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On May 26, 2014, after the Bharatiya Janata Party won a convincing majority in India’s national elections, Narendra Modi took office as prime minister. The first Indian premier to be born after independence, he formed the first majority government in India in more than 25 years. Over the past 12 months, policymakers, corporate leaders, analysts, and the media in India and abroad have been watching closely to see whether Modi can deliver on the promises of growth, good governance, greater role and respect on the world stage, and getting things done.

On May 20, the India Project at Brookings hosted an event to assess the Modi government’s first year in office. The panel considered developments over the last year in the economic, social, energy, and foreign policy realms, as well as in domestic politics. Panelists discussed their perspectives of the government’s performance, where they see continuity vs. change, what has surprised them, what we might expect to see in the future, and key developments to look for over the next year.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #ModiYearOne

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• The Modi government in India turns one: An assessment

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• The Modi government in India turns one: An assessment

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In Pennsylvania, the next major presidential primary state, concerns about the economy loom large as global competition, economic restructuring, and an aging workforce threaten the state’s ability to prosper. Thanks to these assets, the six metro areas generate 80 percent of the state’s economic output even though they house 68 percent of its population. A true economic agenda for the state must speak to the core assets of Pennsylvania’s economy and where these assets are located: the state’s many small and large metropolitan areas. In short, this brief finds that:

• To help Pennsylvania prosper, federal leaders must leverage four key assets that matter today—innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality places. These assets help increase the productivity of firms and workers, boost the incomes of families and workers, and can help the state and nation grow in more fiscally and environmentally responsible ways.
• These four assets are highly concentrated in the state’s economic engines, its metropolitan areas. There are 16 metro areas in the Commonwealth, ranging from Philadelphia, the most populous, to Williamsport, the smallest. The top six metropolitan areas alone generate the bulk of the state’s innovation (80 percent of all patenting), contain the majority of the state’s educated workforce (77 percent of all adults with a bachelors degree), and serve as the state’s transport hubs.
• Despite these assets, Pennsylvania’s metro areas have yet to achieve their full economic potential. For instance, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh enjoy strengths in innovation, but they both struggle to convert their research investments into commercial products and real jobs. The Scranton metro area is emerging as a satellite of the New York City region, but it’s hampered by the absence of frequent and reliable transportation connections and inadequate broadband coverage.
• Federal leaders must advance an economic agenda that empowers states and metro areas to leverage their assets and help the nation prosper. To that end, they should establish a single federal entity that works with industry, states, and metro areas to ensure that innovation results in jobs and helps businesses small and large modernize. The federal government should strengthen access and success through the entire education pipeline. They should overhaul and create a 21st century transportation system. And they should use housing policy to support quality, mixed-income communities rather than perpetuating distressed neighborhoods with few school and job options.

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In the long run-up to the Pennsylvania primary, there's been a good deal of candidate discussion of the state's economy and how to fix it.

But missing from the prescriptions of what the federal government would do and how it would do it has been a discussion of where it will happen.

That needs to change because place matters. For all the ink spilled on the declining fortunes of the commonwealth, there are many bright spots around the state that could be catalysts to growth and prosperity.

Recent Brookings research shows strength in varied fields across the state:

Advanced health care, pharmaceuticals, and information technology in Greater Philadelphia.

Health care, architecture and engineering, and banking in Pittsburgh.

Heavy construction, machinery and food processing in Lancaster.

Industrial gases, health care and higher education in the Lehigh Valley.

The state's economy is an amalgam of its 16 metropolitan areas that generate 92 percent of its economic output.

The top six metropolitan areas alone - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg-Carlisle, Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and Lancaster - constitute 68.4 percent of the state's population and produce 80.5 percent of the state's economic output.

The research underscores that four key assets overwhelmingly located in metropolitan areas - innovation, modern infrastructure, strong human capital, and quality places - are needed today to drive productivity of firms and workers, improve the wealth and opportunities of families, and ensure sustainable growth. America's metropolitan assets - the universities, the health-care concentrations, and the skilled-labor pools - are the drivers of our national economy and the key to future American competitiveness and success.

So what does this mean for Greater Philadelphia? And what would a more thoughtful federal role look like?

Two realms with extensive current federal involvement are transportation infrastructure and innovation. Cogent efforts from Washington in both these areas could significantly leverage state and local efforts.

Rather than thinly spreading transportation-infrastructure dollars across the country, the federal government should spend strategically.

For Greater Philadelphia, supporting its competitive advantage as the linchpin of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with federal dollars for more frequent and reliable service would strengthen the region as a rail hub, as has been championed by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

Additionally, federal transportation policy should empower metropolitan areas with the discretion to spend funds flexibly, whether that's improving the aging SEPTA system, beginning the work of reinventing and burying Interstate 95 to increase access to the Delaware waterfront, or increasing transit access of city residents to suburban jobs.

Regarding innovation, unfortunately, the federal government currently has no unified national strategy to maximize high-quality jobs and spread their benefits throughout the Philadelphia region. Instead, it has a series of highly fragmented investments and programs.

Current programs put strong emphasis on research, but are insufficiently attentive to the commercialization of that research and blind to how innovation and jobs arise from the intense interaction of firms, industry associations, workers, universities and investors - a nexus ready to be capitalized on in Greater Philadelphia as documented by the Economy League of Philadelphia in a report for the CEO Council for Growth.

To this end, the federal government should reorganize its efforts and create a National Innovation Foundation, a nimble, lean organization whose sole purpose would be to work with industries, universities, business chambers, and local and state governments to spur innovation. Similar, successful national agencies are already up and running in competing nations, such as Britain, France, Sweden and Japan.

This effort should include R&D and support for technology-intensive industries such as information technology and pharmaceuticals, but it also must make small and medium-size manufacturers more competitive and train workers in manufacturing and low-tech services to work smarter.

Looking forward, our federal government must realize this is a "Metro Nation" and value and strengthen economic juggernauts such as Philadelphia.

Only by organizing our currently fragmented investments in transportation and innovation - and targeting them where they will provide the greatest return, metropolitan America - will the United States continue not only to compete, but also to lead.

      

Key messages and Policy Pointers

• Given the stalemate in U.N. climate negotiations, the best arena to strike a workable deal is among the members the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF).

• The 13 MEF members—including the EU-27 (but not double-counting the four EU countries that are also individual members of the MEF)—account for 81.3 percent of all global emissions.

• This proposal devises a fair compromise to break the impasse to develop a science-based approach for fairly sharing the carbon budget in order to have a 75 percent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

• To increase the likelihood of a future climate agreement, carbon accounting must shift from pro­duction-based inventories to consumption-based ones.

• The shares of a carbon budget to stay below 2 °C through 2050 are calculated by cumulative emis­sions since 1990, i.e. according to a short-horizon polluter pays principle, and national capability (income), and allocated to MEF members through emission rights. This proposed fair compromise addresses key concerns of major emitters.

