The Economic Journal: 125th Anniversary Issue Free On-line

The Economic Journal, one of the grand old journals of economics, is celebrating its 125th anniversary. The Royal Economic Society (40% of its membership is in the UK, the rest around the world) is collaborating with the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, to make the March 2015 birthday issue freely available online. The theme of the issue is that current top economists look back on classic papers published in the EJ, and offer reflections and analysis. Here are the titles of the papers in bold, with the reference to the classic EJ paper under discussion and weblinks underneath. For those who recognize the original papers and the current authors, no further recommendation is necessary.

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"Economic Journal 125th Anniversary Special Issue" (pages 203–208)
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"Unveiling the Ethics behind Inequality Measurement: Dalton's Contribution to Economics," by Anthony B. Atkinson and Andrea Brandolini

Dalton, H. (1920). ‘The measurement of the inequality of incomes’, Economic Journal, vol. 30(119), pp. 348–61.
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"In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation," Joseph E. Stiglitz

Ramsey, F.P. (1927). ‘A contribution to the theory of taxation’, Economic Journal, vol. 37(145), pp. 47–61.
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"Frank Ramsey's A Mathematical Theory of Saving," by Orazio P. Attanasio

Ramsey, F.P. (1928). ‘A mathematical theory of saving’, Economic Journal, vol. 38(152), pp. 543–59.
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"Keynesian Controversies on Wages," by John Pencavel

Dunlop, J.T. (1938). ‘The movement of real and money wage rates’, Economic Journal, vol. 48(191), pp. 413–34.

Keynes, J.M. (1939). ‘Relative movements of real wages and output’, Economic Journal, vol. 49(193), pp. 34–51.
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"Harrod 1939," by Lawrence E. Blume and Thomas J. Sargent

Harrod, R.F. (1939). ‘An essay in dynamic theory’, Economic Journal, vol. 49(193), pp. 14–33.
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"Introduction to The Distribution of Earnings and of Individual Output, by A.D. Roy," by James J. Heckman and Michael Sattinger

Roy, A.D (1950). ‘The distribution of earnings and of individual output’, Economic Journal, vol. 60(239), pp. 489–505.
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"Introduction to A Theory of the Allocation of Time by Gary Becker," by James J. Heckman

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"Gary Becker's A Theory of the Allocation of Time," Pierre-André Chiappori and Arthur Lewbel

Becker, G.S. (1965). ‘A theory of the allocation of time’, Economic Journal, vol. 75(299), pp. 493–517.
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"Localised and Biased Technologies: Atkinson and Stiglitz's New View, Induced Innovations, and Directed Technological Change," by Daron Acemoglu

Atkinson, A.B. and Stiglitz, J.E. (1969). ‘A new view of technological change’, Economic Journal, vol. 79(315), pp. 573–8.
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"Taxation and Saving – A Retrospective," Alan J. Auerbach

Atkinson, A.B. and Sandmo, A. (1980). ‘Welfare implications of the taxation of savings’, Economic Journal, vol. 90(359), pp. 529–49.
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"Regret Theory: A Bold Alternative to the Alternatives," by Han Bleichrodt and Peter P. Wakker

Loomes, G. and Sugden, R. (1982). ‘Regret theory: an alternative theory of rational choice under uncertainty’, Economic Journal, vol. 92(368), pp. 805–24.
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"Knowledge Spillovers, Innovation and Growth," by Philippe Aghion and Xavier Jaravel

Cohen, W.M. and Levinthal, D.A. (1989). ‘Innovation and learning: the two faces of R & D’, Economic Journal, vol. 99(397), pp. 569–96.
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"Endogenous Growth, Convexity of Damage and Climate Risk: How Nordhaus' Framework Supports Deep Cuts in Carbon Emissions," Simon Dietz and Nicholas Stern

Nordhaus, W.D. (1991). ‘To slow or not to slow: the economics of the greenhouse effect’, Economic Journal, vol. 101(407), pp. 920–37.
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Does Inequality Reduce Economic Growth: A Skeptical View

Those who find the rise in income inequality over the last few decades to be concerning, like me, can find themselves facing the "so what?" question. Is my concern over rising inequality an ethical or perhaps an aesthetic judgement, and thus a personal preference where economics really doesn't have much guidance to offer? Faced with this possibility, the temptation arises to claim the following syllogism: 1) We have experienced greater inequality, which is undesirable. 2) We have experiences slower economic growth, which is undesirable. 3) Therefore, greater inequality causes slower economic growth.

A variety of studies have undertaken to prove a connection from inequality to slower growth, but a full reading of the available evidence is that the evidence on this connection is inconclusive. For example, the OECD has recently published a report called "In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All," and Chapter 3, titled "The Effect of Income Inequality on Economic Growth," offers an OECD analysis seeking to connect the two. But before presenting the new study, the OECD report has the honesty and forthrightness to point out that the full body of literature on this subject is inconclusive as whether such a relationship even exists--and if so, in what direction the relationship goes.

The report first points out (pp. 60-61 that as a matter of theory, one can think up arguments why greater inequality might be associated with less growth, or might be associated with more growth. For example, inequality could result less growth if: 1) People become upset about rising inequality and react by demanding regulations and redistributions that slow down the ability of an economy to produce growth; 2) A high degree of persistent inequality will limit the ability and incentives of those in the lower part of the income distribution to obtain more education and job experience; or 3) It may be that development and widespread adoption of new technologies requires demand from a broad middle class, and greater inequality could limit the extent of the middle class.

In passing, it's worth noting that the first reason falls into the category of "frustrated people killing the goose that lays the golden eggs." In other words, finding a correlation between rising inequality and slower growth could be a sign of dysfunctional responses to the rise in inequality.

On the other side, inequality could in theory be associated with faster economic growth if: 1) Higher inequality provides greater incentives for people to get educated, work harder, and take risks, which could lead to innovations that boost growth; 2) Those with high incomes tend to save more, and so an unequal distribution of income will tend to have more high savers, which in turn spurs capital accumulation in the economy. The report doesn't mention a third hypothesis that seems relevant in a number of developing economies, which is that fast growth may first emerge in certain regions or industries, leading to greater inequality for a time, before the gains from that growth diffuse more widely across the economy.

Given the competing theoretical explanations, what does the actual evidence say? The OECD writes
(pp. 61-62):

The large empirical literature attempting to summarize the direction in which inequality affects growth is summarised in the literature review in Cingano (2014, Annex II). That survey highlights that there is no consensus on the sign and strength of the relationship; furthermore, few works seek to identify which of the possible theoretical effects is at work. This is partly tradeable to the multiple empirical challenges facing this literature.  

The report then goes on to discuss issues like: 1) variations in estimation methods, including whether the analyst looks at one country over time, multiple countries at a point in time, or multiple countries over time, along with the statistical tools used; 2) in many countries around the world, the data on income distribution is not measured well, not measured consistently over time, and not measured in ways that are easily comparable to other countries; 3) in empirical studies the already-weak data on inequality is often boiled down into a single number, like a Gini coefficient or a ratio between those in the 90th and 10th income percentiles, a simplification that might miss what is happening; 4) the connections between income inequality and growth might differ across groups of countries (like high-income and low-income countries), and looking at all countries together averages out these various effects; and 5) whether (and how) the researcher should take into account factors like the extent of progressive taxation and redistribution, the extent of financial markets, or the degree of economic and social mobility over time.

