency currently estimates that China’s banks have issued about $650 billion in bad loans, or about 40 percent of outstanding loans. If an economy growing at close to 10 percent a year generates bad loans on this scale, the misallocation of capital has to be gigantic. Although countries such as South Korea or Taiwan may not have had as much capital, they obtained considerably more growth for their investment buck. The same was true of Japan in its high-growth phase. The same is true of India today.

1. China is relatively open to direct investment by foreign firms (FDI), "particularly in manufacturing." China has the third largest stock of foreign direct investment, after the U.S. and the U.K. In 2003, the flow of foreign direct invesment into China was greater than that to the U.S. "Over half of this investment has gone into manufacturing, where China places few restrictions on foreign ownership. By 2003, foreign firms accounted for over one-quarter of China’s output of manufactured goods, a share that is well ahead of that of the United States and about the same as that of the European Union."
2. China’s imports have grown enormously, and are large compared to its economy. "Imports of goods expanded from $53.4 billion in 1990 to $295 billion in 2002..." China’s imports grew by 40% in 2003. The ratio of Chinese imports to its estimated GDP grew from 15% in 1990 to 30% in 2003. This 2003 ratio "was more than three times Japan’s import ratio of 9 percent and twice the 14 percent import ratio of the United States."
3. As noted, foreign firms with facilities within China account for a fourth of the goods manufactured in China. "There are almost no restrictions on where these goods can be sold, and sales are about evenly divided between exports and China’s internal market..."
4. China’s tariffs only provide a "modest degree of protection..." for a developing country. China’s tariff rates have been declining over the last 20 years. Currently, under its agreements on joining the WTO, China has agreed to reduce its tariff rate ceiling (its "bound rate") to 10% (its average rate in 2003 was 11.5%). This bound rate would be above applied rate for Indonesia (6.9%) but lower than the applied rates for Brazil, Argentina, and, especially, India.

My own sense of things is that Spaniards live far better than Scandinavians. In Norwegian pubs, for example, anyone rich or insane enough to order, say, a gin and tonic is charged about $15 for a few teaspoons of gin at the bottom of a glass of tonic; in Spain, the drinks are dirt-cheap and the bartender will pour the gin up to the rim unless you say "stop." In late March, another study, this one from KPMG, the international accounting and consulting firm, cast light on this paradox. It indicated that when disposable income was adjusted for cost of living, Scandinavians were the poorest people in Western Europe. Danes had the lowest adjusted income, Norwegians the second lowest, Swedes the third. Spain and Portugal, with two of Europe’s least regulated economies, led the list. Most recently, the Danish Ministry of Finance released a study comparing the income available for private consumption in 30 countries. Norway did somewhat better here than in the KPMG study, lagging behind most of Western Europe but at least beating out Ireland and Portugal. The thrust, however, was to confirm Timbro’s and Mr. Norberg’s picture of American and European wealth. While the private-consumption figure for the United States was $32,900 per person, the countries of Western Europe (again excepting Luxembourg, at $29,450) ranged between $13,850 and $23,500, with Norway at $18,350.

The scientific debate over global warming is not so much over whether anthropogenic emissions will affect the climate. Rather it is over the nature and magnitude of the likely effects. Even the most ardent global warming skeptics within the scientific community believe that the increased accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will have some effect. The policy question, then, is what (if any) measures are justified to prevent or mitigate such effects. Most on the "right" argue that the best response is to do little or nothing. Whlie some advocate various "no regrets" policies to improve the efficiency of energy markets (and perhaps pave the way for alternative fuels) -- as I did here -- few conservatives, libertarians, or other free-market advocates believe the most reliable climate forecasts justify drastic measures to suppress the use of carbon-based fuels. The costs of such measures, many argue, are likely to swamp the costs of climate change, and more direct measures to address global ills that could be exacerbated by climate change (disease, flooding, weather extremes, etc.) would be far more cost-effective than reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As an analytical matter, these assessments are probably correct -- it is hard to justify one Kyoto on ecoomic grounds, let alone the dozen or so that would be necessary to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere -- but that does not mean the proper "free market" climate policy is to "do nothing." If property rights lie at the heart of free market environmentalism, than FME advocates should think seriously about the normative implications of human-enhanced climate changes that could disproportionately harm those portions of the world that have (at least thus far) contributed least to the problem. Even if a modest warming were, on balance, beneficial, the impacts would not be uniform. It may well be, as some argue, that increases in crop productivity and reduced energy costs in temperate regions will be greater than the costs to tropical regions, but this does not address the property rights concern absent some system whereby industrialized nations would compensate or indemnify less-developed nations. No such system exists -- nor is it likely that existing international institutions could implement such a system -- but that does not mean it would not be the first-best approach to climate change from an FME perspective.

