Earlier this morning I read this intriguing paper by US researchers Robert Drago & Amy Varner. The title of the paper is “Fertility and Work in the United States: A Policy Perspective” and it addresses the important issues of gender equality and the historical trend towards declining fertility in the United States. Now while I [...]

The name of the late Ester Boserup came into my mind during a recent discussion in comments. The Danish economist - who is well respected by specialists, but perhaps insufficiently well known outside the ‘inner circle’ - had some pretty interesting views on global population, agriculture and technology. One of her central themes is that [...]

In one of those strange coincidences the world’s second and third largest economies are both scheduled to have elections next month - Japan on 11 September, and Germany on the 18th. The coincidences go further, since these two societies are leaders in another, non-economic, sense: they are leaders in the great global ageing revolution. Japan [...]

All is not well in the Netherlands. That was obvious in the June referendum vote, and it is also obvious in the recent economic data. The Dutch economy has been struggling to gain traction of late with poor growth and an actual contraction of 0.5% in the first quarter of 2005. Unemployment too has risen [...]

With apologies to Mel Brooks, and Zero Mostel, this situation is now really getting out of hand. Not only bras, but blouses and T-shirts and mens trousers and pullovers. New Economist has the story here and here. And this on a day when readings of so-called headline inflation (including food and energy) hit the 2.2% [...]

Opening my McKinseyQuarterly Newsletter today, I find an interesting link to the McKinsey Global Institute’s latest contribution (free, but registration required) to the question whether Globalization is actually civilizing, destructive, or feeble - as Wharton’s Mauro Guillen put it in this paper with reference to Albert Hirschman’s analysis of the shifting social value attributed to [...]

Following up on Edward’s post from last month.
Chinese interest has gained Unocal’s shareholders at least $400m extra from Chevron and its shareholders. Whether having regulatory clearance is worth $1.5bn (the remaining difference between the Chevron and CNOOC bids) is an open question. Since Unocal closed at $64.99 per share yesterday, $1.99 per share above Chevron’s [...]

This week seems to be China week. Everyone seems to be asking the same question: why is China so successful? ( see here and here and here.
Now maybe this is just an excuse for a bit of self-publicity, since I have just spent a day ’sprucing-up’ the China page on my website, but lets [...]

I argued recently that John Snow should check out some economics before arguing that structural reforms in Europe and Japan would resolve the problem of global economic trade imbalances. Well……….
I was thumbing through the economics working papers section of the OECD yesterday, and I found this:

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Begin Here
At Moody’s we spend a great deal of time studying the issue of pension burdens for countries around the world.

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To prepare for the upcoming demographic transition, [...]