Martin Ford: How Will China Employ Its Factory Workers After the Robots Come Online?

Martin Ford: How Will China Employ Its Factory Workers After the Robots Come Online?:

The real problem China faces is that it is late to the party. Just as it reaches its manufacturing employment zenith, it faces a potentially disruptive impact from automation technology. And that will happen roughly in parallel with similar transitions in the service sectors of the countries that currently consume much of its output.

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Russia joined WTO today

On August 22, 2012 Russia became the 156^th member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). 18 years of negotiations resulted in commitments of Russia to substantially liberalize trade in goods and services, which will be done gradually during the 2013-2020 transition period. After all commitments are implemented, most favoured nation (MFN) import tariffs will fall from 11.5 percent to 7.9 percent. Russia has also committed to improve market access to foreign providers of financial, business, and telecommunication services.

This development is an opportunity for Russia to open a new page in its trade relationships with other CIS countries, stop thinking in terms of trade wars with zero-sum game and start thinking in terms of cooperation where economic interests prevail over politics.

Most massive and luminous galaxy cluster identified - MIT News Office

Most massive and luminous galaxy cluster identified - MIT News Office:

Illustration courtesy M. Weiss, CXC/NASA

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International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice's Response to Globalization

International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice's Response to Globalization:

Diego Puga, Daniel Trefler

NBER Working Paper No. 18288
Issued in August 2012
NBER Program(s):   ITI 

International trade can have profound effects on domestic institutions. We examine this proposition in the context of medieval Venice circa 800-1350. We show that (initially exogenous) increases in long-distance trade enriched a large group of merchants and these merchants used their new-found muscle to push for constraints on the executive i.e., for the end of a de facto hereditary Doge in 1032 and for the establishment of a parliament or Great Council in 1172. The merchants also pushed for remarkably modern innovations in contracting institutions (such as the colleganza) that facilitated large-scale mobilization of capital for risky long-distance trade. Over time, a group of extraordinarily rich merchants emerged and in the almost four decades following 1297 they used their resources to block political and economic competition. In particular, they made parliamentary participation hereditary and erected barriers to participation in the most lucrative aspects of long-distance trade. We document this 'oligarchization' using a unique database on the names of 8,103 parliamentarians and their families' use of the colleganza. In short, long-distance trade first encouraged and then discouraged institutional dynamism and these changes operated via the impacts of trade on the distribution of wealth and power.

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