• According to this accounting, no countries have negative carbon budgets, there is substantial time for greening major developing economies, and some developed countries need to institute very rapid reductions in emissions.

• To provide a ‘green ladder’ to developing countries and to ensure a fair global deal, it will be crucial to agree how to extend sufficient and predictable financial support and the rapid transfer of technology.

The most urgent and complicated ethical issue in addressing climate change is how human society will share the work of reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Looking ahead to 2015 when a new international treaty on climate change should be agreed upon, we fear we are headed towards a train wreck.

Key developed countries have made it clear they will not accept any regime excluding emerging economies such as China and Brazil, and the U.S. and other ‘umbrella’ countries are calling for only voluntary, bottom-up com­mitments. Yet the major developing countries have made equity the sine qua non for any kind of agreement: they will not take on mandatory emission reduction targets with perceived implications for their economic growth and social development, unless the wealthier countries commit to deep emissions cuts and act first.

These entrenched positions between the different blocs have led to the current impasse, but as Nobel laureate economist and philosopher, Amaryta Sen pointed out, the perfect agreement that never happens is more unjust than an imperfect one that is obtainable.

What is a fair and feasible way to break the impasse, given that all efforts are faltering? The most difficult task is determining a country’s fair share of the required emissions reductions in a way that is politically feasible. After 20 years of negotiations and gridlock, it is clear that many conflicting principles of equity are brought to the table, so a solution will have to be based on some kind of ‘negotiated justice,’ or a ‘fair compromise,’ which will not be one preferred by just one group of countries.

A few basic requirements must be met. A feasible, fair and effective climate agreement must involve the largest emitters from both the developed and developing countries. Such an agreement must find a way to engage the latter without penalizing them or the former countries too much. In order to secure progress, above all it must be acceptable to the two world superpowers and top carbon emitters, China and the U.S.; with this leadership, in fact, other emitters will likely follow. This agreement could be forged in a ‘plurilateral’ setting where a limited number of countries come together first, and then be brought into the formal U.N. negotiations as the basis for a future deal, perhaps by 2015.

How can future negotiations on emissions reductions overcome such political inertia? We suggest that taking three manageable steps to a fair compromise will unlock progress.

First, negotiate a core agreement between the 13 members in the MEF (including the EU-27), which accounts for 81.3 percent of all global emissions. This makes the negotiations feasible, where deals can be struck that would be impossible in the vast U.N. forum.

Second, use consumption-based emissions accounting, which is much fairer than the cur­rent production/territorial-based accounting that all past agreements and negotiations have been based upon. These are relatively new numbers developed by the Norwegian research center CICERO, and have been vetted by the top scientific journals and increasingly utilized by policymakers.

Third, forge a fair compromise to allocate emissions rights. We propose a compromise based on a short-horizon ‘polluter pays principle’ and an indicator of national capability (income).

This third step in particular is a genuine compromise for both developed and developing countries, but it is re­quired to break the current gridlock. Each MEF member gives and takes something from this simple, workable framework and all gain a liveable planet in the future.

Throughout the paper we first explain why counting carbon emissions by consumption is far better and the im­plications of doing so, and we then introduce the MEF and why it is a promising arena for forging a bold compro­mise like the one so badly needed before 2015. We then calculate what the numbers actually mean for that group of countries and develop a proposal for a fair compromise that embodies a feasible but fair operationalization of the central equity principles of the U.N. climate treaty, i.e. action by countries according to their responsibility and capability. We conclude with a discussion of how a start in the MEF could lead to a new framework being brought into those broader negotiations.

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One of global society’s foremost structural changes underway is its rapid aggregate shift from farmbased to city-based economies. More than half of humanity now lives in urban areas, and more than two-thirds of the world’s economies have a majority of their population living in urban settings. Much of the gradual movement from rural to urban areas is driven by long-term forces of economic progress. But one corresponding downside is that city-based societies become increasingly disconnected—certainly physically, and likely psychologically—from the practicalities of rural livelihoods, especially agriculture, the crucial economic sector that provides food to fuel humanity.

The nature of agriculture is especially important when considering the tantalizingly imminent prospect of eliminating extreme poverty within a generation. The majority of the world’s extremely poor people still live in rural areas, where farming is likely to play a central role in boosting average incomes. Agriculture is similarly important when considering environmental challenges like protecting biodiversity and tackling climate change. For example, agriculture and shifts in land use are responsible for roughly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

As a single word, the concept of “agriculture” encompasses a remarkably diverse set of circumstances. It can be defined very simply, as at dictionary.com, as “the science or occupation of cultivating land and rearing crops and livestock.” But underneath that definition lies a vast array of landscape ecologies and climates in which different types of plant and animal species can grow. Focusing solely on crop species, each plant grows within a particular set of respective conditions. Some plants provide food—such as grains, fruits, or vegetables—that people or livestock can consume directly for metabolic energy. Other plants provide stimulants or medication that humans consume—such as coffee or Artemisia—but have no caloric value. Still others provide physical materials—like cotton or rubber—that provide valuable inputs to physical manufacturing.

One of the primary reasons why agriculture’s diversity is so important to understand is that it defines the possibilities, and limits, for the diffusion of relevant technologies. Some crops, like wheat, grow only in temperate areas, so relevant advances in breeding or plant productivity might be relatively easy to diffuse across similar agro-ecological environments but will not naturally transfer to tropical environments, where most of the world’s poor reside. Conversely, for example, rice originates in lowland tropical areas and it has historically been relatively easy to adopt farming technologies from one rice-growing region to another. But, again, its diffusion is limited by geography and climate. Meanwhile maize can grow in both temperate and tropical areas, but its unique germinating properties render it difficult to transfer seed technologies across geographies.

Given the centrality of agriculture in many crucial global challenges, including the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals recently established for 2030, it is worth unpacking the topic empirically to describe what the term actually means today. This short paper does so with a focus on developing country crops, answering five basic questions: 

1. What types of crops does each country grow? 

2. Which cereals are most prominent in each country? 

3. Which non-cereal crops are most prominent in each country? 

4. How common are “cash crops” in each country? 

5. How has area harvested been changing recently? 

Readers should note that the following assessments of crop prominence are measured by area harvested, and therefore do not capture each crop’s underlying level of productivity or overarching importance within an economy. For example, a local cereal crop might be worth only $200 per ton of output in a country, but average yields might vary across a spectrum from around 1 to 6 tons per hectare (or even higher). Meanwhile, an export-oriented cash crop like coffee might be worth $2,000 per ton, with potential yields ranging from roughly half a ton to 3 or more tons per hectare. Thus the extent of area harvested forms only one of many variables required for a thorough understanding of local agricultural systems. 