There's an old saying that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," in other words, the fact that the existing evidence doesn't firmly show a connection from greater inequality to slower growth is not proof that such a connection doesn't exist. But anyone who has looked at economic studies on the determinants of economic growth knows that the problem of finding out what influences growth is very difficult, and the solutions aren't always obvious. For example, the OECD study argues that inequality leads to less investment in human capital at the bottom part of the income distribution. If this result holds up in further study, an obvious answer is not to focus on inequality directly, but instead to focus on additional support for human capital accumulation for those most in need.

There are a few common patterns in economic growth. All high-income countries have near-universal K-12 public education to build up human capital, along with encouragement of higher education. All high-income countries have economies where most jobs are interrelated with private and public capital investment, thus leading to higher productivity and wages. All high-income economies are relatively open to foreign trade. In addition, high-growth economies are societies that are willing to allow and even encourage a reasonable amount of disruption to existing patterns of jobs, consumption, and ownership. After all, economic growth means change.

On the other hand, it's also true that fast-growing countries around the world, either now or in the past, show a wide range of levels and trends of inequality, as well as considerable variation in the extent of government regulation and control, patterns of taxation and redistribution, structure of financial sector, and much more. Consider the pattern of China's fast economic growth in recent decades, with rising inequality and an evolving mixture of private initiative and government control. At least to me, China looks like a situation where growth is causing inequality, not where inequality is slowing growth. It may be that the question of "does inequality slow down economic growth" is too broad and diffuse to be useful. Instead, those of us who care about both the rise in inequality and the slowdown in economic growth should be looking for policies to address both goals, without presuming that substantial overlap will always occur between them.

The Sharing Economy

The nickname "the sharing economy" seems like a triumph of public relations artistry. The term refers to firms based on software that allows people to rent a room in someone's house (like Airbnb) or pay for a ride in someone's car (like Uber or Lyft). At least in the kindergarten where I learned all of my sharing values, being compensated was not a form of "sharing." As an alternative title, I've proposed the "finding ways to get paid for excess capacity" economy, but it doesn't quite trip off the tongue. Better is the "matching economy," which captures the idea of using the web to match up a potential buyer and seller who would otherwise have had no way to connect.

Firms like eBay can be thought of as the first generation  of the matching economy, but people selling stuff to each other displaced relatively few existing workers and raised relatively few public policy issues. Tim Sablik offers an overview of the current issues in "The Sharing Economy: Are new online markets creating economic value of threatening consumer safety?" in the Fourth Quarter 2014 issue of EconFocus, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He points out that in some industries, the growth of supply as a result of the matching economy has been quite substantial:

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there were 233,000 taxi drivers and chauffeurs in the United States as of 2012, but new services are substantially adding to that number. According to a recent study by Uber's head of policy research Jonathan Hall and Princeton University economist Alan Krueger [discussed here], the company had more than 160,000 active U.S. drivers in 2014. That alone nearly doubles the supply of short-term transportation, not counting Uber's competitors like Lyft and Sidecar. Similarly for the hotel industry, Airbnb boasts over a million properties in nearly 200 countries, surpassing the capacity of major hoteliers like Hilton Worldwide, which had 215,000 rooms in 74 countries in 2014."

Sablik points to evidence that the additional competition has led to better deals for consumers, not just the consumers who use matching economy firms, but also because the traditional competitors offer better deals, too. The matching economy firms can be especially useful when there is a spike in demand--like a city hosting a Super Bowl or a political convention. Moreover, the idea of the matching economy is taking on many forms. Here's a list of some sharing economy firms from Sablik:

 

An article in the Economist magazine for January 3, 2015, discussed how the matching economy was reaching into the labor market.

"In San Francisco, ... young professionals ... can use the apps on their phones to get their apartments cleaned by Handy or Homejoy; their groceries bought and delivered by Instacart; their clothes washed by Washio and their flowers delivered by BloomThat. Fancy Hands will provide them with personal assistants who can book trips or negotiate with the cable company. TaskRabbit will send somebody out to pick up a last-minute gift and Shyp will gift-wrap and deliver it. SpoonRocket will deliver a restaurant-quality meal to the door within ten minutes."

So what are the issues or problems with the matching economy? Here is how I see them.

1) The new suppliers in the matching economy only have a cost advantage because they are breaking existing rules or otherwise underregulated. When you purchase a traditional taxi-ride or a hotel room, you are actually paying for more than the basic service. You are also paying for health and safety inspectors, for an assurance of certain kinds of required training and certification, for liability insurance, for limits on the possibilities for price-gouging, and often for brand-name reputation. From this standpoint, the problem isn't that there is more competition, but rather that the competition doesn't need to play by the same rules.

This concern has some force, but there are counterarguments. It's worth noting that new entrants are not completely unrestricted. Many of the matching economy firms do background checks on those providing services, and may require that they carry specific insurance. Users of the services can rate the providers, as well as looking at previous reviews. Sablik writes: "Portland, Ore., has partnered with Airbnb to promote the service through its tourism bureau. The city may stand to gain from the deal. According to Airbnb's own studies, its guests tend to stay longer and spend more than typical tourists. For its part, Airbnb agreed to work with the city to ensure hosts meet safety requirements. It also agreed to collect and remit lodging taxes to Portland on behalf of its hosts."

The rise of the matching economy should also force government to take a fresh look at what regulations are needed. However, it's a well-known phenomenon in regulatory economics to have a situation in which large existing competitors welcome regulation, because the regulations help to block small and innovative new competitors--and the costs of the regulations can then be passed along to consumers. Maybe it's an obvious point, but the goal of regulation be to provide benefits to consumers in excess of the costs imposed, not to hobble new competitors. The appropriate regulations for Airbnb should differ in a number of relevant ways from the regulations for a standard commercial hotel.

2) Benefits to consumers should matter a lot.  may well be true that some of the advantage of matching economy firms is that they face a lighter regulatory hand, but that's probably not their main advantage. The main advantage is that customers like what they provide. Who benefits the most from having a greater supply of car-ride services in New York? It's clearly those with low incomes, who have an improved option to call for a ride, to know who is coming, and to know what the price will be. Some people will feel more secure riding with someone whose name and face and customer reviews they can see in advance, rather than with a stranger who drives up in a taxi. Some people like staying in other people's houses, at least some of the time, while others prefer the characteristics of a hotel or resort, at least some of the time. It

3) Too many of the jobs in the matching economy are low-paid temp work, not "good" jobs.  It's easy to conjure up a mental vision in which the matching economy comes down to rich people paying poor people to drive them places, pick up their dry-cleaning, deliver their groceries, and the like. It's also easy to imagine that the workers in those jobs may be working for low hourly pay, with unreliable fluctuations in their income and no benefits. Clearly, some of the jobs in the matching economy will fall into that category. But not every job needs to involve a career path. it's easy to think about someone who is just trying to pick up some extra income, like a college student, who is delighted with the flexibility of the job. Moreover, at least some of the matching economy companies are guaranteeing workers who want it a minimum number of hours, or offering benefits like insurance.

