Business & Economics Archives

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Business & Economics

Are small farmers in developing countries stuck on stubble?

By Nicholas Magnan
No-till agriculture, a resource conserving technology which increases the amount of organic matter in the soil, offers many benefits to farmers and society. Because farmers don’t plow their fields before planting, equipment, fuel, and labor costs are reduced. These reduced costs should appeal to cash-poor farmers in developing countries. Furthermore, no-till has been shown to increase and stabilize crop yields, conserve water in the soil and protect the crop from mild drought, prevent soil erosion, and mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration.

Public pensions’ unrealistic rate of return assumptions

By Edward Zelinsky
Ten years ago, the financial problems of public employee pensions concerned only specialists in the field. Today, the underfunding of public retirement plans is widely understood to be a major problem of the American polity. Underfinanced public pensions threaten the ability of the states and their localities to provide basic public services while paying the retirement benefits promised to state employees.

Seduction by contract: do we understand the documents we sign?

By Oren Bar-Gill
We are all consumers. As consumers we routinely enter into contracts with providers of goods and services—from credit cards, mortgages, cell phones, cable TV, and internet services to household appliances, theater and sports events, health clubs, magazine subscriptions, and more.

The medieval origins of 20th century anti-semitism in Germany

By Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth
When the Black Death struck in Europe, it killed between 30 and 70 percent of the population. What could account for such a catastrophe? Quickly, communities started to blame Jews for the plague. Pogroms occurred all over Switzerland, Northern France, the Low Countries, and Germany. Typically, the authorities in a location would be alerted to the “danger” by a letter sent from another town (Foa 2000). In typical cases, the city council then ordered the burning of the entire Jewish community.

What effect does immigration have on wages?

By Ian Preston
Concern about the economic impact on UK-born workers motivates much opposition to high levels of immigration. Immigration over the past decade and a half has brought new workers into the country who are younger and better educated both than British born workers and earlier immigrants. For these newly arrived workers to be employed requires either that they displace employed workers already resident or that the labour market adjusts somehow so as to absorb them.

The sleeping giant wakes

By David Armstrong
Napoleon’s famous remark about China — “There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes he will move the world” — has achieved a new lease of life in the context of China’s remarkable growth since the death of Mao in 1976. Since then, China has registered a real GDP growth of more than twenty times, it has some $2 trillion in foreign reserves, a million Chinese emigrants now work in Africa on behalf of Chinese economic interests there, China’s military power (land, sea, and air) is growing at around 12% annually, and its non-financial overseas direct investment is currently in excess of $330 billion, to mention just a few of the statistics that usually appear on this topic.

Have you appointed your Privacy Officer yet?

By Lokke Moerel
The European Commission’s proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation represents a landslide in data protection law since the 1995 Privacy Directive came into force. Regulations, other than Directives, are directly applicable in the member states and will not require national implementation. The Commission announced its intention to finalise the legislative process before the end of 2012, after which the Proposed Regulation will take a further two years to come into effect.

What should we do with failed businesses?

By Jason Kilborn
What should we do with failed businesses? This question has plagued societies around the world for centuries. With the advent of formal bankruptcy or insolvency procedures in the Middle Ages, the questions have multiplied as societies on every continent except Antarctica have struggled to implement the most effective techniques for managing private economic collapse.

How will America pay for long-term care?

As Democrats and Republicans continue to fight over the future of American health care, we must ask: How are we paying for it now? Should open-ended Medicare coverage be replaced with a selection of private insurers? Should Medicare subscribers be paying higher premiums? We sat down with Richard Frank, Professor of Health Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), to discuss the current state of long term care coverage.

Could a calorie tax or cuts in farm subsidies reduce obesity?

By Julian M. Alston and Abigail M. Okrent
Every day — whether in the supermarket, in restaurants, in the workplace, or preparing meals at home — each US adult makes hundreds of decisions about what foods to buy, what to eat, and when. From those myriad decisions has come an unwelcome, progressive rise in obesity and the social costs of obesity-related illness. In less than thirty years, the prevalence of obese Americans has more than doubled, and now more than one-third of adult Americans are obese.

Philip Auerswald on driving innovation today

The benefits of four centuries of technological and organizational change are at last reaching a previously excluded global majority. To make the most of this epochal transition, the key is entrepreneurship. Our friends at the Kauffman Foundation sat down with Philip Auerswald, author of The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy, to discuss what’s next for the world.

The growth of the Giving Pledge and the federal estate tax

By Edward Zelinsky
By taking the Giving Pledge, wealthy individuals publicly commit to contribute “the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.” The Pledge was started by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Jr. Recently, twelve more wealthy families signed the Giving Pledge including Elon Musk, a founder of PayPal.

The Prison House of Labor

By Corey Robin
When Kathy Saumier learned that a new factory was coming to town, it seemed as if there really was—as that absurdist bit of suburban wisdom from The Graduate has it—a great future in plastics. Landis Plastics, to be exact. Landis, a family-owned company based in Illinois, makes containers for yogurt and cottage cheese. The company was opening a plant in Solvay, New York, not far from Syracuse where Saumier lived. She applied for a job.

The rise and decline of the American ‘Empire’

By Geir Lundestad
Since around 1870 the United States has had the largest economy in the world. In security matters, however, particularly in Europe, the US still played a limited role until the Second World War. In 1945, at the end of the war, the United States was clearly the strongest power the world had ever seen. It produced almost as much as the rest of the world put together. Its military lead was significant; its “soft power” even more dominant.

When patents restrain future innovation

By Christina Bohannan and Herbert Hovenkamp
The Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Collaborative Services (Mayo Clinic) v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289 (March 20, 2012), cited Creation Without Restraint to reject a patent on a process for determining the proper dosage of drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases.

The Buffett Rule President Obama ignores

By Edward Zelinsky
Like many of us, President Obama is a Warren Buffett fan. Most prominently, the president advocates, as a matter of tax policy, the so-called “Buffett Rule.” This rule responds to Mr. Buffett’s observation that his effective federal income tax rate is lower than the tax rate of Mr. Buffett’s secretary. In President Obama’s formulation, the Buffett Rule calls for taxpayers making at least $1,000,000 annually to pay federal income tax at a 30% bracket.