The underlying analysis for this paper was originally conducted for a related book chapter on “Agriculture’s role in ending extreme poverty” (McArthur, 2015). That chapter addresses similar questions for a subset of 61 countries still estimated to be struggling with extreme poverty challenges as of 2011. Here we present data for a broader set of 140 developing countries. All tables are also available online for download.

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Premier Li Keqiang's government work report was a pragmatic and concrete one, pointing out challenges as well as strengths and opportunities, according to a US-based China scholar.

The report, delivered by Premier Li at the opening of the fourth session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC) on Saturday, is now being deliberated by some 3,000 deputies.

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution, said the report tells people that the Chinese economy is facing difficulties as a result of structural reforms, the need for better environmental protection and the impact of a sluggish global economy.

"It tells the public that such economic challenges will last for a period of time, so the report does not give the public an unachievable expectation," Cheng Li said.

Meanwhile, the report has also elaborated on China's strength, such as the potential to be unleashed in urbanization, the development of the service sector, the employment policy and the innovation policy, according to Cheng Li.

"So this is a report that neither gives the public too high an expectation nor disappointment," said Cheng Li, whose research has focused on the transformation of Chinese leaders and technological development in China.

Cheng Li believes that this is especially important during the coming two years, or the beginning years of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), when there won't be excessive high economic growth rate, something he said China also does not need.

In the work report, China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2016 has been set between 6.5 percent and 7 percent. It is the first time since 1995 for the target to be in a range rather than one single number.

China's economy grew by 6.9 percent in 2015, the lowest in a quarter of a century, but it was still among the highest in the world.

According to the report, an average annual growth of at least 6.5 percent should be maintained in the coming five years in order to achieve the goals of doubling GDP and household income by 2020 from the 2010 levels.

It also says that by 2020, the contribution from scientific and technological advances should account for 60 percent of GDP growth.

Cheng Li said structural reforms will bring a lot of challenges, all of which would require dealing with by the Chinese government.

He described the goals in the work report as very specific. "There isn't much empty content and slogan type of things," he said.

"It is what the Chinese public wants to see... and it's a relatively balanced and good report, one quite pertinent to China's situation today," Cheng Li said.

He hoped that the report had emphasized more that many of the challenges are also opportunities. "It is just the beginning and the potential is huge," he said, citing how areas such as environmental protection could help job creation and business opportunities.

To Cheng Li, the potential opportunities will help small- and medium-sized companies, large companies, Chinese companies overseas and foreign-funded companies in China break new ground.

Cheng Li said the growth targets set in the 13th Five-Year Plan are quite reasonable. "More than 90 percent of what's in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) had been achieved, and there is a better reason to achieve what's in the 13th Five-Year Plan," he said.

This piece was originally published by China Daily.

       

       

The “green” or “clean” or low-carbon economy—defined as the sector of the economy that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit—remains at once a compelling aspiration and an enigma.

As a matter of aspiration, no swath of the economy has been more widely celebrated as a source of economic renewal and potential job creation. Yet, the clean economy remains an enigma: hard to assess. Not only do “green” or “clean” activities and jobs related to environmental aims pervade all sectors of the U.S. economy; they also remain tricky to define and isolate—and count.

The clean economy has remained elusive in part because, in the absence of standard definitions and data, strikingly little is known about its nature, size, and growth at the critical regional level.

Seeking to help address these problems, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings worked with Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice to develop, analyze, and comment on a detailed database of establishment-level employment statistics pertaining to a sensibly defined assemblage of clean economy industries in the United States and its metropolitan areas.

"Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment" concludes that:

The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry and bulks larger than bioscience but remains smaller than the IT-producing sectors. Most clean economy jobs reside in mature segments that cover a wide swath of activities including manufacturing and the provision of public services such as wastewater and mass transit. A smaller portion of the clean economy encompasses newer segments that respond to energy-related challenges. These include the solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery industries.

The clean economy grew more slowly in aggregate than the national economy between 2003 and 2010, but newer “cleantech” segments produced explosive job gains and the clean economy outperformed the nation during the recession. Overall, today’s clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, expanding at an annual rate of 3.4 percent. This performance lagged the growth in the national economy, which grew by 4.2 percent annually over the period (if job losses from establishment closings are omitted to make the data comparable). However, this measured growth heavily reflected the fact that many longer-standing companies in the clean economy—especially those involved in housing- and building-related segments—laid off large numbers of workers during the real estate crash of 2007 and 2008, while sectors unrelated to the clean economy (mainly health care) created many more new jobs nationally. At the same time, newer clean economy establishments— especially those in young energy-related segments such as wind energy, solar PV, and smart grid—added jobs at a torrid pace, albeit from small bases.

The clean economy is manufacturing and export intensive. Roughly 26 percent of all clean economy jobs lie in manufacturing establishments, compared to just 9 percent in the broader economy. On a per job basis, establishments in the clean economy export roughly twice the value of a typical U.S. job ($20,000 versus $10,000). The electric vehicles (EV), green chemical products, and lighting segments are all especially manufacturing intensive while the biofuels, green chemicals, and EV industries are highly export intensive.

The clean economy offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole. Median wages in the clean economy—meaning those in the middle of the distribution—are 13 percent higher than median U.S. wages. Yet a disproportionate percentage of jobs in the clean economy are staffed by workers with relatively little formal education in moderately well-paying “green collar” occupations.

Among regions, the South has the largest number of clean economy jobs though the West has the largest share relative to its population. Seven of the 21 states with at least 50,000 clean economy jobs are in the South. Among states, California has the highest number of clean jobs but Alaska and Oregon have the most per worker.

Most of the country’s clean economy jobs and recent growth concentrate within the largest metropolitan areas. Some 64 percent of all current clean economy jobs and 75 percent of its newer jobs created from 2003 to 2010 congregate in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas.

The clean economy permeates all of the nation’s metropolitan areas, but it manifests itself in varied configurations. Metropolitan area clean economies can be categorized into four-types: service-oriented, manufacturing, public sector, and balanced. New York, through mass transit, embodies a service orientation; so does San Francisco through professional services and Las Vegas through architectural services. Many Midwestern and Southern metros like Louisville; Cleveland; Greenville, SC; and Little Rock—but also San Jose in the West—host clean economies that are heavily manufacturing oriented. State capitals are among those with a disproportionate share of clean jobs in the public sector (e.g. Harrisburg, Sacramento, Raleigh, and Springfield). Finally, some metros—such as Atlanta; Salt Lake City; Portland, OR; and Los Angeles— balance multi-dimensional clean economies.

Strong industry clusters boost metros’ growth performance in the clean economy. Clustering entails proximity to businesses in similar or related industries. Establishments located in counties containing a significant number of jobs from other establishments in the same segment grew much faster than more isolated establishments from 2003 to 2010. Overall, clustered establishments grew at a rate that was 1.4 percentage points faster each year than non-clustered (more isolated) establishments. Examples include professional environmental services in Houston, solar photovoltaic in Los Angeles, fuel cells in Boston, and wind in Chicago.