Overall, my own sense is that some jobs are just hours and a paycheck, and other jobs are careers. Trying to more toward an economy where career-type jobs are more available--meaning jobs where there is value to a lasting tie between worker and employee, and where the employee has  possibilities for initiative, growth, and advancement, is a policy challenge for another day. Here, I'll just note that  we are going to start passing rules and laws that only "good" jobs are allowed,  while trying to limit jobs with low pay or limited prospects, it's not clear to me that jobs in the matching economy are the problem, or that jobs in the matching economy are worse more than a lot of existing jobs in the conventional hotel or taxi industries, or in the retail and services sectors in general.

4) Current suppliers of the service don't like the new competition. Without meaning to be hard-hearted about it, my sympathy level for this complaint is low. As Sablik points out, in New York city it cost about $1 million to buy the medallion that gives the right to drive a traditional taxicab. That high price suggests that existing owners (who are often quite different from the taxicab drivers) had been quashing new competitors and earning monopoly profits. If we want an economy that is growing and offering opportunities, we need to accept that current suppliers of goods and services will face new competition and need to adapt.

Tradeoffs of Dollarization

Only a few countries around the world have gone so far as to "dollarize" their economy--that is, using  the US dollar as a predominant legal currency. According to an IMF characterization of exchange rate regimes, the dollarized economies include some small island nations with close historical or economic ties to the US, but also Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Timor Leste, and Zimbabwe. However, in a number of other countries the US dollar plays a very substantial role in bank deposits and lending. The IMF has been offering some comments and reports on the tradeoffs of dollarization, often with a strong hint that it might be beneficial to do less of it. For example, Naoyuki Shinohara
Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, made these comments in a February 2015 conference:

[M]any Frontier and Developing Asian economies are also highly dollarized. In some cases, high dollarization can facilitate trade. But there are drawbacks, such as limiting exchange rate flexibility to mitigate against external shocks, and constraining the central bank’s ability to be the lender of last resort. Under such circumstances, consideration could be given to actively promote de-dollarization. But de-dollarization is a long process and requires a commitment to strengthen policies and institutions.

An IMF staff team led by Mauro Mecagni and Rodolfo Maino has published a May 2015 report on "Dollarization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Experience and Lessons." Along with specific information about the extent of dollarization across this region--other than the official dollarization of Zimbabwe--the report does a nice job of reviewing the tradeoffs involved.

What economic factors that often lead to dollarization? The IMF team lists four main causes:

• Large macroeconomic imbalances and high inflation. Several countries around the world (for example, Chile, Colombia, and Peru) became dollarized following periods of macroeconomic turbulence and high inflation that encouraged the substitution of domestic currency with the U.S. dollar. Dollarization may thus result from a legacy of severe economic disruption.
• Financial repression and capital controls. Many Latin American economies in the 1970s and 1980s as well as many SSA [sub-Saharan Africa] countries (for example, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and Nigeria) have become dollarized following periods of financial repression and the imposition of capital controls.
• Use of the dollar as anchor for macrostability. Some countries (for example, Ecuador, El Salvador) adopted the dollar as legal tender in order to escape from a long history of monetary and financial disorder by “importing” the credibility of the U.S. monetary institutions.
• Underdeveloped financial markets. In several countries, domestic borrowers contract debt in foreign currencies in response to the lack of domestic currency alternatives in incomplete financial markets.

Although dollarization arises as a response to economic problems, it brings tradeoffs of its own. A dollarized economy by definition has no control over its own monetary policy--and there is no particular reason to think that decisions made by the US Federal Reserve will suit the economic needs of  other countries. A dollarized economy is also vulnerable to rises and falls in the exchange rate of the US dollar. A particular problem can arise in a partially dollarized economy when the government, or large banks and firms, have borrowed in US dollars, planning to receive funds in the local currency of the country, convert to US dollars in the foreign exchange markets, and repay the US dollar loans. If the exchange rate moves sharply, it can become impossible to repay those US dollar loans (a dynamic that was one of the roots of the East Asian financial crisis in 1998).

The IMF study chooses a threshold in which if the ration of a foreign currency deposits to total deposits is more than 30%, an economy is said to be "dollarized." Here's the picture for sub-Saharan Africa as of 2012, with the extent of dollarization shown as a share of bank deposits and a share of bank loans. Moving clockwise from east to west, an arc of countries including Angola, Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique are relatively heavily dollarized.

The IMF researchers look for past examples of de-dollarization in recent decades, including Israel, Poland, Bolivia, Peru, and Angola. Overall, they sum up the de-dollarization efforts in this way:

Experience also shows that dollarization is often difficult to reverse. While the use of a foreign currency as a store of value or for domestic transactions has increased sharply in several countries over time, there are fewer cases in which this trend has been significantly reversed. Memories of macroeconomic instability and hyperinflation—the key factors that encourage dollarization—do not wither away easily, encouraging economic agents to maintain foreign currency denominated assets even when macroeconomic conditions have stabilized and policy credibility has been established.

As one might expect, the main steps to reduce dollarization focus on controlling inflation and achieving macroeconomic stability, so the main incentives behind dollarization are reduced. Passing laws and regulations to outlaw dollarization doesn't tend to work well; it only emphasizes the desperate problems of the local currency, thus making dollarization look more attractive. But the IMF team points out that when a country has its macroeconomic fundamentals under control, it can also nudge its economy along the de-dollarization trajectory in other ways. For example, it can set financial regulations for local banks that require them to take the foreign exchange risks of lending in US dollars into account--which pushes the bank toward holding more reserves and doing more lending in the local currency.

In a globalized economy, banks and firms in all countries are going to be involved in foreign currency exchanges. There can be a reasonable economic case for similar nearby countries to link their currencies together. But when dollarization becomes highly prominent, it's typically a signal that the government's economic policies are mistrusted or incompetent or both.

The Earned Income Tax Credit

The single largest federal program for providing cash assistance to those with low incomes is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which in 2014 reduced taxes owed by the working poor by about $3.6 billion while transferring to those households an additional $60.8 billion (according to Table 14-1 in the Analytical Perspectives volume of the proposed US budget. This isn't as much as programs with non-cash benefits, like Food Stamps and Medicaid. But it's more than what is spent on welfare, or on the Supplemental Security Income program for the low-income disabled and elderly. In "Earned Income Tax Credit in the United States," which appears in the Journal of Social Security Law (2015, 22:1, pp. 20-30), Elaine Maag provides a useful overview of the program.

For economists, the big selling point of the EITC is that it rewards work. The classic problem that arises when government provides assistance to those with low income levels is that as a person works to earn an extra $100, they often find that the government benefits are then reduced by nearly that same amount or sometimes even more. As a result, many low-income people who work are saving the government some money, but not much increasing their actual after-benefits, after-taxes standard of living. In contrast, the EITC is set up so that the work disincentives are greatly reduced. Maag offers a graph familiar to those who know the program that shows how it operates.

