Um artigo de B. Douglas Bernheim publicado no National Bureau of Economic Research-NBER avalia as perspectivas para o campo emergente da neuroeconomia colocar luz nas questões tradicionais da economias positiva e normativa. O artigo pode ser encontrado em http://www.nber.org/papers/w13954.
“Tomei conhecimento há duas semanas, através do blog do Prof. Greg Mankiw, da Harvard University, do lançamento do livro “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies” (O Mito do Eleitor Racional: Porque Democracias escolhem políticas ruins), da Princeton University Press, de 2007. O autor é Bryan Caplan, que é Professor Associado de Economia da George Mason University, nos EUA.
A tese do livro é polêmica, principalmente se transportada, sem a devida mediação, para outros contextos, já que o livro trata essencialmente da vida política dos EUA (e é bom colocar isso diante mão, para que alguns leitores deste blog não partam para a crítica ideológica sem atentar para as circunstâncias que levam um autor a escrever o que escreve!).
Segundo o Prof. Caplan o grande obstáculo para políticas econômicas sólidas não são os interesses de grupos entrincheirados, nem os crescentes lobbies, mas sim as falsas concepções populares, as crenças irracionais, e os viéses pessoais assumidos pelos eleitores comuns. O argumento do Prof. Bryan Caplan é que os eleitores continuamente elegem políticos que ou compartilham seus vieses, ou pretendem compartilhá-los, resultando assim em políticas públicas ruins que vencem novamente pelo voto popular.”
Esta é a introdução ao meu artigo desta semana no blog Acerto de Contas, que você pode acessar aqui!
Artigo do Prof. Paul Krugman em sua coluna de 05/05 em The New York Times:
Success breeds failure
Cross your fingers, knock on wood: it’s possible, though by no means certain, that the worst of the financial crisis is over. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that as markets stabilize, chances for fundamental financial reform may be slipping away. As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one.
Let’s look at the story so far.
After the financial crisis that ushered in the Great Depression, New Deal reformers regulated the banking system, with the goal of protecting the economy from future crises. The new system worked well for half a century.
Eventually, however, Wall Street did an end run around regulation, using complex financial arrangements to put most of the business of banking outside the regulators’ reach. Washington could have revised the rules to cover this new “shadow banking system” — but that would have run counter to the market-worshiping ideology of the times.
Instead, key officials, from Alan Greenspan on down, sang the praises of financial innovation and pooh-poohed warnings about the growing risks.
And then the crisis came. Last August, as investors began to realize the scope of the mortgage mess, confidence in the financial system collapsed.
I believe we’ve been lucky to have Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman during these trying times. He may lack Mr. Greenspan’s talent for impersonating the Wizard of Oz, but he’s an economist who has thought long and hard about both the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s, and he understands what’s at stake.
Mr. Bernanke recognized, more quickly than others might have, that we were in a situation bearing a family resemblance to the great banking crisis of 1930-31. His first priority, overriding every other concern, had to be preventing a cascade of financial failures that would cripple the economy.
The Fed’s efforts these past nine months remind me of the old TV series “MacGyver,” whose ingenious hero would always get out of difficult situations by assembling clever devices out of household objects and duct tape.
Because the institutions in trouble weren’t called banks, the Fed’s usual tools for dealing with financial trouble, designed for a system centered on traditional banks, were largely useless. So the Fed has cobbled together makeshift arrangements to save the day. There was the TAF and the TSLF (don’t ask), there were credit lines to investment banks, and the whole thing culminated in March’s unprecedented, barely legal Bear Stearns rescue — a rescue not of Bear itself, but of its “counterparties,” those who were on the other side of its financial bets.
It’s still far from certain whether all this improvisation has resolved the crisis. But it was the right thing to do, and for the moment things seem to be calming down.
So two cheers for Mr. Bernanke. Unfortunately, his very success — if he has succeeded — poses another problem: it gives the financial industry a chance to block reform.
We now know that things that aren’t called banks can nonetheless generate banking crises, and that the Fed needs to carry out bank-type rescues on their behalf. It follows that hedge funds, special investment vehicles and so on need bank-type regulation. In particular, they need to be required to have adequate capital.