The measurements and trends presented here offer a mixed picture of a diverse array of environmentally-oriented industry segments growing modestly even as a sub-set of clean energy, energy efficiency, and related segments grow much faster than the nation (albeit from a small base) and in ways that are producing a desirable array of jobs, including in manufacturing and export-oriented fields.

As to what governments, policymakers, and regional leaders should do to catalyze faster and broader growth across the U.S. clean economy, it is clear that the private sector will play the lead role, but governments have a role too. In this connection, the fact that significant policy uncertainties and gaps are weakening market demand for clean economy goods and services, chilling finance, and raising questions about the clean innovation pipeline reinforces the need for engagement and reform. Not only are other nations bidding to secure global production and the jobs that come with it but the United States currently risks failing to exploit growing world demand. And so this report concludes that vigorous private sector-led growth needs to be co-promoted through complementary engagements by all levels of the nation’s federal system to ensure the existence of well-structured markets, a favorable investment climate, and a rich stock of cutting-edge technology—as well as strong regional cast to all efforts. Along these lines, the report recommends that governments help:

Scale up the market by taking steps to catalyze vibrant domestic demand for low-carbon and environmentally-oriented goods and services. Intensified “green” procurement efforts by all levels of government are one such market-making engagement. But there are others. Congress and the federal government could help by putting a price on carbon, passing a national clean energy standard (CES), and moving to ensure more rational cost recovery on new transmission links for the delivery of renewable energy to urban load centers. States can adopt or strengthen their own clean energy standards, reduce the initial costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption, and pursue electricity market reform to facilitate the use of clean and efficient solutions. And localities can also support adoption by expediting permitting for green projects, adopting green building and other standards, and adopting innovative financing tools to reduce the upfront costs of investing in clean technologies.

Ensure adequate finance by moving to address the serious shortage of affordable, risk-tolerant, and larger-scale capital that now impedes the scale-up of numerous clean economy industry segments. On this front Congress should create an emerging technology deployment finance entity to address the commercialization “Valley of Death” and also work to rationalize and reform the myriad tax provisions and incentives that currently encourage capital investments in clean economy projects. States, for their part, can supplement private lending activity by providing guarantees and participating loans or initial capital for revolving loan funds targeting clean economy projects using new or improved technologies. And for that matter regions and localities can also help narrow the deployment finance gap by helping to reduce the costs and uncertainty of projects by expediting their physical build-out, whether by managing zoning and permitting issues or even pre-approving sites.

Drive innovation by investing both more and differently in the clean economy innovation system. With the needed major scale-up of investment levels unlikely for now, Congress at least needs to embrace continued incremental growth of key energy and environmental research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budgets. At the same time, Congress should continue its recent institutional experimentation through measured expansion of such recent start-ups as the Energy Frontier Research Centers, ARPA-E, and Energy Innovation Hubs programs. Two worthy additional experiments would be the creation of a water sciences innovation center and the establishment of a regional clean economy consortia initiative. States can also advance the clean economy through maintaining and expanding their own RD&D efforts, perhaps by tapping state clean energy funds where they exist. All should be focused and prioritized through a rigorous, data-driven analysis of the nature, growth, and strengths of local clean economy innovation clusters.

In addition, the “Sizing the Clean Economy“ emphasizes that in working on each of these fronts federal, state, and regional leaders need to:

Focus on regions, meaning that all parties need to place detailed knowledge of local industry dynamics and regional growth strategies near the center of efforts to advance the clean economy. While the federal government should increase its investment in new regional innovation and industry cluster programs such as the Economic Development Administration’s i6 Green Challenge, states should work to improve the information base about local clean economy industry clusters and move to support regionally crafted initiatives for advancing them. Regional actors, meanwhile, should take the lead in using data and analysis to understand the local clean economy in detail; identify competitive strengths; and then move to formulate strong, “bottom up” strategies for overcoming key clusters’ binding constraints. Employing cluster intelligence and strategy to design and tune regional workforce development strategies will be a critical regional priority.

***

The measurements, trends, and discussions offered here provide an encouraging but also challenging assessment of the ongoing development of the clean economy in the United States and its regions. In many respects, the analysis warrants excitement. As the nation continues to search for new sources of high-quality growth, the present findings depict a sizable and diverse array of industry segments that is—in key private-sector areas—expanding rapidly at a time of sluggish national growth. With smart policy support, broader, more rapid growth seems possible. At the same time, however, the information presented here is challenging, most notably because the growth of the clean economy has almost certainly been depressed by significant policy problems and uncertainties.

That question is: Will the nation marshal the will to make the most of those industries?

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Event Information

To access a curated stream of tweets from the #CleanEcon event, please visit this Storify page. Below you will find this event's full webcast archive--or, you may view one of four segments taken from that webcast.

No swath of the U.S. economy has been more widely celebrated as a source of economic renewal than the “clean” or “green” economy. However, surprisingly little is really known about these industries’ nature, size and growth—especially at the regional level. As a result, debates on transitioning to a green or clean economy are frequently short on facts and long on speculation as the nation searches for new sources of economic growth.

On July 13, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings brought together business, economic development and political leaders to review the progress of clean industries, identify policy issues and opportunities, and consider how faster and broader growth of the clean economy could be encouraged at the national, state and regional level. A report and first-of-its-kind database, produced in collaboration with Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice, was released at the event, providing new measures of the clean economy at the national and metropolitan levels. Also featured was an interactive web tool that allows users to track jobs, growth, segments, and other variables nationally, by state and by region.

Brookings Managing Director William Antholis welcomed participants and Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, presented the findings of this major new report on the status of the U.S. clean economy. Panel discussions followed, presenting the corporate and regional perspective.

After each panel, the speakers took audience questions.

Go to the report »

Go to the interactive web tool »

Video

• Introducing the Metropolitan Clean Economy
• Panel One: The Clean Economy, Firm by Firm
• Panel Two: The Clean Economy, Region by Region
• Clean Economy Closing Dialogue
• Growing the Clean Economy in Philadelphia

Audio

• Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment
• Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment
• Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment
• Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment

       

       

       

       

       

Editor's Note: Launched at a December 5, 2011 event at Brookings, this study is based on a publication developed in 2005 by the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement: Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It is a central tenet of international law that states bear the primary duty and responsibility to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of persons within their borders, including the internally displaced. While internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain entitled to the full protection of rights and freedoms available to the population in general, they face vulnerabilities that nondisplaced persons do not face. Therefore, in order to ensure that IDPs are not deprived of their human rights and are treated equally with respect to nondisplaced citizens, states are obligated to provide special measures of protection and assistance to IDPs that correspond to their particular vulnerabilities. Reflecting these key notions of international law, the rights of IDPs and obligations of states are set forth in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (hereafter, “the Guiding Principles”).

