American - Economist | November 7, 1943 -
We tend to think that employment is employment, and we don't ask the question: is this rewarding employment? Research establishes pretty clearly that typical notions of happiness - that more is better - really don't correspond to the way people think and feel.
Michael Spence
HappinessPeopleResearchBetterWay
I picked economics at the end of my undergraduate time because it seemed to be a really nice combination of theory, including mathematical theory on one hand, and things that are quite practical that you can touch and see and feel. So I picked it, and I consciously thought of it as an experiment to see if I liked it. And it worked.
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During my Ph.D. program, I became interested in the informational structure of markets that turned into the work on signaling, which was the part of my early work that was recognized for the Nobel Prize, but it was not really a subject at the time.
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With external help, even the countries ravaged by World War II recovered.
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On their own, tariff and trade barriers, if viewed as transitory negotiating tactics, will not significantly change global investment patterns or the structure of global supply chains and employment.
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Whatever advantage Trump thinks he will gain by positioning the U.S. in opposition to its natural allies will be dwarfed by the losses.
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A split between the U.S. and its traditional allies, if it becomes a permanent feature of the new global order, would lead to deeper fragmentation among the world's market-oriented democracies. That will surely shift the long-term balance of power in China's favor, as it moves steadily toward becoming the world's largest economy.
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For physical goods, there are costs associated with logistics and lead times, owing to inventories and poor forecasts of the market. With digital capital-intensive technology, however, production will inevitably move toward the final market, wherever it is. This re-localization constitutes a major shift in the structure of global supply networks.
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Labor, no matter how inexpensive, will become a less important asset for growth and employment expansion, with labor-intensive, process-oriented manufacturing becoming a less effective way for early-stage developing countries to enter the global economy.
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All countries will eventually need to rebuild their growth models around digital technologies and the human capital that supports their deployment and expansion.
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Actions aimed at supporting deleveraging and balance-sheet repair - such as recognizing losses, writing down assets, and recapitalizing banks - carry longer-term benefits but short-term costs.
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Robotics has already made significant inroads in electronics assembly, with sewing trades - traditionally many countries' first entry point to the global trading system - likely to come next.
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