Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has made clear that his re-election does not signal a return to the old days of corruption and cronyism when his party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and its public-sector unions ruled Mexico virtually unopposed for 70 years. To prove this point, one need …
The recently reelected president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, wants people to know he is determined to fight inflation through combating “speculation.” A noble goal, to be sure. But the weapons chosen for that battle by President Correa—a PhD economist trained at the University of Illinois—actually will doom his anti-inflation campaign. …
When someone says “minimum wage,” what comes to mind? Do you think of teenagers flipping burgers? Or a single parent trying to feed several kids? While President Obama and other proponents of a higher minimum wage want you to visualize that single parent, the truth is that a burger-flipping teenager …
Up to 875,000 federal workers may experience mandatory unpaid leave for one day per week thanks to sequestration, resulting in a 20 percent pay cut for 22 weeks beginning April 1. But the union that represents federal workers is vowing to get that pay. National Federation of Federal Employees spokesperson …
The Washington Post has a sympathetic article today on federal workers who consider themselves unfair victims of the sequester. Unfortunately, the article does not consider data and evidence, instead characterizing criticism of federal worker compensation as mere assertion, jealous emotionalism, or politicking. Federal employees are upset about “perceptions” of government …
According to a recent statement from the American Sugar Alliance: Over the past few weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has released three key data points that deserve attention on Capitol Hill and are sure to deflate the Big Candy lobby’s attempt to gut U.S. sugar policy and outsource …
Thursday was a really bad day for the Indian economy. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the October–December quarter came in at 4.5 percent, continuing to weaken. Worse, the central government budget for the next fiscal year leaves India on the same, failing course it’s been on of undisciplined spending …
A new report published in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review provides strong evidence that the Administration’s obsessive focus on boosting exports as a way to help U.S. manufacturers is just plain wrong. The study debunks the idea that changes in either imports or exports affect growth in …
For the past few weeks, India’s internal turmoil has been on display via news headlines on rape, widespread poverty, and continued civil conflict. Foreign Affairs recently published an article exploring one of the root causes of India’s widespread poverty and a perpetrator of its social challenges: landlessness. The article explains …