Using the Guiding Principles as a departure for analysis, this study examines government response to internal displacement in fifteen of the twenty countries most affected by internal displacement due to conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations: Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen. The analysis seeks to shed light on how and to what extent, if any, governments are fulfilling their responsibility toward IDPs, with a view to providing guidance to governments in such efforts. In so doing, this study also seeks to contribute to research and understanding regarding realization of the emerging norm of the “Responsibility to Protect.” To frame the analysis, the introduction to this volume examines the connections among the concepts of national responsibility, “sovereignty as responsibility” and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

The comparative analysis across the fifteen countries, presented in chapter 1, is based on a systematic application of the document Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility (hereafter, “Framework for National Responsibility,” “the Framework”). Seeking to distill the Guiding Principles, the Framework outlines twelve practical steps (“benchmarks”) that states can take to directly contribute to the prevention, mitigation and resolution of internal displacement:

1. Prevent displacement and minimize its adverse effects.
2. Raise national awareness of the problem.
3. Collect data on the number and conditions of IDPs.
4. Support training on the rights of IDPs.
5. Create a legal framework for upholding the rights of IDPs.
6. Develop a national policy on internal displacement.
7. Designate an institutional focal point on IDPs.
8. Support national human rights institutions to integrate internal displacement into their work.
9. Ensure the participation of IDPs in decision making.
10. Support durable solutions.
11. Allocate adequate resources to the problem.
12. Cooperate with the international community when national capacity is insufficient.

      

       

       

       

We are kicking off the new Millions Learning video series with a spotlight on Teach For All, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Teach For All is an international network of local, independent partner country organizations dedicated to improving educational opportunities for children and youth around the globe. From China to Bulgaria to Peru to Ghana, each partner organization recruits and trains recent top-performing graduates and professionals to teach in their country’s underserved communities for two years, with the ultimate goal of developing a cadre of education leaders, both inside and outside of the classroom.

In this video, Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, discusses Teach For All’s unique approach to building a pipeline of future “learning leaders and champions” and the role that a supportive policy environment plays in enabling this process. Kopp then explains how Teach For All grew from the original Teach For America and Teach First in the United Kingdom to an international network of 40 partner countries, sharing her own lessons learned along the way.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Wendy Kopp of Teach For All

       

Food safety is not a problem unique to China, though it is certainly one of the country’s most pressing and persistent challenges. On April 28, 2016, the John L. Thornton China Center hosted a public event to discuss food safety in China and what new regulations might mean for consumers and businesses.

Revised food safety law a step in the right direction

China’s revised Food Safety Law, enacted in October 2015, is intended to strengthen the regulation of food companies in China and enhance oversight along the supply chain. The law imposes tougher consequences on violators of food safety regulations. The revised Food Safety Law is a step in the right direction, but improving food safety will require more than just new regulations. Greater inter-agency coordination is needed among the various government entities with regulatory responsibility for food safety, including the China Food and Drug Administration, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Health and Planning Commission, and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

China has done relatively better in enforcing food safety and quality standards for its food exports than it has for its domestic food market. A disparity between export quality and what is found in local markets is not uncommon in developing countries. But after several large-scale food safety incidents, domestic Chinese consumers are now paying close attention to the quality of their food and are no longer willing to accept such a disparity. Setting and enforcing higher food safety standards domestically is important for maintaining public health and for increasing consumer confidence. The latter will take time but is an indispensable component of the consumption-driven economy that China seeks.

Industry consolidation needed

One of the biggest obstacles facing Chinese food safety regulators is a still-fragmented domestic food industry with many small players. The increase in regulatory requirements and inspections mandated by the new law will raise the costs of doing business and likely lead to industry consolidation, which would help make the domestic Chinese food industry more manageable from a regulatory perspective. Emerging trends that see consumers buying food products from small and perhaps unverified retailers online actually make the jobs of regulators more difficult. This is because products are harder to trace—and, if there is a problem, to recall—when transactions occur through nontraditional retail channels. Traceability is critical to ensuring food safety because it allows problematic food items to be identified. The responsible firm can then correct the situation and each actor in the supply chain can be held accountable.

The Chinese government is already supporting initiatives that aggregate production units at the farm level. These farmer production bases enable farmers to coordinate food production and marketing to larger retailers. Participating farms have been provided with safe pesticides and guidelines on pesticide application; they are also able to sell to large retailers directly. These direct farmer-retailer relationships allow for greater traceability and facilitate the spot-checking that is necessary for verification. This model holds promise for improving food safety, especially as it pertains to pesticide application, but it will need to be scaled up to have a meaningful impact on China’s domestic food market.

What can China learn from other countries?

Since China is not alone in facing food safety challenges, it can learn lessons from the experiences of other countries. According to Vivian Hoffmann of the International Food Policy Research Institute, “there are many ways in which the public sector can harness the capacity and energy of the private sector to make food safety regulation more efficient.” For instance, China could consider greater co-regulation, which is a strategy that involves the private sector in regulation. Allowing firms to give input when regulators are setting standards can help prevent situations where unattainable standards are either crippling for companies or just ignored altogether. Hoffman is clear to note that allowing firms to give input does not mean compromising on consumer safety. Rather, it would create a more transparent process that would allow companies time to work up to higher standards if necessary. Private companies could be involved in testing their own products, but verification testing would still be needed.

Open communication with consumers is also important. The risk-based approach to food safety, which is the international norm and which China has also adopted, entails a particular challenge: Sometimes what consumers think is the most dangerous aspect of the food supply is different from scientists’ perceptions and knowledge of risk. For example, scientists may focus on biological contaminants while consumers worry about pesticides and additives. The concerns of consumers should be taken into account when setting priorities, but experts also need to explain why their concerns may be different. Communication and transparency are essential for bridging this disconnect. Chenglin Liu of St. Mary’s School of Law similarly stresses transparency as a key ingredient in improving China’s food safety situation. Broader capacity building efforts—as it relates to rule of law, an independent judiciary, and independent journalism—will help improve the enforcement of regulations.

The country’s revised Food Safety Law is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough to resolve China’s food safety woes. Regulatory enforcement remains a challenge. Fortunately, it is by no means an insurmountable one. Vigilant consumers will continue to demand higher-quality and more-traceable food products, a trend that puts increasing pressure on regulators to enforce high standards and that also presents great opportunities for proactive businesses.

       

Overview

Increasing educational attainment is likely to reduce conflict risk, especially in countries like Pakistan that have very low levels of primary and secondary school enrollment. Education quality, relevance and content also have a role to play in mitigating violence. Education reform must therefore be a higher priority for all stakeholders interested in a more peaceful and stable Pakistan. Debate within the country about education reform should not be left only to education policymakers and experts, but ought to figure front and center in national dialogues about how to foster security. The price of ignoring Pakistan’s education challenges is simply too great in a country where half the population is under the age of 17.

