US Energy Policy

"This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks."
- Thomas Friedman


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French industry's competitiveness

The Gallois report about the French industry's competitiveness has just been made public (links here ) and received a lot of publicity from the French media. As a trained economist and French patriot, I was eager to read it. The author, a respected businessman - formerly head of aerospace giant EADS -  describes rather briefly the declining state of the French industry over the last ten years, which accounted for 18% of GDP in 2000 and is now down to 12.5%. What are the causes of this decline? The author cites various causes, ranging from product quality, technology, labour flexibility, cost, competition, education and regulation. Standard economic theory says the government should increase labour flexibility, promote competition, support education and enact smart regulation. For example, the Porter Hypothesis (cf Ambec et al 2011 ) states that market-friendly environmental policy can enhance business competitiveness through innovation. What are the main propositions? Create
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Is the yield curve back to the 1950s-1960s?

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In recent years, the yield curve has flattened and shifted downwards. The flattening has received a lot of attention because it is viewed as a recessionary signal. In this article, we argue that the fact that the curve has shifted downwards as well as flattening indicates that the yield curve may have changed regime. This regime shift seems to have been caused by lower inflation expectations and lower risk premia. In an environment of lower inflation and lower risk premia, the yield curve may occasionally invert without signalling a recession as it did in 1966. 1. The recessionary signal Inversions of the yield curve have often been used to predict recessions. The 10-year to 3-month spread between US Treasury yields became briefly negative twice this year in March and the May (figure 1), spurring debate about whether this was signalling a forthcoming recession. The negative spread was mainly the result of a decrease of the 10-year yield – from 2.8 per cent on 1 March to 2.4 per cen
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Are the Euro Area and the US en route to Japanisation?

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As part of NIESR's quarterly World Forecast, you will find a link to a box co-written by my colleagues Corrado Macchiarelli, Barry Naisbitt and myself about the risk of 'Japanisation' for the US and Euro Area economies. Here is an extract. Since the financial crisis, the Euro Area and US economies have had a period during which their economies showed some of the same characteristics as Japan. This note examines their experience in the context of whether they are en route to Japanisation. We conclude that the period from 2013 to 2016 was very similar to that situation but that the US has now clearly moved away from that experience. The Euro Area, however, while it cannot be described as having suffered Japanisation, has not moved as decisively away from that experience.
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