Louis Michel, in een vorig leven de incarnatie van het Belgisch buitenlands beleid en nu eurocommissaris voor ontwikkelingssamenwerking, pleit voor een verdubbeling van het budget dat Europa aan ontwikkelingssamenwerking besteedt. Hij wil dit voornamelijk doen door een toename van het aantal grote infrastructuurwerken. Als hij had gepleit voor een halvering van zijn budget was het natuurlijk nog groter nieuws geweest, maar dit terzijde. Vorige week verscheen in de boekenbijlage van De Morgen een artikel van de hand van Frank Westerman, de Nederlander die drie weken terug de Gouden Uil Literatuurprijs kreeg voor zijn boek "El Negro en ik". Onder de titel "Bevoogding werkt niet" maakt Westerman op 2 bladzijden brandhout van de ontwikkelingssamenwerking zoals die tot op heden door het "Westen" is gevoerd. Verplichte lectuur voor Big Loulou: "De aanvankelijke no-nonsenseaanpak van het rücksichtslos overplanten van Westerse technologie, in de geest van de Marshall-hulp die voor Europa zo heilzaam was gebleken, had al in de jaren zestig geleid tot nooit gebruikte tractorparken en onder stuifduinen bedolven machinerie". (In Kongo staat er een electriciteitscentrale op de Kongostroom die nauwelijks werkt wegens geen wisselstukken. In Ivoorkust kan een autosnelweg niet beletten dat Noord en Zuid gesplitst zijn) "De geïnjecteerde miljoenen hadden een corrumperende en verlammende werking, ze veranderden een land als Guinee-Bissau in een collectief van hulpverslaafden dat lusteloos aan het donorinfuus bungelde" (Vervang Guinee-Bissau even door "Wallonië" ?) Kortom ik geloof niet in de denkpiste van Michel. Het enige gevolg van een dergelijke keuze zal een steun zijn aan Europese bedrijven die met ons belastinggeld een aantal ontwikkelingslanden vol nutteloze beton gieten. "Nuttiger, want vrij van wrevelwekkende bevoogding, lijkt me het slechten van oneerlijke handelsbarrières, of het afdwingen van nette gedragscodes voor multinationals die hun fabrieken naar lageloonlanden verplaatsen". Maar dàt is natuurlijk gemakkelijker gezegd dan gedaan.

The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power. Nuclear certainly has problems—accidents, waste storage, high construction costs, and the possible use of its fuel in weapons. It also has advantages besides the overwhelming one of being atmospherically clean. The industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it. Problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design. Nuclear power plants are very high yield, with low-cost fuel. Finally, they offer the best avenue to a “hydrogen economy,” combining high energy and high heat in one place for optimal hydrogen generation. The storage of radioactive waste is a surmountable problem. Many reactors now have fields of dry-storage casks nearby. Those casks are transportable. It would be prudent to move them into well-guarded centralized locations. Many nations address the waste storage problem by reprocessing their spent fuel, but that has the side effect of producing material that can be used in weapons. One solution would be a global supplier of reactor fuel, which takes back spent fuel from customers around the world for reprocessing. That’s the kind of idea that can go from “Impractical!” to “Necessary!” in a season, depending on world events.