The different lines in the graph represent single-earner families with different numbers of children. Maag explains the situation for a family with one child:

"In 2014, a family with one child was eligible for a subsidy of 34 cents for each dollar earned up to $9,720—a maximum credit of $3,305. A family qualified for the $3,305 credit until its income reached $17,830. At that point, the EITC declined by almost 16 cents for each additional dollar of earnings; the credit phased out completely once earnings reach $38,511 (figure 1). Larger credits are shown for families with more than one child, as well as the small credit available to a family with no custodial children."

Thus, a low-income person with one child who starts working gets a bonus of 34 cents on the dollar up to a certain level of earnings--which helps to offset their declining eligibility for other government benefits. For this family, the credit does phase out above $17,830 in income, so each $1 earned above this amount means that the amount of the credit falls by about 16 cents. This represents a lower incentive to work--but losing only 16 cents in benefits for every $1 earned is a lot better than losing, say $1 in benefits for every dollar earned. And any means-tested program has to be phased out in some way as income levels rise. Along with the federal EITC, 23 states have also added their own versions of the EITC to their state-level income tax codes.

Maag reviews the empirical evidence that the EITC does seem to encourage greater levels of work participation in the phase-in range, although it doesn't seem to have much effect on average hours worked and doesn't do much to discourage work hours in the phase-out range. She writes (footnotes omitted): "The official measure of poverty in the US does not include changes in resources due to taxes. If it did, scholars have determined that the EITC wouldhave been credited with lifting 6.5 million people out of poverty in 2012, including about 3.3 million children. Changes in income as a result of the EITC are associated with better health, more schooling and higher earnings in adulthood."

Overall, I think one can make a plausible case for a dramatic increase in the amount spent on the EITC. But honesty compels me to point out that the EITC has two well-known shortcomings and problems that need to be mentioned.

• The program is heavily focused on families with children. Thus, it doesn't help the situation of a childless person who is below the poverty line and working for near minimum-wage. EITC benefits are also lower for married couples. Any government program where the benefits are  higher for those who are unmarried with children deserves a closer look to see if the incentives can be structured differently. 
• The EITC adds a lot of complexity to the tax forms of the working poor, who are often not well-positioned to cope with that complexity, nor to hire someone else to cope with it. About 20% of EITC payments go to those who don't actually qualify, which seems to happen because low-income people hand over their tax forms to paid tax preparers who try to get them signed up. Of course, there's another group, not well-measured as far as I know, of working-poor households who would be eligible for the EITC but don't know how to sign up for it. 

These issues don't have neat and tidy answers, but they do have messy and practical answers.

Quandaries of Global Trade in Secondhand Clothing

Even good intentions can have unexpectedly mixed results. Used clothing that is donated to charity in high-income countries often ends up being passed along to low-income countries. In turn, the textile and clothing industries in those countries often can't compete with these imports, and end up contracting. Andrew Brooks tells the story in his new book Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes. For those who would like a shorter version, Brooks has authors a couple of short and readable overview articles on March 20, 2015, in Geographical, and on February 13, 2015, in the Guardian.

Basic statistics on exports of used clothing are available from US and UN sources. The US Department of Commerce website reports that in 2014, US exports of "Worn clothing and other worn articles," item 6309.00, totaled 774 million kilograms in 2014, with a value of $710 million. The United Nations Comtrade data on "Worn clothing and other worn textile articles; rags 269" shows that worldwide exports in this area rose from $1.5 billion 2000 to $5.1 billion by 2013. As one would expect, a certain amount of this used clothing is moving between nearby high-income countries: say between the US and Canada, or between European Union countries. But a sizeable share also makes its way from high-income to low-income countries. Here are the UN numbers of main importers and exporters in the "worn clothing" category.

The main source of contention arises when clothing from high-income countries like the US and the UK ends up in low-income countries. A substantial amount of this used clothing ends up in the hands of companies like the Trans-Americas Trading Co., which buys clothing from charities and reports on its website: "Approximately eight out of ten pounds of clothing collected by large charitable institutions are sold to recyclers in order to generate revenue for their charitable programs." Here are a couple of images from the Brooks posting on Geographical.  The first shows what happens to some of the used clothes when given away in the US and the UK.

Brooks reports that about one-third of all globally donated clothes end up in Africa, where most of them are not donated, but instead are re-sold. The next image shows some of the effects of this used clothing in various nations of sub-Saharan Africa.

In a number of African countries, the presence of used clothing has become so prominent in the markets that it has a local slang name. Here are a few examples, as reported by Brooks:

• Nigeria: "okirika" (bend down boutique)...
• "Ghana: "obroni wawu" (clothes of the dead white man)" 
• Zambia: "salaula" (selecting from a bale by rummaging)
• Congo: "sola" (to choose)
• Zimbabwe: "mupedzanhamo" (where all problems end)
• Kenya & Tanzania: "mitumba" (bundles) or "kafa ulaya" (clothes of the dead whites)

There are some legitimate quandaries here. On one side, many of the charities in high-income countries that ask for donated clothing, and then end up selling that clothing to dealers like Trans-Americas Trading Co., are doing good things with the money they raise. Clothing that is passed along to others doesn't end up in a landfill someplace. It's quite plausible that those who wear end up wearing the donated clothing didn't have more cost-effective options. On the other side, there is some severe irony in this global trade in secondhand clothing.

One irony is that there was a history of high-income countries using trade barriers to limit imported clothing from low-income countries under the Multi-Fiber Agreement, which lasted from 1974-1994 and then was phased out over the following decade. The agreement was especially controversial among economists because textiles had been one of the early steps into manufacturing for high-income countries in the 19th century, and for a number of Asian economies in the mid-20th century. Having argued that it was important for high-income countries to protect their own textile markets, it is ironic to now face the reality that second-hand clothes from high-income countries are injuring textile production in low-income countries. Thus, one can have some sympathy with countries that essentially ban imports of worn clothing, including Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Namibia, and South Africa.

On the other side, the textile industry like so many others is dramatically shifting toward greater mechanization and use of industrial robots, even in low-income countries. Thus, it's not altogether clear that textiles offer the same path to a substantial number of jobs or a growing manufacturing sector that it once did. And it seems unlikely that textiles are going to be one of the hot new growth industries of the future. For low-income countries, looking for opportunities in other industries may well be the wiser long-term choice.

E-cigs: The Bootlegger/Baptist Opposition

It might seem that the debate over e-cigarettes and "vaping" should be a fundamentally empirical question. Does vaping primarily reduce cigarette smoking? If so, then it should be viewed as an overall benefit to public health and, at a minimum, not discouraged. Or does vaping serve as a gateway that leads to increased cigarette smoking? If so, then it should be discouraged in many of the same ways as cigarette smoking: public health advisories, taxes, no-vaping in public spaces, and the like.

But interpreting the evidence isn't simple. For example, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) put out a report on April 17, 2015, titled "Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students — United States, 2011–2014." The first paragraph offers this statement: "In 2014, e-cigarettes were the most commonly used tobacco product among middle (3.9%) and high (13.4%) school students. Between 2011 and 2014, statistically significant increases were observed among these students for current use of both e-cigarettes and hookahs (p<0.05), while decreases were observed for current use of more traditional products, such as cigarettes and cigars, resulting in no change in overall tobacco use." Some people see this shift from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes as good news, because the health effects of e-cigarettes are lower (that is, they have nicotine, but none of the other by-products of smoking that are typically linked to cancer). Some see the rise in e-cigarettes as a threat to be stopped.