But while our out-of-control financial system has been bad for the country, it has been very good for wheeler-dealers, who collect huge fees when things seem to be going well, then get to walk away unscathed — indeed, often with large severance packages — when things go wrong. They don’t want regulations that would stabilize the economy but cramp their style.
And now that the financial clouds have lifted a bit, the pushback against sensible regulation is in full swing. Even the Fed’s very modest proposal to curb abusive mortgage lending with new standards is under fire, and there are worrying signs that the Fed may back down.
Maybe a Democratic sweep in November can revive the cause of financial reform, but right now it looks as if we’ll soon return to business as usual.
The parallel that worries me is what happened a decade ago, after the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management failed, temporarily causing the whole financial system to freeze up.
Through luck and skill, that crisis was contained — but rather than serving as a warning, the episode nurtured the false belief that the Fed had all the tools it needed to deal with financial shocks. So nothing was done to remedy the vulnerabilities the L.T.C.M. crisis revealed — the same vulnerabilities that are at the heart of today’s much bigger crisis.
And if we don’t fix the system now, there’s every reason to believe that the next crisis will be bigger still — and that the Fed won’t have enough duct tape to hold things together.
“Está claro que as redes de negócios são agora a fonte primária para nova diferenciação”. Esta foi a mensagem do CEO- Chief Executive Officer da SAP (de origem alemã, é uma das maiores empresas do mundo em vendas de software para negócios), Henning Kagermann, em seu discurso principal no evento da SAP em Atlanta, nos EUA, em abril de 2007.
Segundo ele duas tendências estão levando as empresas para a transformação das redes de negócios: o ritmo das mudanças nos negócios e a crescente comoditização. Uma nova aquisição (de empresa) ocorre a cada vinte minutos, continua Kagermann, e o tempo de integrar os sistemas está cada vez mais curto. Ao mesmo tempo, um novo produto atinge o mercado cada 3,5 minutos, pronto para imitação, fazendo com que as empresas tenham que “mover para cima” a cadeia de valor pela colaboração mais íntima com parceiros, de modo a proporcionar serviços para um sem número de consumidores.
A liderança que Kagermann imprimiu na SAP acerca deste conceito de business network transformation (transformação da rede de negócios) levou a que dois autores parceiros da SAP, Philip Lay e Geoffrey Moore, da TCG Advisors, produzissem um artigo com o título deste conceito.”
Esta é a introdução à newsletter da Creativante desta semana, que você pode acessar aqui!
Matéria interessante da CNN (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0393083.htm) do dia 02/05, sobre mobilidade empresarial!
============================
SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM) (TSX: RIM) today announced a co-innovation partnership to usher in a new era in enterprise mobility. SAP, the leader in enterprise software, and RIM, the leader in mobile connectivity for the enterprise, have joined forces to change the way people work, by enabling anytime, anywhere mobile access to SAP enterprise applications through the widely adopted BlackBerry® platform.
Just as the BlackBerry wireless platform has transformed the way people use e-mail, SAP and RIM will bring the power and productivity of SAP enterprise applications to the BlackBerry platform in a similarly robust and user-friendly manner. Mobile users will soon be able to work freely on SAP, no longer tethered to their desktops or offices in order to perform their jobs. By tearing down the walls between enterprise computing and mobile connectivity, SAP and RIM are enhancing employee productivity.
The first output expected from this new partnership is a native BlackBerry smartphone client that will merge the power of the SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application with core BlackBerry smartphone applications, including the BlackBerry Email, Address Book and Calendar applications, to deliver an indispensable tool for sales people. The new mobile SAP CRM application will leverage the inherent security, management capabilities and efficiency of the BlackBerry platform and the intuitive user experience of BlackBerry smartphones. Organizations that already have the SAP CRM and the BlackBerry solutions deployed will require only basic user training and minimal incremental IT infrastructure investments.
According to research firm IDC, the mobile user population is set to increase from about 800 million in 2007, accounting for 25.7 percent of the worldwide workforce, to one billion in 2011, accounting for 30.4 percent of the workforce. (1)
“Providing access to and securing broad adoption of enterprise applications with mobile workers has been a pervasive challenge over the years,” said Mary Wardley, vice president, CRM Applications, IDC. “Most existing solutions require users to learn yet another application and navigation paradigm on their devices, and for IT to manage a complex infrastructure to deploy and support. By having a native application on a BlackBerry smartphone that easily extends functionality but retains the native ease of use, users will find it non-intrusive to adopt applications such as CRM. This is an exciting partnership and definitely has the potential to change the game.”