The structure of such reversals reveals a hidden strength in the environmental movement and explains why it is likely to keep on growing in influence from decade to decade and perhaps century to century.

The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities. My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated. They became more independent, as they became less fundamentalist in their religious beliefs. Urbanization is the most massive and sudden shift of humanity in its history. Environmentalists will be rewarded if they welcome it and get out in front of it.

What is its net effect on the environment? GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That’s why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops. There has yet to be a public debate among environmentalists about genetic engineering. Most of the scare stories that go around (Monarch caterpillars harmed by GM pollen!) have as much substance as urban legends about toxic rat urine on Coke can lids. Solid research is seldom reported widely, partly because no news is not news. A number of leading biologists in the U.S. are also leading environmentalists. I’ve asked them how worried they are about genetically engineered organisms. Their answer is “Not much,” because they know from their own work how robust wild ecologies are in defending against new genes, no matter how exotic. They don’t say so in public because they feel that entering the GM debate would strain relations with allies and would distract from their main focus, which is to research and defend biodiversity.

According to the first official data from China as reported by Xinhua news agency, the value of apparel exports was up 80% to the U.S. and 43% to the EU in January from a year earlier. The rise in exports was higher in volume than in value because prices dropped as competition surged. For example, exports from Jiangsu were up 40% in volume, but only 10% in value.

Beijing announced last December that it would levy export duties on textiles and apparel (ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 yuan per piece, accounting for less than one percent of value). These duties are far too small to effect trade and are better seen as a way for the government to replace the revenue it used to collect by auctioning off slices of its export quota to firms.

30 million textile and apparel jobs could be lost worldwide

Most bilateral FTAs negotiated by the Bush administration have had a strategic purpose beyond trade, but those agreements – along with the economic stability of other key nations – are menaced by China’s export surge. Washington will have to take stronger, more direct measures to give preferences to its friends and allies if it wants to use trade as a tool of diplomacy.

Mixing history with economic theory, Hannesson examines the privatization of the oceans beginning with extension of national jurisdiction to 200 miles in the 1970s and concluding with the development of IFQ systems in New Zealand, Chile, Norway, Canada, Iceland, and the United States. While the existing IFQ systems have not always resulted in the recovery of the fish stocks they were designed to manage, most have increased the efficiency of the fisheries by reducing the size of the fleet and the amount of capital invested. The case studies, especially the failures, provide scholars, fisheries managers, and policy makers with some valuable insights into the necessary elements of an IFQ regime and potential sources of conflict. The creation of an IFQ system will affect some of sectors of the fishery more than others and there will be perceived “losers.” Hannesson’s case studies reveal that these “losers” are different in every fishery and can be very powerful opponents. In New Zealand, the Maori argued that the IFQ system violated their traditional fishing rights protected by a treaty with Great Britain. In Alaska, the crab processors worried about losing business to fresh fish markets as the season grew longer. Valuable lessons can be learned from the various approaches taken by each nation to address the real and perceived losses of the different sectors. It is important to note that Hannesson approaches IFQs from a purely economic perspective. Some environmental groups, mainly in the United States, have strongly opposed the development of IFQs. Hannesson acknowledges their arguments, which are generally based on the premise that marine life is valuable in and of itself, and recognizes that “exclusive use rights have no role to play in that universe.” IFQs, however, may hold the key to the ultimate conservation of the world’s fish stocks by giving fishermen a vested interest in their survival. The Privatization of the Oceans is a fascinating look into the early development of IFQs around the world and a great starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the evolution of private property rights in fisheries.