As the government regulators figure out what to do, it's important to remember that there is an industry lobbying powerhouse with a large incentive to restrict e-cigarettes: the big tobacco companies.  Jonathan H. Adler, Roger E. Meiners, Andrew P. Morriss, and Bruce Yandle make this argument in "Bootleggers, Baptists, and E-cigs," which appears in the Spring 2015 issue of Regulation magazine.

A bootleggers-and-Baptists coalition refers to legal restrictions that arise from a combination of those who don't want the activity to occur and those who want to use the regulations to cripple potential competition. In the canonical example, both bootleggers and Baptists favored laws prohibiting legal alcohol sales--but for different reasons. Other common examples include when industry partners with environmentalists to support tough environmental regulations, which industry favors because it will cripple any new competition.  In another example, existing examples of legal gambling--like state lotteries--often partnered with anti-gambling forces to oppose expanded gambling opportunities from Native American casinoes. Bruce Yandle and Adam Smith have a recent book out on the subject: Bootleggers and Baptists: How Economic Forces and Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics. Here's an interview with Yandle from a few years back.

In the case of e-cigarettes, the Adler, Meiners, Morriss, and Yandle  essay points out that  few years back, the four big tobacco companies (Philip Morris Inc., R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard) signed an agreement in which they would pay $206 billion over time to 46 states, and in exchange, the states would not sue them for how smoking increased the health care spending costs of those states. Many anti-smoking groups broadly favored the settlement, because worked like a tax on cigarettes to push tobacco companies to raise their prices to consumers and thus discourage smoking.

But the big tobacco companies were concerned that new entrants to the industry might be able to undercut them on price, because new entrants would not have to make these payments to the states. As the Adler et al. group explains: "Therefore the MSA [Master Settlement Agreement] provided that for every percent of market share over 2 percent lost by a participating cigarette manufacturer, the manufacturer would be allowed to reduce its payments to the states by 3 percent, unless each participating state enacted a statute to prevent price competition from non-participating manufacturers (which each state did). The statutes require nonparticipating cigarette producers to make payments equal to or greater than what they would owe had they been participants in the agreement, to eliminate any cost advantage."

In short, the political process over how e-cigarettes should be regulated is not a pure public health argument. E-cigs represent a competitive threat to the tobacco industry, which will lobby to have have them regulated at least as harshly as conventional cigarettes, although the health issue posed by e-cigs (which, by the way, can contain little or no nicotine if the vaper desires) is clearly much lower. States will be worried that this new competition from vaping might in some way affect their revenues they are expecting from the tobacco companies. A certain group of anti-smoking neo-prohibitionists has pretty much already decided to view vaping as an insidious precursor to conventional cigarettes.

As I have pointed out, the anti-smoking efforts that began with the US Surgeon General's report back in 1964 have saved millions of lives, but even though smoking rates have diminished, tobacco use is still linked to 400,000 premature deaths and another $300 billion in economic costs due to health care costs and lost productivity each year. Perhaps e-cigs can help to reduce these costs. The evidence on how e-cigarettes interact with use of conventional cigarettes is still accumulating, but before we run with the assumption that e-cigs are part of the same problem, it's worth some critical scrutiny on the bootlegger-and-Baptist coalition that is pushing for this result.

John Stuart Mill's Birthday: Thoughts on Conformity and Individualism

John Stuart Mill was born 209 years ago on May 20, 1806, and has a claim to being the greatest economist of his time. His Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1848, served as the leading overview of the subject of economics four four decades, until Alfred Marshall published his Principles of Economics in 1890. Mill's 1848 book is wonderfully systematic and detailed, and has its share of original insights for its time. Some of my own favorites include the idea that it is possible to separate for analytical purposes the issues of production and distribution;  the systematic treatment of supply and demand in setting prices; the discussion of the function of money; and the arguments about the economy evolving toward a stationary state.  However, I think Mill may rank higher as a political philosopher than as an economist.  

As a birthday present, here's a passage from Mill's 1859 classic On Liberty. In "Chapter III: Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being," Mill argues that while there was once a time when society needed to control the individuality of people, we have now entered a time when people instead have an urge for conformity. Mill wrote about the practices of most people:

"I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ..."

Even worse than bowing to such conformity, Mill argues, people then demand that others conform as well. We first conform to the crowd, and then pressure others to conform as well, instead of leaving each person to steer their own way. In one of my favorite lines in the Mill corpus, he writes:

"If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode."

My own sense is that most people, definitely including myself, find it easy to think about what would be "best" for other people, and to undervalue what other people choose for themselves. Or to put it another way, all the choices I agree with are (of course) distinctively individual, while all the choices I disagree with are (of course) people who could do better if they didn't keep giving in to the forces of conformity and custom within their group. Here's the longer version of the paragraphs containing these passages:

"There has been a time when the element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess, and the social principle had a hard struggle with it. The difficulty then was, to induce men of strong bodies or minds to pay obedience to any rules which required them to control their impulses. To overcome this difficulty, law and discipline, like the Popes struggling against the Emperors, asserted a power over the whole man, claiming to control all his life in order to control his character—which society had not found any other sufficient means of binding. But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences. Things are vastly changed, since the passions of those who were strong by station or by personal endowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and ordinances, and required to be rigorously chained up to enable the persons within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual or the family do not ask themselves—what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or, what would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ...

There is no reason that all human existence should be constructed on some one or some small number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development; and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature, are hindrances to another. The same mode of life is a healthy excitement to one, keeping all his faculties of action and enjoyment in their best order, while to another it is a distracting burthen, which suspends or crushes all internal life. Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable. Why then should tolerance, as far as the public sentiment is concerned, extend only to tastes and modes of life which extort acquiescence by the multitude of their adherents? Nowhere (except in some monastic institutions) is diversity of taste entirely unrecognised; a person may, without blame, either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or music, or athletic exercises, or chess, or cards, or study, because both those who like each of these things, and those who dislike them, are too numerous to be put down. But the man, and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what everybody does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. ...

If the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the time is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment. The demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds on.

Perhaps the good news here is that Mill's comments still read as timely today, which suggests that perhaps this balance between conformity and individualism is not decided once and for all, but is an ongoing challenge for each of us to accept, both in having the willingness and energy to make our own choices, and in the level of tolerance and acceptance we offer as a society to those who (peacefully) choose not to conform with our own decisions.

Improving the Health of US Children

"A large volume of high-quality research shows that unhealthy children grow up to be unhealthy adults, that poor health and low income go hand in hand, and that the consequences of both poverty and poor health make large demands on public coffers. Thus promoting children’s health is essential for improving the population’s health; policies to prevent children’s health problems can be wise investments; and policy makers should implement carefully designed policies and programs to promote child health." Thus say Janet Currie and Nancy Reichman in their introductory essay to the Spring 2015 issue of Future of Childen, which features eight other articles on the theme of "Policies to Promote Child Health."

