Ezra Klein surveyed 18 economists for their charts of the year. Here’s my candidate, courtesy of Spiegel Online: This chart illustrates the end of euro complacency. Investors once acted as though the euro eliminated not just currency risk but sovereign credit risk. All nations–from Greece to Germany–could borrow at the same low rates. No longer. [...]
Archive for the ‘International’ Category
The Most Important Economic Chart of the Year
Posted in Budget, Economy, Finance, International, tagged Europe, Graphics, Interest Rates on December 21, 2011 | 2 Comments »
North Korea’s Economic Failure in a Second Picture
Posted in International, tagged GDP, North Korea, South Korea on December 19, 2011 | 1 Comment »
North Korea isn’t just dark. If you look at the nation’s per capita income, it’s clear that the economic situation has gotten darker. Over at the Washington Post Wonkblog, Brad Plumer crunches the data on per capita income in South and North Korea since the 1970s. Stunning divergence: Note that Kim Jong Il took power [...]
North Korea’s Economic Failure in One Picture
Posted in International, tagged Electricity, Growth, North Korea, South Korea on December 19, 2011 | 3 Comments »
North Korea is notoriously secretive. But it can’t hide from satellites. Here are nighttime images showing the amount of light coming from the Korean peninsula. As Donald Rumsfeld once said, “North Korea is dark”: This image comes from “Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space” by J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil, who [...]
The Rising Risk of Social Unrest
Posted in Budget, International, tagged Budget, Employment, jobs, unemployment on November 5, 2011 | 4 Comments »
The risk of social unrest is on the rise around much of the world, according to polling data summarized in the International Labour Organization’s latest World of Work Report (ht: Tortsen Slok). The ILO estimates that the risk of unrest has risen the most in advanced economies over the past five years, followed by the Middle [...]
Child Mortality and Development, the Video
Posted in Data, History, International, tagged Data, Development on November 2, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Courtesy of Bill Gates, here’s Hans Rosling talking child mortality and development. (Gates emphasizes foreign aid in his description, but that seems secondary compared to development generally.) Hans Rosling Breaks Down the Impact of Foreign Aid from bgC3 on Vimeo.
Some Economics of Somali Piracy
Posted in International, Microeconomics, tagged Piracy, Somalia on October 9, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Jeffrey Gettleman has penned a fascinating piece about the 388-day ordeal of two British sailors taken hostage by Somali pirates. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, he recounts how Paul and Rachel Chandler sailed off course between the Seychelles and Tanzania and found their sailboat boarded by ten pirates. Their first order of business? [...]
Indebted Countries Come in Three Flavors
Posted in Budget, International, tagged Debt, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, United Kingdom on September 26, 2011 | 3 Comments »
The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor includes a colorful chart of who owns the debt of six countries with well-known debt concerns: The debt owned by foreign investors and foreign central banks are in red and yellow; the other colors represent debt owned domestically. Based on IMF’s accounting, the six countries come in three flavors: The “PIG” countries. Portugal, [...]
The Latest Sovereign Debt Meme? Going Big
Posted in Budget, International, tagged Budget, Debt, Deficit, Europe on September 16, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The developed world is awash in sovereign debt. Greece stands on the precipice of painful (and inevitable) default. Italy and Spain struggle to convince markets that their debts are good. Portugal and Ireland hope to get in the lifeboat with Italy and Spain, rather than drown with Greece. And then there’s the United States. Much further from a sovereign crisis than many Euro nations, [...]
Unemployment, Small Business, Quantitative Easing, and More
Posted in Economy, International, Macroeconomics, tagged Federal Reserve, Macroeconomics, Monetary Policy, Small Business, Sweden, unemployment on September 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »
The Fed’s quantitative easing programs did indeed lower interest rates, but more so for Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities than for other kinds of debt. Small businesses are overrated as job creators. Extended unemployment insurance does increase unemployment rates, but not that much. Those are just a few of the findings from papers presented today at [...]
The Dark Side of Brazil’s Economic Rise
Posted in International, tagged Brazil, International on September 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Over at the Wall Street Journal, John Lyons delves into some of the economic challenges facing Brazil, including the strong real I mentioned yesterday: But while foreign investment is mostly a good thing, there are downsides. The abundance of cash has helped fund riskier bank loans and fueled a potential real-estate bubble. By some measures, [...]
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