We moderns live more harmoniously – much more harmoniously – with nature than did our primitive ancestors. To live harmoniously with nature is to understand and accept natural forces. The greater this understanding and acceptance, the greater the harmony. Because we know so much more today than we did before about physics, chemistry, meteorology, biology, physiology, metallurgy, and on and on with our ologies and urgies, we live so much more harmoniously with nature. Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let’s stop mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. It’s an utter myth – we might say an urban myth – that primitive peoples lived with nature harmoniously. Nature devastated them. Nature battered them into early graves. Their ignorance of nature prevented them from achieving much material wealth. To dance to imaginary rain gods or to chant and pray for a child dying of bacterial infection is not to live harmoniously with nature; it is to live most inharmoniously. Nature is doing its thing – failing to water the crops, growing bacteria within a child’s lungs – while human beings who are as ignorant of nature as nature is of human beings, moan, chant, pray, dance, build totems, burn leaves and twigs, all in fruitless, inharmonious efforts to solve the problems. It is we today, with our knowledge of how to irrigate fields using science and engineering, and how to make and administer antibiotics, who live harmoniously with nature. We don’t demand miracles. We don’t expect nature to change its logic simply because we arrogantly wish it to do so. We accept nature’s logic and work with it. Natural forces are what they are. Praying for miracles is fruitless; these forces will do what they do. Only people who understand these forces and how to counteract or reinforce or sustain or alter them with other natural forces can be truly said to live harmoniously with nature. It is science – rational thought, skepticism, critical inquiry – that furthers greater harmony with nature

Lokale internettelevisie is aan een forse opmars bezig. Dankzij de betaalbare digitale camera’s en de groei van het aantal gezinnen met een snelle internetverbinding, duiken er steeds meer lokale televisiestations op. "De opmars van internettelevisie kan je vergelijken met de bloei van de vrije radio’s in de jaren tachtig", stelt Peter Monsaert van de vzw Darm, die samen met de Gentse organisatie Victoria Deluxe wijktelevisie maakt. Eén van de kenmerken van lokale internetstations is dat ze nog fijnmaziger werken dan de reguliere regionale radiozenders.

Volgens een Amerikaans-Japanse studie zijn de voedingskwaliteiten van gekloond rundvlees identiek aan die van natuurlijk rundvlees. En die vaststelling lijkt eveneens geldig voor melk, preciseren de onderzoekers van de universiteit van Connecticut en hun collega’s van het Onderzoekscentrum in het Japanse Kagoshima. Hun bevindingen staan in Pnas, de annalen van de Amerikaanse Nationale Academie voor Wetenschappen.

Contrary to widespread impressions, China’s export surge is not an outgrowth of aggressive market-share penetration by rapidly growing indigenous Chinese companies. To the contrary, the bulk of the export surge has been dominated by Chinese subsidiaries of global multinational corporations and cross-border joint-venture operations. Over the past 11 years, the dollar volume of Chinese exports has increased by an astonishing 6.5 times, from US$91.7 billion in 1993 to US$593.4 billion in 2004. Yet fully 62% of that increase has been driven by what the Chinese call foreign-invested enterprises -- offshore Chinese outposts of foreign companies and investors from Europe, Japan, elsewhere in Asia, and yes, even the US. Who is the New China? These numbers suggest that China’s so-called export prowess is traceable more to “us” in the West than it is to them. This is not a conclusion that resonates with US politicians. I have made this point repeatedly in congressional testimony in Washington, and it almost always falls on deaf ears. But there’s even a broader macro issue to hammer home -- the basic roots of America’s current account and trade deficits. In my view, the US external deficit is, first and foremost, an outgrowth of America’s unprecedented shortfall of domestic saving. The net national saving rate -- the combined saving of consumers, businesses, and the government sector, all adjusted for depreciation -- has plunged to a record low of 1.5% of GDP since early 2002. Lacking in domestic saving, American must then import surplus saving from abroad to keep its economy growing -- and run massive current-account and trade deficits to attract the capital. If the US Congress were to close down trade with China today, a saving-short America would then have to run a deficit with a higher-cost producer somewhere else in the world -- the functional equivalent of a tax hike on the American public. The fact that China accounts for the biggest portion of the US trade deficit is actually a good thing -- it offers America access to high-quality, low-cost goods. If a nation has to run a trade deficit -- and unfortunately that’s the inescapable verdict for a saving-short US economy -- then it makes eminent sense to trade most aggressively with the world’s low-cost producer. That’s precisely what’s happening.