There has been much debate concerning the roots of militancy in Pakistan, and multiple factors clearly come into play. One risk factor that has attracted much attention both inside Pakistan and abroad is the dismal state of the national education sector. Despite recent progress, current school attainment and literacy levels remain strikingly low, as does education spending. The Pakistani education sector, like much of the country’s public infrastructure, has been in decline over recent decades. The question of how limited access to quality education may contribute to militancy in Pakistan is more salient now than ever, given the rising national and international security implications of continued violence.

The second half of 2009 witnessed not only the Pakistani government stepping up action against insurgents but also the release of a new Pakistan National Education Policy that aspires to far-reaching and important reforms, including a commitment to increase investment in education—from 2 to 7 percent of gross domestic product. Hundreds of millions of dollars in international education aid have been newly pledged by donor countries. This renewed emphasis on education represents a substantial opportunity to seek to improve security in Pakistan and potentially also globally over the medium to long term. Policymakers both inside and outside Pakistan should give careful consideration to whether and how education investments can promote peace and stability, taking into account what we now know about the state of the education sector and the roots of militancy.

This report takes a fresh look at the connection between schools, including but not limited to Pakistan’s religious seminaries, known as “madrasas,” and the rising militancy across the country. Poor school performance across Pakistan would seem an obvious area of inquiry as a risk factor for conflict. Yet to date, the focus has been almost exclusively on madrasas and their role in the mounting violence. Outside Pakistan, relatively little attention has been given to whether and how the education sector as a whole may be fueling violence, over and above the role of the minority of militant madrasas.

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Over the past two decades, Ghana’s economy experienced an average annual growth rate of 5.8 percent, and became a low-middle income country in 2007. Though Ghana’s average annual employment growth between 1993 and 2013 has been higher than sub-Saharan Africa’s—3.7 percent versus 3.0 percent—its overall employment growth has not kept up with its economic growth. Notably, Ghana’s impressive economic growth has largely stemmed from crude oil exports, mining, and financial intermediation—all sectors and subsectors in which labor absorption is low. Given these trends, Ghana’s ability to transform its growth gains into better livelihoods for its citizens is being challenged.

In their paper, Understanding Ghana’s growth success story and job creation challenges, Ernest Aryeetey and William Baah-Boateng examine the sustainability of the high growth Ghana has experienced over the last two decades and advise Ghanaian policymakers to rethink their growth strategy.

For a more in-depth look at these and related topics, such as labor productivity, you can read the full paper here.

Ghana’s labor trends

Like in many other sub-Saharan African countries, the agriculture sector is the largest employer in Ghana, though its employment share is decreasing from 61.1 percent in 1984 to 44.7 percent in 2013. In addition, while industry’s employment share has slightly grown from 13.7 percent to 14.6 percent over the same period (and the manufacturing subsector has decreased from 10.9 percent to 9.1 percent), services has grown from 25 percent to 40.9 percent—leading to what the authors refer as a “missing middle.”

As noted above, the authors emphasize that the sectors that have been driving Ghana’s growth are not labor-intensive, namely mining, oil extraction, and finance. While labor has been moving from agriculture to services, the authors note that the trend “may not reflect a structural and productive transformation,” largely because the jobs created in the services sector are mostly informal and have low productivity. Indeed, services sector maintained the lowest annual average growth of labor productivity between 1992 and 2013. As part of these shifts, informal employment—which represented 88 percent of Ghanaian employment in 2013—grew by 3.7 percent on average while formal employment grew by only 2.6 percent during this period.

Unemployment in Ghana remains low, at 5.2 percent, though has experienced significant swings from 2.8 percent in 1984 to 10.4 percent in 2000 to 3.1 percent in 2006. The authors note, though, that these numbers might be deceptive due to the high numbers of informal, vulnerable, and “discouraged workers” (those who are jobless and available for work but fail to make the effort to seek work for various reasons) in Ghana. In fact, they state that, in 2006, after accounting for discouraged workers the unemployment rate more than doubled from 3.1 percent to 6.5 percent.

Vulnerable employment and the working poor

Despite Ghana’s relatively low unemployment rate, many laborers still live in poverty: According to the authors, 22 percent of working people are poor. Many others work in “vulnerable employment”—which the authors define as “a measure of people employed under relatively precarious circumstances indicated by their status in employment. It consists of own account and contributing family work that are less likely to have formal work arrangements, access to benefit or social protection programs, and are more ‘at risk’ to economic cycles (ILO 2009).” This definition is opposed to “productive employment,” or “paid employment and self-employed with employees.” Vulnerable workers are usually found in the informal sector and tend to have lower earnings—a situation exacerbating the ever-widening earnings gap and growing income inequality.

According to the authors, working poverty is closely linked with vulnerable employment, for which seven of 10 jobs in Ghana qualify (Table 1).  Some policies, which could combat working poverty, have been somewhat ineffective in reducing poverty: For example, Ghana has been consistent in raising its minimum wage, keeping it largely above the rate of inflation, but this policy tends to only affect those in the formal sector, leaving out workers in the informal sector. This trend has also increased Ghana’s inequality: The Gini coefficient increased from 35.4 percent in 1987/88 to 42.3 percent in 2013.

Table 1: Quantity and quality of employment (percent of employed)

Economic sector	1984	1992	1999	2000	2006	2010	2013
Employment-to-population (ratio, SSA)	—	64.3	64.1	64.1	64.9	65.2	65.5
Employment-to-population (ratio, Ghana)	80.2	72.9	73.9	66.9	67.7	67.4	75.4
Economic sector
Agriculture	61.1	62.2	55.0	53.1	54.9	41.6	44.7
Industry	13.7	10.0	14.0	15.5	14.2	15.4	14.6
Manufacturing (part of industry)	10.9	8.2	11.7	10.7	11.4	10.7	9.1
Service	25.2	27.8	31.0	31.5	30.9	43.0	40.9
Institutional sector
Public	10.2	8.4	6.2	7.2	5.7	6.4	5.9
Private	6.0	6.1	7.5	8.9	7.0	7.4	6.1
Informal	83.8	85.5	86.1	83.9	87.3	86.2	88.0
Type of employment
Paid employees	16.2	16.8	13.8	16.0	17.5	18.2	22.5
Self-employment	69.6	81.3	68.7	73.4	59.5	60.8	52.6
Contributing family worker	12.5	1.9	17.2	6.8	20.4	11.6	22.3
Other	1.7	—	0.3	3.8	2.6	9.4	2.6
Quality of employment
Gainful/productive employment*	20.9	—	—	21.2	22.0	23.1	28.7
Vulnerable employment**	77.4	82.5	80.8	74.9	75.4	67.5	68.7
Working poverty	—	48.7	35.4	—	25.6	—	22.3

Notes: * Gainful/productive employment comprises paid employment and self-employed with employees.