Sara Rosenbaum and Robert Blum lead off with an essay, "How Healthy Are Our Children?" Here's a thought-provoking table of the main causes of child mortality in the US a century ago, as compared with today. The entries of the table for a century ago help to define some past successes, while the entries for the present point to current challenges.

An overall shift seems clear. Infectious diseases are down. Injuries, homicide and suicide have taken their place near the top of the list. These conditions help to make clear that the modern health problems of American children are mostly about broader conditions of health and safety, which in turn are often correlated with family income and measures of socioeconomic status. The chapter in the Future of Children issue summarize the evidence that does exist about factors that are correlated with child health. Here's a sampling from Rosenbaum and Blum write (footnotes omitted):

Specifically, we have come to understand that many disease conditions—and especially noncommunicable conditions— result from interactions between individuals and their environments. ...  In the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES), researchers showed an association between child abuse and being reared in dysfunctional households, on the one hand, and later adult health, on the other. Since then, research has documented strong associations between adverse childhood experiences and adult cancers, sexually transmitted infections, ischemic heart disease, and hepatitis. In fact, children who have adverse childhood experiences show a risk of subsequent disease approximately two to four times as high as children who did not have such experiences. Researchers define adverse childhood experiences to include psychological/ physical/ sexual abuse, exposure to substance abuse, mental illness, exposure to maternal violence, and exposure to parental criminal behavior. In their research sample, drawn from a large HMO in Southern California, ACES researchers found that one in four adults reported two or more such experiences, while 11 percent of those 50 years of age or older reported four or more. For adults of any income level, early adverse childhood experiences have profound effects. Poverty not only increases the risk of having such experiences, but also reduces the availability of protective factors (for example, nurturing adults) that can buffer the impact of exposure. Exposure to social toxins in childhood alters the developing brain and can have adult consequences. Today we understand that brain development extends well into the third decade. Exposure to toxic environments — what researchers call toxic stress— alters brain architecture in developing children by chronically increasing cortisol, a stress hormone; this, in turn, reduces brain development, producing a less complex brain scaffolding. The result is reduced capacity for reasoning, stress reactivity, decision making, and learning. ...

Today, the primary health problems that children and youth face are noncommunicable conditions that not only adversely affect health and development but also act as precursors of noncommunicable disease in adults. These conditions arise from both lifestyle behaviors and the social environments in which our most vulnerable children live. ... The neighborhood in which a child is born and grows up can have an important impact on the risk of illness or death, as well as life expectancy. Neighborhoods are highly correlated with both family income and a host of environmental exposures (for example, violence, unsanitary conditions, environmental and social toxins). One important factor is residential segregation, which continues to be pervasive in American life. ...

Elsewhere in this issue, Maya Rossin-Slater demonstrates substantial disparities in birth outcomes by maternal education, which is a commonly used measure of socioeconomic status. Using data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to look at marker childhood health conditions associated with lower income and adverse community health conditions, we can also see an association between the incidence of poorer health and populations at heightened risk of poverty and deprivation, including members of racial and ethnic minorities—particularly non-Hispanic blacks. ... There was a strong and positive correlation between parental income and children’s positive assessment of their health; while nearly 90 percent of children at the highest income levels reported excellent health, only 46 percent of those living in poverty did so. ... Two researchers recently presented nationally representative statistics from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that connect indicators of poor child health to household income. Obesity, hypertension, diabetes, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, known as “good cholesterol”), and high cholesterol ratio were measured through physical examinations and/or laboratory reports. Their figures indicate clear income gradients in children’s health across all measures other than diabetes. ...

Of course, access to health insurance remains important. Several recent research studies have used administrative evidence on access to Medicaid over time to see if children from low-income families who had access to Medicaid are different in adulthood from children who didn't have access to Medicaid. For example there was a large expansion in Medicaid coverage that applied only to children born after September 30, 1983. Thus, one can reasonably compare children from low-income families born just before this cutoff date to those born just after, and it turn out that the children from low-income families who had more access to Medicaid turn out to have fewer emergency-room visit and lower hospitalizations rates as adults. Another study looked compared children from low-income families who lived in certain states and certain time periods where the eligibility rules made them less likely to get Medicaid coverage to similar children from low-income families who lived in states and during time periods where Medicaid coverage was more like. (Medicaid rules and eligibility vary in meaningful ways across states and over time.) They found that tax payments are higher in the future for those who had Medicaid coverage, and conclude that "the [federal] government will recoup 56 cents of each dollar spent on childhood Medicaid by the time these children reach age 60."

Overall, the state of this debate seems to be that there are lots of studies showing factors that are correlated with greater risks to childhood health, and there are a growing number of studies showing the long-term benefits from taking steps to reduce these risk factors. But these studies haven't really been pulled together to form a cohesive whole, or to have a sense of what the top public priorities should be.  Currie and Reichman write in their introduction: "We suspect that, for many dimensions of child health, an ounce of prevention would be worth a pound of cure, but it’s difficult to prove this without hard evidence on the costs and benefits of different approaches."

Bitcoin: A Remarkable Innovation and Its Limitations

My own sense is that popular interest in Bitcoin peaked about 12-18 months ago. Perhaps that interest will return. But for now, my sense is that Bitcoin represents a remarkable--indeed, a breakthrough--innovation which nonetheless is beginning to show its limitations. Rainer Böhme, Nicolas Christin, Benjamin Edelman, and Tyler Moore provide an overview of "Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance" in the Spring 2015 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (29:2, pp. 213-38). (Full disclosure: My actual job, as opposed to my blogging hobby, has been to work as Managing Editor of the JEP since the first issue in 1987.) The conclusions in this post are my own, but many of the facts will draw on the Böhme, Christin, Edelman, and Moore essay.

Broadly speaking, money operates on a bookkeeping system: that is, private parties can't just claim to have money, but instead must have it transferred from another account into your own account. With traditional money, these accounts can be verified by banks, financial institutions, and regulators, and the central bank reserves to itself the power to create money. 

The remarkable innovation of Bitcoin is that it has created a currency that is automated and private, with no need for a central bank or regulatory system. A total of about 14 million Bitcoins have been created, with a US dollar value of about $3.5 billion. They have been used in about 62 million transactions. Anyone who signs up a Bitcoin account is given a "public" number, which is your account number to the system as a whole, and also a "private" number, which is your personal passcode for accessing the system. 

The heart of Bitcoin is the "blockchain," which is a complete listing of every Bitcoin ever issued and all the transactions that have happened with each. Everyone with a Bitcoin account can look at the blockchain if they wish--but it's such an enormous file (and getting larger with each transaction) that most people could not download it to their personal computer even if they wanted to. So most people using Bitcoin hire a "wallet" company which holds your copy of the blockchain, and through which you can operate your account. Some wallet companies know your "private" number; some don't. 

With traditional money, a transaction is verified by financial institutions operating in a regulatory framework. For Bitcoin, a transaction is verified when the blockchain is updated. But this is where the process gets a little messy and very creative. Someone needs to be paid for updating the blockchain, and of course, they can be paid in Bitcoins for doing so. To ensure trustworthiness, we actually want to have multiple actors all updating the blockchain at the same time, so that they can serve as a check on each other. And we need those actors updating the blockchain to pay some cost, because if there was no cost to participate, random players could claim to have received Bitcoins from others. 