Today is the 138th anniversary of the US Senate’s approval of the Alaska purchase. This raises the question: why don’t countries sell territories to each other any more? In theory, one would expect to have seen more such purchases since 1867, because income inequality between countries has risen, meaning that rich countries would sacrifice less to buy out poorer countries. Indeed, it would be surprisingly cheap to buy a whole country. Take Zimbabwe. In 1999 the Zimbabwean government bought 90,000 hectares of farmland at a price of Z$200 million. If we assume all Zimbabwe’s land is as valuable as this farmland, this valued the country’s 39.05 million hectares at Z$86,777 million. Of course, some urban land is more valuable than farmland. But scrubland and mountains are worth less. Now, let’s assume land prices have kept price with Zimbabwe’s enormous inflation rate since 1999. The value of Zimbabwe now is therefore Z$18644 billion. With an exchange rate of Z$11417 to the pound, this values Zimbabwe at £1.6bn. This follows from the Mugabe government’s own estimates. Now, you can quibble with the calculations. But if I’m anywhere near the ball-park, this is nothing. It’s the cost of administering immigration policy for a year. And it’s about half of one percent of the £327bn cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This suggests it would be easily feasible, in financial terms at least, for the west to buy out Zimbabwe - and, by extension, other sub-Saharan countries. All I’m doing here is extending a point made by Keith Hartley (pdf) at the recent Royal Economic Society conference, when he said it would have been Pareto-superior to have bribed Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq, rather than go to war. And consider the benefits of western ownership of Zimbabwe. We’d bring freedom, good government and (though this would require a little effort) well-defined property rights. All these are essential for economic development. And unlike in Iraq, we’d meet less resistance because we’d have bought off our potential enemies. Of course, there are tons of details to be worked out. Not least is whether we need to buy whole countries or just parts of them, which could act as beacons for the rest of the region, showing what good government can do. What could be wrong in principle with this plan? Sure, it violates national sovereignty – though why this (as distinct from democracy) is a value eludes me. And there’s something unpleasant about handing money to dictators. But might it be that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs? Put it another way. If you think the war in Iraq was a good thing, how can you oppose this plan, given that it brings freedom and good government to people at a far lower cost?

it is surely better to attack directly existing inequalities in income and wealth at their source than to ration each of the hundreds of commodities and services that compose our standard of living. It is the height of folly to permit individuals to receive unequal incomes and then to take elaborate and costly measures to prevent them from using their incomes.

Dat sorteren in zakken is eigenlijk geen goed systeem en wekt veel irritatie, waardoor mensen die hele groene beweging als een soort plaag zijn gaan ervaren. Laat de mensen hun afval dumpen in zakken en dan is er toch een mooie opdracht voor het bedrijfsleven om dat te selecteren en te verwerken? Het lijkt ook obligaat om te beweren dat we van kernenergie afmoeten, terwijl we er niet van afkùnnen, tenzij we terug gaan naar het welvaartsniveau van de jaren zestig. Het is zonder meer bedrog, zowel van onze overheid als van de pers die het niet aanklaagt: 60% van onze elektriciteitsproductie komt uit kernenergie, maar die gaan we afschaffen. Inmiddels ondertekenen we Kyoto-akkoorden om onze CO2-uitstoot te verminderen, terwijl we niet anders zullen kunnen dan opnieuw veel meer vervuilende energie te produceren indien we uit de kernenergie stappen. Ofwel gaan we over tien jaar die beslissing terugdraaien, ofwel kopen we onze elektriciteit in Frankrijk, waar ze door kernenergie geproduceerd wordt. Dat is totaal hypocriet, dat zijn de nieuwe taboes. Er is maar één manier om aan de Kyoto-akkoorden te beantwoorden: halveer de inkomens van alle mensen, geef ze minder auto’s, minder vliegtuigvakanties... Niemand die dat politiek verkocht krijgt. Maar ook dit is een proces van krachten en tegenkrachten: ik mag dan kritiek geven op de milieubeweging, maar ik zal de eerste zijn om te vechten dat er een daadkrachtige ecologische beweging bestaat.