This groundbreaking partnership between two leaders in their respective markets leverages best-in-class business applications and mobile technology to deliver:
– Expanded Reach of SAP® Business Suite Applications — Users rely on
their BlackBerry smartphones for access to people and information on the
go, so it becomes easier to introduce new enterprise applications with a
far greater adoption rate.
– Automated Data Synchronization — The new solution leverages the push-
based architecture of BlackBerry® Enterprise Server to automate data
synchronization between business systems and mobile applications.
BlackBerry smartphone users have the flexibility to use the mobile
enterprise application even in the absence of network coverage. Once back
in coverage, all updates queued on the handset and back-end servers are
automatically transferred without user action, similar to how e-mail on
BlackBerry smartphones works today.
– Easy Deployment — The mobile device management capabilities of
BlackBerry Enterprise Server allow IT groups to centrally manage and
wirelessly deploy mobile applications to BlackBerry smartphones.
– Market-Leading Enterprise-Class Security — The proven capability and
demonstrated track record from SAP in enterprise applications security,
combined with the renowned wireless security of the BlackBerry platform,
helps ensure enterprise-class security for the end-to-end solution.
– Low Incremental Cost of Ownership — Businesses that have already
deployed BlackBerry Enterprise Server and SAP applications can leverage
their existing investments and keep deployment and maintenance costs at a
minimum.
“SAP is thrilled to bolster its long-standing relationship with RIM through the co-development of this breakthrough offering,” said Bill McDermott, president and CEO, SAP Americas and Asia Pacific Japan. “By combining RIM’s expertise for empowering the mobile worker and SAP’s strength in business computing, we are embarking on an exciting future to make it easier and more convenient for today’s business users to perform their jobs. Our extended partnership with RIM will open many new doors for mobile workers around the world who require real-time mobile access to enterprise applications in a secure setting.”
“In concert with SAP, we are bringing the unique benefits of the BlackBerry platform to SAP applications, providing organizations with the security, manageability, efficiency and ‘push’ capabilities of the BlackBerry platform with a dedicated client application that also integrates with core BlackBerry applications,” said Jim Balsillie, co-CEO, Research In Motion. “Our partnership with SAP will allow us to deliver an unparalleled solution to our mutual customers who demand the very best in enterprise mobility. With this new partnership, we have an excellent opportunity to further entrench BlackBerry as the leading mobile connectivity platform for enterprise information access. The vision that users can have access to SAP’s enterprise computing applications from virtually anywhere, anytime, represents a new era of opportunity.”
As part of the work delivered through the partnership, RIM will enhance its framework for building intuitive, workflow-enabled mobile applications for the BlackBerry platform. The framework will serve as the basis for developing mobile applications for other solutions in the SAP Business Suite.
SAP and RIM will be previewing the mobile CRM application at the annual SAPPHIRE® conferences in Orlando, May 4 to 7, and Berlin, May 19 to 21, as well as at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) 2008, May 13 to 15 in Orlando.
For more information, please visit http://www.blackberry.com/go/sap. For more information about SAP CRM, please visit http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/crm/index.epx
(1) IDC, Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2007-2011 Forecast, December 2007 - Doc # 209813
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications. RIM technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data. RIM’s portfolio of award-winning products, services and embedded technologies are used by thousands of organizations around wireless platform, the RIM Wireless®the world and include the BlackBerry Handheld(TM) product line, software development tools, radio-modems and software/hardware licensing agreements. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, RIM operates offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. RIM is listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market (NASDAQ: RIMM) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: RIM). For more information, visit www.rim.com or www.blackberry.com.
About SAP CRM
SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) is an important component of the SAP® Business Suite. With an eye toward empowering the growing business user market, this breakthrough product has been co-innovated with leading customers and partners, and is designed to be simple and powerful to solve real business problems. SAP CRM offers capabilities such as trade promotions management, business communications management and pipeline performance management. SAP CRM features a dynamic user interface (UI) that gives business users the power to easily access all relevant information to best serve customers.