Every 10 minutes or so, the recent Bitcoin transactions are grouped into a "block." The Bitcoin automated system generates a mathematical puzzle based on the preexisting contents of the blockchain. The puzzle is not fundamentally hard to solve, but it includes a random component and takes a lot of computing power. In other words, those with faster computers will have a better chance of solving the puzzle, but because of the randomness, speed doesn't always win. The first to solve the puzzle posts a new blockchain, along with a proof-of-work that the puzzle was solved. Those who solve puzzles are called "miners," and again, they are rewarded with Bitcoin in a way that expands the quantity of currency at a smooth pace over time. Böhme, Christin, Edelman, and Moore estimate that in solving the Bitcoin puzzles, Bitcoin miners use about 173 megawatts of electricity at any given time, which is about 20% of the output of a nuclear power plant. 

But remember that many miners are working simultaneously on blockchain puzzles. It may happen that as later miners complete their work, they confirm the blockchain addition made by the first miner. In other cases, later miners will provide a different form of the blockchain. In effect, the miners "vote" for the correct form of the blockchain, and the number of "votes" is determined by the quantity of computing power needed to solve the puzzles. A Bitcoin transaction is not truly final until it has been definitively added to the blockchain, which means that it needs to be confirmed by the process of multiple miners solving puzzles, which in practice can often take about a hour. The authors write: 

But voting on the authenticity of a transaction requires first working to solve a mathematical puzzle that is computationally hard to solve (although easy to verify). Solving the puzzle provides “proof of work”; in lieu of “one person, one vote,” Bitcoin thus implements the principle of “one computational cycle, one vote.” Through this design, the proof-of-work mechanism simultaneously discourages creating numerous fake identities and also provides incentives to participate in verifying the block chain.

It is worth emphasizing the remarkable accomplishment of the Bitcoin system. It functions! However, as this brief description has hinted in various places, Bitcoin has limitations that have begun to emerge. Here are some of the main ones. 

1) Bitcoin isn't anonymous: it's pseudonymous. For example, say that you use a Bitcoin account to mail-order something for delivery to your home. Now there is a connection between your Bitcoin account and your address, and any other transactions through your account can be traced to you. There are Bitcoin-based companies called "mixers" that try to make transactions more anonymous. They take a batch of Bitcoin transactions and scramble up who is receiving what from whom. But it turns out that their scrambling can often be unscrambled, if law enforcement wants to commit the resources to doing it. 

2) The dollar-Bitcoin exchange rate can move abruptly, which makes Bitcoin less suitable as a transaction currency. The price of Bitcoin spiked enormously in late 1013, going from about $200 per Bitcoin to almost $1,200 per Bitcoin, before then falling back. A currency that fluctuates this wildly ends up looking less like a mechanism for buying and selling, and more like a financial investment with risky characteristics. Indeed, a study a couple of years ago found that more than half of existing Bitcoins either took more than a year to be spent or had not been spent.

3) It's not clear how the Bitcoin technology would function for widespread everyday uses. As noted above, finalizing a Bitcoin transaction--as miners solve mathematical puzzles and work toward a definitive update of the blockchain-- takes about a hour to be finalized. If Bitcoin had to deal with even a modest fraction of the number of transactions commonly handled by, say, Visa or American Express, the system would be overwhelmed by the number of transactions and unable to function. 

4) Bitcoin itself operates remarkably well, but most people use Bitcoin through a number of platforms that are vulnerable to fraud and cyberattack. For example, there are currency exchange platforms that switch Bitcoin to conventional currencies. There are "digital wallet services" that host your Bitcoin account and your personal copy of the blockchain, and that many people use for making Bitcoin transactions. There are the "mixers" I mentioned above, which take a batch of Bitcoin transactions and scramble them together, to increase the anonymity of the transactions. These platforms are vulnerable to cyberattack and fraud, and when you pay these platforms, you are revealing that you are linked to the Bitcoin currency, thus compromising your anonymity to some degree. 

In short, dealing with Bitcoin is full of risks and costs. It may be worthwhile for some large purchases under particular circumstances, but at least as Bitcoin is currently constituted, it seems unlikely to become a truly large-scale force in modern finance. So what's next? 

One vision is that other forms of virtual money will follow where Bitcoin has already broken the trail and this is already happening in various ways. I'm sure that some of these will have niche success, but I would be surprised if they have more. As virtual currencies become larger, governments will insist on increased disclosure and degrees of regulation. As governments requirements rise, the advantages of virtual currencies will diminish. 

Another vision is that the main use of Bitcoin-like technology may not be in the area of money, but in transferring other pieces of digital property. The JEP authors quote an earlier article by Mark Andreeson, a coauthor of the Mosaic browser: 

Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. . . . All these are exchanged through a distributed network of trust that does not require or rely upon a central intermediary like a bank or broker. What kinds of digital property might be transferred in this way? Think about digital signatures, digital contracts, digital keys (to physical locks, or to online lockers), digital ownership of physical assets such as cars and houses, digital stocks and bonds . . . and digital money.

Those who would like some additional reading about the economics of Bitcoin might begin with the discussion and articles cited in my post "How Does Bitcoin Work?" (September 24, 2014).

Factoryless Goods Producing Firms

Andrew B. Bernard and Teresa C. Fort sketch what is known about the "Factoryless Goods Producing Firm" in the May 2015 issue of the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings (vol. 105:5, pp. 518-523). The AER is not freely available on-line, but many readers will have access through a library subscription. Succumbing to acronyms, Bernard and Fort write: "We define a FGPF as a firm that has no manufacturing establishments in the United States, but performs pre-production
activities such as design and engineering itself and is involved in production activities, either directly or through purchases of contract manufacturing services (CMS)."

Want examples? Here are three:

Perhaps the canonical example of a factoryless goods producer is the British appliance firm, Dyson, best known for its innovative vacuum cleaners. The firm initially designed, engineered, and produced vacuum cleaners in Wiltshire, England but subsequently chose to offshore and outsource all the production to Malaysia while leaving several hundred research and other employees in the United Kingdom. Dyson’s more recent innovations in product lines such as hand dryers and fans have never been produced in the United Kingdom or by Dyson itself.

The best-known example of a factoryless goods producer is Apple Inc. Apple designs, engineers, develops, and sells consumer electronics, software, and computers. For the vast majority of its products, including iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks, Apple does none of the production and the actual manufacturing is performed by other firms in China and elsewhere. While Apple is known for its goods and services and closely controls all aspects of a product, almost none of Apple’s US establishments would be in the manufacturing sector.

The semiconductor industry is well-known to have factoryless goods producers in the form of “fabless” firms. Mindspeed Technologies, a fabless semiconductor manufacturer in Newport Beach, CA “designs, develops, and sells semiconductor solutions for communications applications in wireline and wireless network infrastructure equipment.” Mindspeed outsources all semiconductor manufacturing to other merchant foundries, such as TSMC, Samsung, and others. Mindspeed’s establishments would not be in the manufacturing sector.