Another directly relevant Supreme Court decision is Sony v. Universal City Studios, a 1984 case involving the use of video recorders in the home. The film studios argued that Sony should be liable for copyright infringement since its video recorders could be used to copy movies and television programs illegally. The Supreme Court held that Sony was not liable since the VCR technology had "substantial noninfringing uses." This phrase has since become the legal test of whether liability can be imposed. Under this doctrine, a company that sells a technology whose only use is to violate copyright could potentially be liable for infringement, but as long as there are substantial noninfringing uses there would be no liability. The studios lost the Sony case, but it forced them to take the home video market seriously. Their first instinct was to set a $50 to $60 price for videocassettes. But by choosing a high price, they stimulated the development of the video rental market, giving users inexpensive access to movies. On the other hand, the availability of rentals stimulated the demand for VCR’s. As VCR prices declined, more people bought them and the video rental industry flourished, creating a new, rapidly growing outlet for studio productions. In the late 1980’s Disney began to experiment with lower prices for videos, hoping to bypass the rental stores and sell directly to home users. Disney’s 1987 video release of "Lady and the Tramp" was priced at $29.95 and sold over 3.2 million copies, making it the best-selling video as of that date. Its record was soon eclipsed by "E.T.," which sold 14 million copies at $19.95 apiece. These examples convinced Hollywood that if it priced its product low enough it could successfully compete with the rental market. When DVD technology came along in 1996, Hollywood understood that pricing under $20 was critical. DVD technology has been hugely successful because the prices of the players and discs have continued to decline, making it highly affordable and widely used. The critical lesson from the history of the VCR is this: If consumers have ways to share content, either via rental markets or via the Internet, you will have to set low prices to induce them to buy. But low prices may well stimulate enough volume to make up for the lost revenue. Apple’s iTunes, with its 99-cent price for songs, has driven this lesson home, but there are those who argue that prices should be even lower. (...) With respect to technology, the Sony decision got it right: encourage technologies that create more total value. Then, let companies fight to find business models that deliver that value to consumers. They can be awfully creative when they are forced to be.

China wil in de komende vijftien jaar veertig kerncentrales bouwen. Ze moeten de voornaamste bron van energie worden voor het economisch in opkomst zijnde oosten van het land. Dat heeft Zhang Fubao van de staatscommissie voor wetenschap, technologie en industrie voor nationale defensie volgens het staatspersbureau Xinhua woensdag op een studiebijeenkomst gezegd. Door de economische ontwikkeling zal de vraag naar elektriciteit in China in de komende jaren enorm toenemen. Door kernenergie te gebruiken hoopt de Chinese regering aan die vraag te kunnen voldoen en tegelijkertijd de afhankelijkheid van steeds schaarser wordende olie en de vervuiling door kolengestookte elektriciteitscentrales te verminderen.

Vrijhandel is in theorie een goede zaak: de productie vindt plaats waar dat het meest efficiënt en dus het goedkoopst gebeurt, wat lage prijzen garandeert. Maar dan moet die vrijhandel wel gepaard gaan met eerlijke concurrentie. En daar lijkt het schoentje in China toch wat te knellen. Eerlijke concurrentie vergt eigenlijk internationale afspraken in verband met concurrentie, milieu- en sociale normen. Maar een voorstel om dergelijke regels vast te leggen in de WHO stootte op het veto van de ontwikkelingslanden, waaronder China. Zij beschouwden dat als een teken van westers protectionisme.