About SAP
SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 47,800 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol “SAP.” (For more information, visit www.sap.com)
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications.
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (”SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
Copyright © 2008 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.
The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. RIM, Research In Motion and BlackBerry are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be pending or registered in other countries. RIM assumes no obligations or liability and makes no representation, warranty, endorsement or guarantee in relation to any aspect of any third party products or services.
Forward-looking statements in this news release are made pursuant to the “safe harbor” provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used herein, words such as “intend” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions made by and information available to Research In Motion Limited. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, possible product defects and product liability, risks related to international sales and potential foreign currency exchange fluctuations, the initiation or outcome of litigation, acts or potential acts of terrorism, international conflicts, significant fluctuations of quarterly operating results, changes in Canadian and foreign laws and regulations, continued acceptance of RIM’s products, increased levels of competition, technological changes and the successful development of new products, dependence on third-party networks to provide services, dependence on intellectual property rights, and other risks and factors detailed from time to time in RIM’s periodic reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and other regulatory authorities. RIM has no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Note to editors:
To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this newly launched site, you also can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. No registration is required. To preview and request broadcast-standard video digitally or by tape, log on to www.thenewsmarket.com/sap, where registration and video is free to the media.
Artigo de hoje do New York Times revela o peso dos custos da saúde, mesmo para os assegurados!
Even the Insured Feel the Strain of Health Costs
By REED ABELSON and MILT FREUDENHEIM
Published: May 4, 2008
The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.
Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.
With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.
“It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.
Mr. Corbin said that under their employer’s health plan, he and his co-workers are now obliged to pay up to $4,000 of their families’ annual medical bills, on top of about $1,600 a year in premiums. Five years ago, they paid no premiums and were responsible for only about $2,000 of their families’ medical bills.
“That’s a big jump,” Mr. Corbin said. “You’ve just lost a month’s pay.”
Already, many doctors say, the soft economy is making some insured people hesitant to get care they need, reluctant to spend a $50 co-payment for an office visit. Parents “are waiting longer to bring in their children,” said Dr. Richard Lander, a pediatrician in Livingston, N.J. “They say, ‘The kid isn’t that sick; her temperature is only 102.’ ”
The problem of affording health care is most acute for people with no insurance, a group expected to soon exceed 48 million, but those with insurance say they too are feeling the pain.
Since the recession of 2001, the employee’s average cost of an annual health care premium for family coverage has nearly doubled — to $3,300, up from $1,800 — while incomes have come nowhere close to keeping up. Factor in other out-of-pocket medical costs, and the portion of the average American household’s income that goes toward health care has risen about 12 percent, according to the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, and is now approaching one-fifth of the average household’s spending.
In a recent survey by Deloitte’s health research center, only 7 percent of people said they felt financially prepared for their future health care needs.
Shirley Giarde of Walla Walla, Wash., was not prepared when her husband, Raymond, suddenly developed congestive heart failure last year and needed a pacemaker and defibrillator. Because his job did not provide health benefits, she has covered them both through a policy for the self-employed, which she obtained as the proprietor of a bridal and formal-wear store, the Purple Parasol.
But when Raymond had his medical problems, Ms. Giarde discovered that her insurance would cover only $22,000, leaving them with about $100,000 in unpaid hospital bills.
Even though the hospital agreed to reduce that debt to about $50,000, Ms. Giarde is still struggling to pay it — in part because the poor economy has meant slumping sales at the Purple Parasol. Her husband, now disabled and unable to work, will not qualify for Medicare for another year, and she cannot afford the $758 a month it would cost to enroll him in a state-run insurance plan for individuals who cannot find private insurance.
She recently refinanced her car, a 2002 Toyota Highlander, to help pay for her husband’s heart medicines, which cost some $400 a month.
Experts say that too often for the underinsured, coverage can seem like health insurance in name only — adequate only as long as they have no medical problems.
“There’s a real shift in the burden of health care to people who happen to be sick,” said Paul B. Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a research group in Washington.
Companies and policy makers have yet to focus on what the faltering economy means for employees’ medical care, said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a Washington association of about 200 large employers.
“It’s a bad-news situation when an individual or household has to pay out-of-pocket three, four or five times as much for their health plan as they would have at the time of the last recession,” she said. “Americans have been giving their pay raise to the health care system.”
