Lecture of the Day

Tyler Cowen lecturing on globalization and music

Here's the podcast

Related;

Changing Trade

Source of the Chart Junk: The Economist

Related;
World Trade Report 2008: Trade in a Globalizing World

Headline of the Day

World leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis

The following headline appears too suspicious-
G8 says committed to fulfilling Africa aid pledge

Related;The G8 on Africa and development

IMF and World Bank compete for attention;
Export Restrictions Hamper Humanitarian Response, Zoellick Says
Price Surge Driving Some Countries Close to Tipping Point—IMF

Jagdish Bhagwati on Food Prices

Jagdish Bhagwati on Food Prices;



Bhagwati and Sachs on the food crisis

NAMA

A simple guide — NAMA Negotiations

Non-agricultural market access negotiations

Dani Rodrik on EU

To me the EU is the most impressive achievement of international economic statecraft in the second half of the 20th century.

-Rodrik

Economic History Talk of the Day

John Nye on Wine, War and Trade

Book recommendations from Bloggers

Krugman recommends;

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
by Dan Koeppel

Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
by Leonard Mlodinow

Made in China

Econ Talks

Robert Solow on Low Wage Workers in Rich Countries

Bernstein on the History of Trade

McCormick Says Buy Dollar Versus Pound, Australia Dollar

Cuomo Says McCain Making Mistake With Supply-Side Policy

Politics and Business in Russia After the Elections

Reinhart of AEI Calls Fed Statement `A Little Dovish'

Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World
Ashraf Ghani

Headline of the Day

'Free Tibet' flags made in China

Econ Talks

Author Weinberg Says Rockefeller Was No `Robber Baron'

Bernstein on the History of Trade

Will God - or Man - Play Dice with Nature?

Economists agree on Trade?

Tyler Cowen- Freer trade could fill the world's rice bowl

Dani Rodrik- The "free trade reduces prices" fallacy, yet again

Related;
Solow, Bhagwati, Krugman Evaluate the Human Cost of Trade, Economic Liberalization

Rice vs Grapes- Poor vs Rich

Australian drought has global impact;

Australia is among the top five rice exporters in the world, providing the food staple to millions of people.

Farmers in NSW and Victoria are in the final stages of harvesting the smallest rice crop in 80 years.

In a good year Australia exports more than 600,000 tonnes of rice, but since 2002 exports have been lower.

Race and farming

The struggle of black farmers in America has been captured in vivid black and white moments by documentary photographer, John Ficara. Black owned farms peaked in the early 1920s with an estimated total of 15 million acres and over 900,000 farmers. Today there are only 2.2 million acres owned by black farmers. These farmers are losing their land three times faster than white family farmers and a recent study by the university of Michigan predicts that within the next ten years there will be virtually no black owned farms.

Targeting the Bitter Folks

World Bank president on food prices

As financial markets have tumbled, food prices have soared. Since 2005, the prices of staples have jumped 80 percent. Last month, the real price of rice hit a 19-year high; the real price of wheat rose to a 28-year high and almost twice the average price of the last 25 years.

The good news for some farmers adds a crushing load to the most vulnerable – children, as young as four or five, forced to flee the safety of their rural communities to fight for food in teeming cities; food riots threatening societal breakdown; mothers deprived of nutrition for healthy babies. The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices. For these countries, where food comprises from half to three quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.

The realities of demography, changing diets, energy prices and biofuels, and climate changes suggest that high -- and volatile -- food prices will be with us for years to come.

We need a New Deal for Global Food Policy. This New Deal should focus not only on hunger and malnutrition, access to food and its supply, but also the interconnections with energy, yields, climate change, investment, the marginalization of women and others, and economic resiliency and growth. Food policy needs to gain the attention of the highest political levels, because no one country or group can meet these interconnected challenges.

We should start by helping those whose needs are immediate. The UN’s World Food Program requires at least $500 million of additional food supplies to meet emergency calls. The United States, the European Union, Japan, and other OECD countries must act now to fill this gap – or many more people will suffer and starve.

Skyrocketing food prices have increased attention to the larger challenge of overcoming hunger and malnutrition, the “Forgotten” U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG).

Even though hunger and malnutrition fall under the very first MDG, beyond traditional food aid, they receive only about one tenth of the resources appropriately directed to HIV/AIDS, another killer. Yet malnutrition is the MDG with the greatest “multiplier” effect: it is the largest risk factor for kids under five and the underlying cause of an estimated 3.5 million of their deaths each year. More than 20 percent of maternal deaths are traced to malnutrition. It weakens immunities to diseases. Research in Guatemala has shown that boys who received nutritional supplements during their first two years earned on average 46percent higher wages as adults. When impoverished families cut back, young girls are the first to lose out. Hunger and malnutrition are a cause, not just a result, of poverty.