How prominent are factoryless goods producing firms in the US economy, and how much have they expanded over time? By definition, you don't find these firms in the manufacturing sector of the economy. Bernard and Fort look at stastistics on the wholesale trade sector of the economy. As background, wholesale trade is about 6% of the US GDP when measured in value-added terms. which is about half the size of the manufacturing sector, or half the size of the professional and business services sector. Here are a few facts from Barnard and Fort ahout factoryless goods producing firms:

• In 2007, the total number of factoryless good producing firms was 13,500, and these firms employed 672,000 workers. "
• Industries where factoryless goods producing firms tend to focus include electrical machinery and equipment, machine and mechanical appliances and computers, pharmaceuticals, and apparel. 
• Compared to other firms in the wholesale industry, the factoryless goods producing firms tend to be larger and to pay higher wages. 
• If you go back to 1992, and look at the factoryless goods producing firms of that time, you find that many of them begin manufacturing in the US at some poitn. Indeed, "it is likely that the current set of FGPFs are a mix of different types of firms including former manufacturing firms, new firms created as FGPFs from their inception, and other firms that have made the transition to the design and manufacture of products. More work is needed to understand the evolution of FGPFs over time."
• The imports of factoryless goods producing firms are equal to about 38% of their total sales. Thus, a majority of money spent at such firms ends up flowing to non-manufacturing inputs from the US economy.

The growth of factoryless goods producing firms may have effects on wages, employment, and productivity. It's a phenomenon worth understanding.

Full disclosure: The  AER is published by the American Economic Association, which also publishes the Journal of Economic Perspectives, where I work as Managing Editor.

The Shifting Geographical Center of US Population

Maybe this is the kind of factoid that is only of interest to me, but the US Bureau of the Census calculates the "mean center of population for the United States"--that is, if you average the locations where everyone lives in the US, what's the average location?

Back in 1790, the average location of the population was near Washington, DC. Unsurprisingly, over time the center of the population moved west, as additional western states were added.

I found myself mildly surprised by three factors about the movement of the average location of an American in the last couple of centuries.

1) I'm surprised that the center of the US population was already in Maryland in 1790. I would have thought that with a substantial share of the population in Philadelphia and New York, as well as Boston and New England, that the central location in 1790would have been further north.
2) I'm surprised that the movement has continued at such a steady pace in recent decades.
3) I'm surprised that the average location of the population has reached the middle of Missouri, apparently headed for Oklahoma in another couple of decades.

China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US Residents

During my adult life, the main source of immigration to the U.S. has always been Mexico. Thus, I was surprised to see that for 2013, immigration from China and India exceeded that from Mexico. The data comes from analysts at the US Census Bureau, Eric B. Jensen, Anthony Knapp, C. Peter Borsella, and Kathleen Nestor, and presented at a recent conference under the title, "The Place-of-Birth Composition of Immigrants to the United States: 2000 to 2013."

Here's a takeaway figure. It's a measure of those who are foreign-born, and who were living outside the US a year ago--in other words, it's a measure of migration to the US in the previous year.

As I have noted in the past, immigration from Mexico has dropped off substantially in the last few years. Indeed, a few years ago when the U.S. unemployment rate was still so elevated in the aftermath of the Great Recession, net migration from Mexico to the U.S.--that is, new arrivals minus departures--may have been slightly negative. Over the last decade or so, a combination of stronger enforcement at the border, along with a gradually stronger economy in Mexico and fewer children per women in Mexico have meant fewer young people on the move looking for work.

The data here comes from the American Community Survey. It asks people about whether they were in another country the year before. It does not ask whether they are legal or illegal immigrants. If undocumented immigrants are less likely to answer such surveys, they will be undercounted. While the point surely has some truth, it's also true that the ACE is often used together with a variety of other measures (including US and Mexican Census data) as part of inferring the number of undocumented immigrants. Precisely because the survey does not ask about legal or illegal immigration status, many undocumented migrants do seem to fill it out accurately.

The Census Bureau economists also offer some interesting observations about the demography of these migrant groups.

Concerning China: "Initially, immigrants born in China were concentrated around the 20-29 age group. Also, there was a relatively high percentage of females relative to males in the 0-4 age group.  More recently, the age structure is concentrated around the college-aged populations, with the largest percentage point increases in the 15-19 and 20- 24 age groups for both males and females."

Concerning  Mexico: "The age distribution of immigrants born in Mexico became older between the 2005-2007 and 2011-2013 periods. The percentage of males and females in the 0-4, 15-19 and 20-24 age groups declined. The percentage in the 40-44, 55-59, and 65 and over age groups increased for both males and females."

Concerning India: "Most immigrants born in India are concentrated in ages 20-34, with the largest percentage in the 25-29 age bracket. This is consistent for both males and females."

The Rise of Remittances

The total number of migrants working in other countries worldwide is now approaching 250 million. Many of them send money home, and remittances are on their way to becoming an important part of the global financial system. The World Bank Migration and Remittances Team, Development Prospects Group, offers an overview in its Migration and Development Brief of April 13, 2015.

Here's a pattern showing the rise in remittances over time compared to some other international financial flows.  Back in 1990, international remittances were lower than official development assistance (ODA). Flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries were also smaller than ODA, as were flows of private debt and portfolio equity to developing countries. (The FDI flows to developing countries show here exclude China.) Remittances have been larger than development assistance for some years now, and the gap is growing. Perhaps more surprising, remittances also outstripped debt and portfolio equity flows to developing countries in recent years. The flows of remittances also look quite stable compared to other private-sector capital flows.

As one might expect, the amount of remittances will be biggest for some of the larger economies in the developing world, but expressed as a share of GDP, the amount of remittances will be largest for some smaller economies.

Remittances are important for their sheer size, and because they offer a way for extended households and kinship networks in low-income countries to help themselves in a direct way. They are also goign to be a subject of policy.

For example, the World Bank estimates that at present, transferring $200 to a recipient country on average incurs a fee of about 8%. It seems plausible that technology and the growth of these markets should be able to reduce this cost substantially. If the cost of transfers could be cut to 3%, OECD estimates that it would benefit the recipients of these remittances by $20 billion per year. The key question here is that making international flows of capital cheaper and easier comes into conflict with the policy agenda of avoiding money-laundering and cutting off financial assistance to terrorist groups.

Another possibility is that low-income countries will issue bonds in their own currencies, hoping to attract investment from those with remittances to send. The World Bank researchers explain: "A diaspora bond – a low denomination security with a face value of $1,000, say, carrying a 3-4% interest rate and 5-year maturity – issued by a country of origin could be attractive to migrant workers who currently earn near-zero interest on deposits held in host-country banks. Diaspora bonds could be used to mobilize a fraction – say, one-tenth – of the annual diaspora saving, that is, over $50 billion, for financing development projects." India and Israel have already taken steps along these lines, but many low-income countries around the world could give it a try.

A more complex step is to use the expected inflow of future remittances as collateral, in what is known a "future-flow securitization of remittances"--which can then lead to lower borrowing costs or longer borrowing terms for governments of developing countries.

For a more detailed overview of the economics of this subject, I recommend Dean Yang's article on  "Migrant Remittances" in the Spring 2011 issue of  the Journal of Economic Perspectives. (Full disclosure: I've labored in the fields as Managing Editor of JEP since the first issue in 1987.)