Sage Holben, a 62-year-old library technician with diabetes who is active in her local union in St. Paul, says that in 2003 union members agreed to a two-year freeze on wages to protect their health care coverage. But for the union, which will begin talks on the next contract this fall, it may be difficult to continue that trade-off, Ms. Holben said. “It’s at the point where we’re losing, anyway,” she said.
“I live paycheck to paycheck,” said Ms. Holben, who makes close to $40,000 a year at Metropolitan State University.
When she took the job in 1999, she says, the health benefits required no co-payments for doctor visits. Now, her out-of-pocket cost per visit is $25, and she pays $38 a month for her diabetes medicine. She has not been to the eye doctor in two years, even though eye exams are crucial for people with diabetes and she knows she needs new glasses. Nor does she monitor her blood sugar as regularly as she should because of the cost of the supplies.
“It’s not an extravagant expense,” she said. “It just adds up.” And it comes atop the increasing cost of utilities, gasoline and food — and the few hundred dollars of repairs her 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier needs.
Many employers do recognize that their workers are struggling financially even as they are asking them to pick up more of their health-care bills.
“It makes the work we have to do even more challenging,” said Anne Silverman, the vice president in charge of benefits in North America for the publishing company Reed Elsevier. “Employees are being stretched in terms of their disposable income.”
Even so, more companies may see themselves as having little choice but to require employees to pay even more of their health expenses, said Ted Nussbaum, a benefits consultant at the firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide. And when a weak economy undermines job security, he said, workers may simply have to accept reduced benefits.
While Mr. Nussbaum and other consultants say it is unlikely that significant numbers of employers will simply drop coverage for their workers, the weak economy could prompt more of them to push for so-called consumer-driven plans. Such plans tend to offset lower premiums with higher annual deductibles.
And while these plans often allow employees to put pre-tax savings into special health care accounts, they typically end up forcing the worker to assume a bigger share of overall medical costs. About six million people are now enrolled in these medical plans.
Among employers, the hardest pressed may be small businesses. Their insurance premiums tend to be proportionately higher than ones paid by large employers, because small companies have little bargaining clout with insurers.
Health costs are “burying small business,” said Mike Roach, who owns a small clothing store in Portland, Ore. He recently testified on health coverage at a Senate hearing led by Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.
Last year, Mr. Roach paid about $27,000 in health premiums for his eight employees. “It’s a huge chunk of change,” he said, noting that he was forced to raise his employees’ yearly deductible by 50 percent, to $750.
Around the nation, some workers are simply priced out of their employee health plans.
After Brian Falacienski of Milton, Fla., was laid off last year from his job as a surveyor for a construction company, he found another position. But the cost of his new health plan — $800 a month for coverage with a $1,000 annual deductible — was beyond the means of Mr. Falacienski, 38, who is married and has a 2-year-old daughter.
His wife, Marianne, started researching individual insurance policies and was able to find policies for her husband and daughter offering basic, if minimal, coverage, costing $161 a month for father and daughter. But Ms. Falacienski, 32, who has arthritis and the severe digestive disorder Crohn’s disease, is now uninsured. Because of her conditions, she said, four major insurers rejected her.
“I even applied for Medicaid,” she said, “but I wasn’t low-income enough.”
Um artigo recente de Jennifer Hunt , da McGill University, EUA, para o NBER-National Bureau of Economic Research pergunta se o aumento nos pós-graduados estrangeiros em território americano contribuiu para a inovação naquele país. Seu artigo, intitulado How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation? (Quanto a migração incrementa inovação?) encontrou o seguinte:
In this paper I have demonstrated the important boost to innovation per capita provided by skilled immigration to the United States in 1950-2000. A calculation of the effect of immigration in the 1990-2000 period puts the magnitudes of the effects in context.
The 1990-2000 increase from 2.2% to 3.5% in the share of the population composed of immigrant college graduates increased patenting by at least 81:3 = 10:4%, and perhaps by as much as 18%. The increase in the share of post-college immigrants from 0.9% to 1.6% increased patenting by at least 10.5% and perhaps by as much as 24%. The increase from 0.30% to 0.55% in the share of workers who are immigrant scientists and engineers increased patenting by at least 13% but probably by less than 23%.