** Vulnerable employment comprises own account and contribution family work.

Source: Computed from Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) 3, 4, 5, and 6; Population Census 1984, 2000, and 2010.

Overall, though, Ghana has made great strides. Vulnerable employment has been declining, and productive employment has risen, gains the author attributes to the drop in working poverty—down from 48.7 percent in 1992 to 22.3 percent two decades later (Table 1). However, they also hint that these improvements could have been even larger had job growth been concentrated in paid employment and self-employed with employees.

The skills gap

In their paper, the authors posit that job creation has occurred in less productive sectors due to a lack of skills and education in the workforce—and skill-intensive jobs/vacancies are instead getting filled by foreign laborers. While the proportion of the labor force with no formal education has significantly fallen from 44.1 percent in 1992 to 25.6 percent in 2013, post-primary education rates have barely risen—from 5.7 percent to 12.1 percent during that same period for secondary, vocational, and technical education. Tertiary is even less—from 2 percent to 5.4 percent. Ghanaian universities have not been training engineers, scientists, and technical workers that could increase the productivity and grow the industrial sector. A shortage of technical and vocational skills also limits this sector. Thus, the authors note, employers are forced to look outside of the country to find the workers with the skills required to do the job. The authors emphasize:

[P]roductive structural economic transformation hinges on the level and quality of education and labour skills. A highly skilled, innovative, and knowledgeable workforce constitutes a key ingredient in the process of structural economic transformation, and as productive sectors apply more complex production technologies and research and development activities increase the demand for education and skills. However, the observed weak human capital base does not provide a strong foundation for structural economic transformation of Ghana.

At the same time, the more educated in Ghana also tend to be more likely to be unemployed due to limited job creation for them in the formal sector. In 2013, the unemployment rates for those with secondary education and above (including tertiary) was over 6 percent. The unemployment rate for those with basic education or less was under 3.3 percent. The authors suggest that this trend is due to the fact that those with less education are more likely to take an informal job, while more educated laborers struggle to find jobs in the small formal sector.

Recommendations

Though Ghana has outperformed many of its sub-Saharan neighbors in terms of job creation and growth, its challenges with declining manufacturing, high informal employment, and low education attainment endanger its momentum. To tackle these obstacles, the authors recommend:

1. Adjust the priorities of the growth strategy to promote manufacturing, and reconsider the goal of economic growth for growth’s sake by acknowledging that sustainable growth must be coupled with generation of productive and high-earning jobs for all.
2. Create a manufacturing and business-friendly environment by addressing the country’s high interest rates, high taxes, and chronic energy problems, among others.
3. Enact policies to enhance the high-productivity, high-labor-absorbing agricultural sector, such as improving agricultural extension, develop irrigation plans, among others.
4. Develop policies to increase the number of secondary school graduates as well as students studying science, technology, engineering, and math.

For further discussion and recommendations, read the full paper here.

Note: The African Lions project is a collaboration among United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), the University of Cape Town’s Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU), and the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative, that provides an analytical basis for policy recommendations and value-added guidance to domestic policymakers in the fast-growing economies of Africa, as well as for the broader global community interested in the development of the region. The six papers, covering Mozambique, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, explore the key constraints facing African economies as they attempt to maintain a long-run economic growth and development trajectory.

      

       

Editor's Note: In this blog, Vera Songwe introduces the African Leadership Transitions Tracker, a new interactive that aims to start a broader conversation about leadership transitions and what they mean for the region and beyond.

On March 28, Nigerians voters will go to the polls to participate in their nation’s fifth election since the military handed over power to civilians in 1999. As Africa’s largest economy and an important oil exporter, this election comes at an important time for Nigeria and for the continent as a whole.

Events around this election have generated significant debate around electoral and voting processes on the continent such as the importance of a constitution, the cost, the frequency and level of contestability, and the power of incumbency in African elections. However, amid this dialogue, much less consideration has been devoted to where this election stands within the continuum of leader transitions Nigeria has experienced since it first gained independence in 1960. Nigerians have, in fact, gone through 18 leadership transitions in the last 55 years, including the untimely death of former President Umaru Masu Yar’Adua in May 2010, the multiparty elections that brought President Olusegun Obasanjo to power in 1999, and the first presidential elections that brought President Shegu Shagari to power in 1979. Nigeria’s high rate of leadership changeover should not, however, be considered illustrative of Africa’s overall story. On the contrary, a high level of diversity exists among countries in the region on this measure, with countries like Angola having had only one leadership transition since it achieved its independence in 1975, and Benin, on the other hand, undergoing an election, coup, or other type of leadership transition nearly every two years in the country’s 55-year post-independence history. However, overall in Africa today there are more peaceful and competitive leadership transitions than there have been over the last six decades. This contestability process is gaining ground across the continent, and while coups d’etat appear to be fading revolutions are gaining ground where competition has not taken hold.

The recent passing of Singapore’s 30 year-long leader Lee Kwan Yew credited with having taken Singapore from a third world country to a fully developed country in less than a generation, has brought the question of leadership and leadership transitions back to the fore. A 2010 report by Michael Spence’s Growth Commission heralds Lee Kuan Yew as the hero of Singapore’s growth story. The African Leadership Transition Tracker hopes to launch a dialogue on what the frequency, nature, and scope of leadership transitions mean for African countries’ growth, stability, and development trajectory overall. Moreover, how have transition trends in the region changed from the time of the African founding fathers and the tumultuous years of the 1960s to the present day?

As an initial step towards thinking this question through, Brookings’s African Growth Initiative is today launching the African Leadership Transitions Tracker as a resource both to inform readers about African political history and a tool to initiate analysis on what leadership changeover might mean (or not mean) for development. The Transitions Tracker specifically records all changes that have occurred at the head-of-state level in every African country between the end of the colonial period and the present day. We are hoping that recording this information and presenting it visually (and as a downloadable data set) will help start a broader conversation and support additional work on these issues. Brookings will update this data on a regular basis, and we welcome your feedback as we further refine this interactive. Moreover, the information we present today is by no means the full story—key variables are needed to complement this study, including, for example, the various political party affiliations of leaders within a country or cross tabulations with resources that seek to measure the level of citizen participation and engagement in these transitions. However, as further analysis takes place, we are hoping that the African Leadership Transitions Tracker will enrich dialogue about developments occurring in the region and place current news on elections or other types of changeover events within the broader context of the continent’s leadership story overall.  Over the next few months, we will be running a series of articles based on this data.  

Special thanks to Ehui Adovor, graduate student at George Washington University and the many AGI research assistants, analysts, and program staff that have supported this project, including Jessica Pugliese, Brandon Routman, Christina Golubski, Andrew Westbury, and Amy Copley.