China dankt zijn sterke positie op de textielmarkt onder meer aan zijn enorme productiecapaciteit en lage lonen. Maar het loonvoordeel is onvoldoende om de prijsverschillen van 60 tot 80 procent te verklaren. In vertrouwelijke Europese rapporten zijn er dan ook aanwijzingen van weinig koosjere praktijken in het Chinese bedrijfsleven. Banken kennen enorme leningen toe zonder de minste garantie; de audit van de rekeningen blijkt in sommige gevallen een lachertje; geprivatiseerde bedrijven kunnen goedkope, gesubsidieerde grondstoffen blijven afnemen van staatsondernemingen, enzovoort.

while American tariffs seem ineffective at protecting U.S. jobs, they are very good at complicating the lives of single mothers. This is because tariffs are low on industrial inputs for factories, luxury goods, and other products bought mainly by businesses and wealthy consumers, but high on cheap clothes, shoes, food, and other products important to poor families. An extreme, but not unrepresentative, case is that of cheap sneakers, which carry the highest tariff rate in the system (48 percent). This tariff then travels through the system to end as a large, hidden sales tax. Bought only by the poor, these shoes have not been made in the United States since at least the 1970s.

(I)f you delve into the life satisfaction literature, you learn two fun facts.

1. Once you reach a modest standard of living, additional income does not increase life satisfaction very much. Marginal utility of wealth decreases rapidly - maybe even more rapidly than you thought. (Having been a happy grad student on $6000/year, it’s not more rapid than I thought).

2. Unemployment per se has a large effect on life satisfaction. If you compare two people with equal incomes, one employed, one unemployed, the unemployed one is typically a lot less happy.

Just to get a feel for these results, Donovan and Halpern report (Chart 11) that about 80% of people in almost every occupational category is "fairly" or "very" satisfied with their lives. Manual laborers and white collar workers are nearly equal in satisfaction. Managers are a bit higher, around 90%. But the unemployed are fully 20 percentage points less likely than most workers to be satisfied with their lives.

Suppose, then, that labor market regulation could raise the incomes of manual laborers up to the level of white-collar workers. That’s a big change, but the extra income would probably add at most 1 percentage point of life satisfaction. If a side effect of the regulation was increasing the unemployment rate by 5%, however, this gain would be exactly balanced by the decreased satisfaction of the unemployed. And this is true even if we ignore all of the other side effects of the regulation - from extra taxes to pay for extra workers on the dole, to higher prices from restricted supply.

If you think this is remotely accurate, you will flee in terror from any regulation that might marginally push up unemployment. Flexible labor markets are more than just efficient. Contrary to popular prejudice, they also make a lot of people happy by making it easy to find a job.

If English books are threatening to swamp cyberspace, Mr Chirac will not stand idly by. He asked his culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and Jean-Noël Jeanneney, head of France’s Bibliothèque Nationale, to do the same for French texts—and create a home-grown search-engine to browse them. Why not let Google do the job? Its French version is used for 74% of internet searches in France. The answer is the vulgar criteria it uses to rank results. “I do not believe”, wrote Mr Donnedieu de Vabres in Le Monde, “that the only key to access our culture should be the automatic ranking by popularity, which has been behind Google’s success.”

THIS WEEK, Louis Michel, the EU commissioner, concluded a four-day visit to Cuba. The EU imposed diplomatic sanctions after Fidel Castro jailed 75 dissidents in 2003. Those sanctions were suspended after the release on medical grounds of 14 of the prisoners, and the EU has set itself till June to judge whether a diplomatic approach is the most effective course. Unfortunately, the signals are almost a parody of the world according to Donald Rumsfeld. “Old Europe” bears the stereotype of feebleness in the face of appalling regimes. The stereotype is true. The dissidents’ trials were closed to foreign diplomats and journalists, founded on trumped-up charges of being foreign agents (some of the dissidents had met members of the US mission), and resulted in prison terms of up to 28 years. M Michel apparently received neither an explicit commitment from Havana that the remaining prisoners would be released, nor any other undertaking to improve Cuba’s human rights record. Yet he declared himself optimistic because he had been allowed to meet pro-democracy activists and wives of political prisoners. For good measure, he added an impertinent flourish by advising the democracy campaigners to avoid provoking Castro.