While I find evidence for the crowding-out of natives in the short run, in the long run there is evidence for the reverse: that skilled natives are attracted to states or occupations with skilled immigrants. The results hint that skilled immigrants innovate more than their native counterparts, especially if they are scientists or engineers. If correct, the result could reflect higher education of immigrants within skill categories, or positive selection of immigrants in terms of ability to innovate. However, the effect of natives is not as well identified econometrically as the effect of immigrants.
Estes resultados sugerem que há méritos claros na adoção de políticas para atrair alunos estrangeiros, e retê-los, uma vez que eles completem seus estudos (como a Grã-Bretanha e Austrália, entre outros, fazem atualmente).
No Brasil esta migração de talentos há muito é desejada!
O ITIF é um instituto de pesquisa e educacional (um think tank) não partidário, baseado em Washington, EUA, cuja missão é formular e promover políticas públicas para o avanço da inovação tecnológica e a produtividade internacionalmente, em Washington, e nos estados americanos.
Recentemente o ITIF divulgou um estudo intitulado “Explaining International Broadband Leadership” (Explicando a Liderança Internacional em Banda-Larga). Os resultados do estudo podem ser encontrados aqui!
Mais informações vindas hoje do blog do Prof. Mark J. Perry:
According to the more comprehensive Household Survey Data (which unlike the establishment data, includes the self-employed, unpaid family workers, agricultural workers, and private household workers), there were 146.331 million Americans employed in April (see chart above), which is: a) 618,000 higher than April of last year (145.733 million jobs), and b) 362,000 higher than March of 2008 (145.969 million).
Note also what happened to employment levels for both measures during the 2001 recession. Much different than 2008. No recession.
Update: Also, as Brian Wesbury points out, the actual, unrounded unemployment rate is only 4.952%, very, very close to being reported as 4.9% instead of 5%!
Este é o recado de um instigante artigo da nova The Economist sobre a mídia americana. Vejam a matéria abaixo!
American media
May 1st 2008 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
THE New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry’s deep malaise. The Grey Lady’s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On April 29th Standard & Poor’s cut the firm’s debt rating to one notch above junk.
At the company’s annual meeting a week earlier, its embattled publisher, Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, attempted to quash rumours that his family is preparing to jettison the firm it has owned since 1896. Carnage is expected soon as dozens of what were once the safest jobs in journalism are axed, since too few of the staff have accepted a generous offer of voluntary redundancy.
Pick almost any American newspaper company and you can tell a similar story. The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.
Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers’ revenue. But some of the fall in revenues is actually due to the economic slowdown in America, and especially in the housing market, which contributes a large slice of classified advertising.
The credit crunch has also come at a bad time for a group of new newspaper owners, who used loans that were readily available until last summer to buy their way into the business, but must now be having second thoughts. Sam Zell, a property tycoon who bought the Tribune Company, the owner of papers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, is finding the going harder than expected. He is trying to sell assets such Newsday, a New York tabloid that is the subject of a bidding war between two other moguls, Mort Zuckerman and Rupert Murdoch, and perhaps other firms.
Mr Murdoch’s enthusiasm is a reminder that not all newspapers are suffering. He bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal’s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post, which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times.
Industry experts such as Lauren Rich Fine of Kent State University do not think that the Times is responding forcefully enough. “Now is the time to beef up its business section,” she says. Ms Fine also points out that although all newspapers are being buffeted by the internet, their ability to respond will probably depend on whether their audiences are national, metropolitan or local. The first category can afford to invest in distinctive international or business coverage, while the last can prosper by becoming “more intensely local”. But she fears for the big metropolitan newspapers, which may find themselves trapped in the middle.
Not all is lost, however. Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest “Newspaper Next” report from the American Press Institute, an industry group, makes clear. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming “information and connection utilities”, through such offerings as local internet forums.
The hero for industry optimists is Brian Tierney, a former public-relations executive who led a group of investors that borrowed heavily to buy Philadelphia’s two main dailies. He has since revived them with a vigorous marketing drive. He is also finding new ways to drum up advertising, such as introducing a business column sponsored by a local bank. People said pigs will fly before our circulation rises, Mr Tierney recalled in a recent speech, before recounting how he celebrated a rise in circulation by projecting flying pigs onto the walls of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