This New Deal requires a stronger delivery system, to overcome fragmentation in food security, health, agriculture, water, sanitation, rural infrastructure, and gender policies.

A shift from traditional food aid to a broader concept of food and nutrition assistance must be part of this New Deal. In many cases, cash or vouchers, as opposed to commodity support, is appropriate and can enable the assistance to build local food markets and farm production. When commodities are needed, purchasing from local farmers can strengthen communities. Funds can buy micro-nutrients customized to locations. School lunch programs draw children to classrooms, while helping healthy kids to learn, and some offer parents food, too.

The World Bank Group can help by backing emergency measures that support the poor while encouraging incentives to produce and market food as part of sustainable development. Countries as diverse as Bhutan and Brazil, Madagascar and Morocco, have feeding programs for vulnerable groups. Mozambique, Cambodia, and Bangladesh employ locally-selected public works programs in exchange for food – developing roads, wells, schools, protections against natural disasters, and forests. Others, such as China, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Mexico offer cash transfers conditional on self-help steps – sending children to school or preventive health checkups. Countries also have to stop dangerous border barriers to the trade in food, which put neighbors in need at greater risk and stifle signals to stimulate more production.

We will work with countries, especially in Africa, and partner institutions, to seize an opportunity from the higher demand for food. Our World Development Report 2008, on Agriculture for Development, points the way. We can help create a “Green Revolution” for sub-Saharan Africa by assisting countries to boost productivity throughout the agricultural value chain and help small-holder farmers to break the cycle of poverty. We will almost double our own lending for agriculture in Africa, from $450 million to $800 million, and can help countries and farmers manage systemic risks, including through financial innovations to counter weather variability, such as drought. We can offer access to technology and science to boost yields.

The International Finance Corporation, or IFC, our private sector arm, will scale up investment and advisory support to agribusiness operations in Africa and elsewhere, including through working with the Bank on land titling and productivity, local currency financing, working capital, distribution and logistics, and support for the intermediary services on which farmers must rely.

To be most successful, we will need to integrate and mobilize a diverse range of partners – the FAO, WFP, and IFAD; other MDBs; private donors such as the Gates Foundation; agricultural research institutes; developing countries with great agricultural experience, such as Brazil; and most of all, the private sector.

A New Deal for Global Food Policy will contribute to inclusive and sustainable development. Poor, middle income, and developed countries will benefit together. Income gains from agriculture have three times the power in overcoming poverty than increases in other sectors, and 75 percent of the world’s poor are rural, with most involved in farming. Almost all rural women active in the economies of developing countries are engaged in agriculture. With support, women can seize the opportunities of globalized food demand.

See Rodrik's comments on the speech

Here is the podcast.

Everybody likes being number one- even Economists

An interesting comment by Bhagwati on university politics (it is 10 minutes into the end of the podcast, talking about Japan bashing);

Everybody likes being number one, .. is almost an obsession…in the way our culture is… When we were trying to hire Robert Barro from Harvard to Columbia...We happen to have the largest apartment on campus, we actually gave 4 rooms away when our daughter went to Yale, because we don’t derive our utility from how large over apartment is, or how big our office,…may be we’re just crazy people, I guess

We were told, even with seven rooms left over in our apartment...,not to invite Robert Barro to our apartment, because he would want one more room than we had.

Related;
Fighting Raids;

The University of California at Berkeley announced last week that it has raised a $1.1 billion fund to fight raids on its faculty by wealthier private universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The money will endow chairs for 100 professors and facilitate raises for Berkeley professors who now often earn as much as 30 percent less than their counterparts at private universities.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Berkeley would revamp the management of its $2.9 billion endowment, too, in hopes of matching the 25+ percent returns achieved in recent years by the most successfully-managed private university portfolios.

It is a hopeful sign for the nation’s highest-ranked public university. Perhaps it will be enough to counter over the next few years the threat reported here last week to one of the nation’s most creative economics departments.

Mineshaft Canary

Common Sense and Nonsense on Global Imbalances

This forum, featuring Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, Dr. Jose Antonio Ocampo, and Dr. Mark Weisbrot, was organized by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Multilateral economic institutions are facing a period of unprecedented challenges — among these are large macroeconomic imbalances (including the US current account deficit), stalled negotiations at the WTO, and a much-reduced IMF. Three economists discussed some of these current challenges and their implications for economic growth and development. The panel discussion was followed by a brief question and answer period.

DeLong Morning Coffee-Free vs. Fair Trade

The question of "free" versus "fair" trade, has three baskets: an environmental regulation basket, a labor-standards and freedom basket, and a "wages basket."...

There is a good chance that China is now on the same path to world preeminence that America walked 130 years ago. Come 2047 and again in 2071 and in the years after 2075, America is going to need China. There is nothing more dangerous for America's future national security, nothing more destructive to America's future prosperity, than for Chinese schoolchildren to be taught in 2047 and 2071 and in the years after 2075 that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible.