1 Eurozone growth accelerates (San Francisco
Chronicle) Economic growth in the 19-country eurozone accelerated in February
to a near six-year high. In its monthly survey of economic activity across the
region, financial information company IHS Markit also said job creation was the
best for nine and a half years, as order books and business optimism continued
to pick up.
The firm's purchasing managers' composite output
index — a broad gauge of economic activity — spiked to 56.0 points in February
from 54.4 the previous month. The index now stands at its highest level since
April 2011, and is pointing to potentially robust quarterly growth of 0.6 percent
in the first three months of the year — if the current pace is sustained into
March.
The big surprise within the survey was that France
appears to be growing slightly faster than Germany for the first time since
August 2012. Both are growing at rates of between 0.6 percent and 0.7 percent
in the first quarter.
Political uncertainties abound in the eurozone this
year. In addition to the French election in April/May, there are national polls
taking place in the Netherlands next month and Germany in the autumn.
In light of last year's vote in Britain to leave the
European Union and Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election,
there are concerns that a populist tide may sweep continental Europe, too. Given
the uncertainties, few in the markets think the European Central Bank will soon
end to its stimulus efforts to revive the eurozone economy.
2 India demonetization
hits trust hurdle (Mihir Sharma in Gulf News) It’s been more than three months
since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his people that 86 per cent of
their currency would be worthless in a few hours. Since then, his government
has scrambled to find justification for such an unprecedented and draconian
decision — one justification after another, as it happens.
First, the goal was to
eliminate “black money” — stacks of cash concealed from the taxman. When the
programme turned up little such cash, officials started talking about combating
counterfeit notes and terror financing. Finally, they hit on the idea that
demonetisation would promote cashlessness, and that’s where we seem to have
stopped for the moment.
I wonder how long the
government will stick with that justification, though, because the initial data
isn’t encouraging. According to the Reserve Bank of India, as cash trickles
back into the economy, people are slowly abandoning the digital methods of
payment they were forced to use in the first weeks after demonetisation.
As of January 18, only
Rs9.2 trillion in new bills had re-entered the system, after Rs15.44 trillion
in old bills had been taken out. This is unlikely to surprise most development
economists. If the government had indeed intended to make digital payments more
common, then they should have figured out ways to nudge people into using them,
rather than trying to force the change.
Call it Liberalism 101
or call it common sense: If the state tries to force people into changing their
behaviour, they resist. They find ways to get around state diktats and go back
to old patterns of behaviour the moment the pressure’s off. Instead,
governments have to set up patterns of incentives — gentle “nudges,” as behavioural
economists would say — to get people to behave differently.
It’s particularly
important to keep this in mind in low-trust economies like India. The reason
that many poorer Indians keep a lot of cash in hand is not because they’re
avoiding taxes — obviously — but because they have trouble trusting “formal”
institutions that are quite visibly not set up for them to use.
3 South Korean women to
live beyond 90 (James Gallagher on BBC) South Korean women will be the first in
the world to have an average life expectancy above 90, a study suggests. Imperial
College London and the World Health Organization analysed lifespans in 35
industrialised countries.
It predicted all would
see people living longer in 2030 and the gap between men and women would start
to close in most countries. "South Korea has gotten a lot of things
right," Prof Majid Ezzati said. "They seem to have been a more equal
place and things that have benefited people - education, nutrition - have
benefited most people."
The data also forecasts
that Japan, once the picture of longevity, will tumble down the global
rankings. It currently has the highest life expectancy for women, but will be
overtaken by both South Korea and France.
The US also performs
poorly and is on course to have the lowest life expectancy of rich countries by
2030. The study predicts an average age of 80 for men and 83 for women -
roughly the same state Mexico and Croatia will have achieved.
"[Society in the
US is] very unequal to an extent the whole national performance is affected -
it is the only country without universal health insurance” added
Prof Ezzati
No comments:
Post a Comment