      

Editor's Note: In an interview with La Repubblica's Rosalba Castelletti, Jonathan Laurence discussed the significance of the revelations that the United States has continued to spy on Germany, and what they mean for the future of the transatlantic relationship.

"È un momento delicato, ma non penso che la Germania abbia interesse ad esagerare le tensioni con gli Stati Uniti". A sostenerlo è Jonathan Laurence, professore di Scienze politiche al Boston College ed esperto di Relazioni transatlantiche presso il think tank Brookings Institution di Washington.

Professor Laurence, quest'episodio come inciderà sulle relazioni tra i due Paesi?

"La situazione è tesa. Berlino stavolta non ha espresso solo la consueta indignazione, ma ha compiuto un atto formale con l'espulsione del capo dei servizi segreti, perché è la terza volta che il popolo tedesco apprende di essere spiato dagli americani. La prima volta è successo con il Datagate, la seconda con l'intercettazione del cellulare della cancelliera e ora con due spie tedesche al soldo degli americani".

In cosa differisce quest'ultimo caso dai precedenti?

"Non si tratta di programmi d'alta tecnologia, ma di spionaggio più "vecchia maniera": documenti in cambio di soldi. Stavolta poi non c'è in ballo un problema di sicurezza internazionale. È un nuovo colpo per la reputazione Usa perché ancora una volta si dimostra indifferente alla sensibilità europea riguardo alla raccolta di dati".

E i tedeschi sono forse i più sensibili, visto che hanno sperimentato lo spionaggio della Gestapo e della Stasi...

"Di fatti. L'attuale cancelliera ha fatto il suo debutto in politica proprio dopo il crollo della Stasi. Ecco perché dobbiamo aspettarci che la Germania dichiari a gran voce la sua collera".

Cosa può fare l'amministrazione Usa per riparare?

"Qualcosa di più che cercare infruttuosi colloqui bilaterali o accordi di non spionaggio reciproco. La Germania non è ingenua, sa che i servizi americani hanno bisogno di operare soprattutto dopo il 2001, ma vuole che si lavori insieme. Non credo però che cerchi il conflitto. Berlino e Washington hanno bisogno l'una dell'altra sia sulle sanzioni contro la Russia in merito alla crisi Ucraina sia sull'accordo di libero scambio".

      

Also in this podcast: Russ Whitehurst discusses the cost of universal education for preschool, and David Wessel comments on the current state of the economy

"To use some of the time honored clichés, 'The enemy may get a vote too.' Or the Bolshevik line, 'You may not have an interest in war, but war may have an interest in you' I paraphrase that to say we may not, at the moment, have an interest in counterinsurgency and stabilization missions, but they may have an interest in us… we can't be like the ostrich putting our head in the sand just because we're tired of these kinds of wars. They might come back, whether we like it or not." says Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon about his new book, "The Future of Land Warfare."

After learning about the various scenarios that might necessitate land warfare, we'll hear Russ Whitehurst, senior fellow in Economic Studies and Editor of the Evidence Speaks project, discuss the cost of universal Pre-K. "The question is: what should the nation or states do to increase participation rates to a universal level?" Whitehurst asks in this project. "And what I've found by looking at the evidence is that actually people haven't provided very good evidence on how many children are presently served."

Also, stay tuned to hear expert David Wessel update us on one of the nation's most alarming economic problems – wage stagnation.

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Show Notes:

• Read more about O'Hanlon's book, "The Future of Land Warfare"
• The future of the U.S. army
• Toward a "Reaganov" Russia: Russian Security Policy after Putin
• Obama the Carpenter: The President's National Security Legacy
• What role will evidence play in the 2016 election?
• Do we already have universal preschool?
• Why public school vouchers could have bi-partisan appeal
• Hutchins Roundup: wealth inequality, student borrowing, and more

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Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen on Stitcher, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu.

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Chattanooga a few years ago faced what many smaller cities are struggling with today—a sudden decline after years of prosperity in the "old" economy. This case study offers a roadmap for these cities by chronicling Chattanooga's demise and rebirth.

Chattanooga is located in the southern end of the Tennessee Valley where the Tennessee River cuts through the Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau. The city’s location, particularly its proximity to the Tennessee River, has been one of its greatest assets. Today, several major interstates (I-24, I-59, and I-75) run through Chattanooga, making it a hub of transportation business. The city borders North Georgia and is less than an hour away from both Alabama and North Carolina. Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham are all within two hours travel time by car.

Chattanooga is Tennessee’s fourth largest city, with a population in 2000 of 155,554, and it covers an area of 143.2 square miles. Among the 200 most populous cities in the United States, Chattanooga—with 1,086.5 persons per square mile—ranks 190th in population density.2 It is the most populous of 10 municipalities in Hamilton County, which has a population of 307,896, covers an area of 575.7 square miles, and has a population density of 534.8 persons per square mile.

With its extensive railroads and river access, Chattanooga was at one time the “Dynamo of Dixie”—a bustling, midsized, industrial city in the heart of the South. By 1940, Chattanooga’s population was centered around a vibrant downtown and it was one of the largest cities in the United States. Just 50 years later, however, it was in deep decline. Manufacturing jobs continued to leave. The city’s white population had fled to the suburbs and downtown was a place to be avoided, rather than the economic center of the region. The city lost almost 10 percent of its population during the 1960s, and another 10 percent between 1980 and 1990. It would have lost more residents had it not been for annexation of outlying suburban areas.

The tide began to turn in the 1990s, with strategic investments by developing public-private partnerships—dubbed the “Chattanooga way.” These investments spurred a dramatic turnaround. The city’s population has since stabilized and begun to grow, downtown has been transformed, and it is once again poised to prosper in the new economy as it had in the old.

This report describes how Chattanooga has turned its economy around. It begins with a summary of how the city grew and developed during its first 150 years before describing the factors driving its decline. The report concludes by examining the partnerships and planning that helped spur Chattanooga’s current revitalization and providing valuable lessons to other older industrial cities trying to ignite their own economic recovery. 

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The United States alliance with Saudi Arabia dates back to 1943, making the U.S. relationship with the Kingdom one of America's longest-standing in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a key counterterrorism and diplomatic partner within the region, yet the alliance has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, especially in the period following the 9/11 attacks, when questions about Saudi support for extremist causes emerged. Saudi Arabia’s prosecution of the war in Yemen has added to the criticism, with many observers blaming the Kingdom for the unfolding humanitarian crisis within the Arab world's poorest state. In recent comments, President Barack Obama has been critical of Saudi policies, despite U.S. logistical and intelligence support to Saudi Arabia’s war effort in Yemen.

On April 21, the Intelligence Project and Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut to discuss the U.S.-Saudi alliance with Senior Fellows Bruce Riedel and Tamara Cofman Wittes. Senator Murphy has urged a more rigorous approach to cooperation with Riyadh that balances U.S. counterterrorism interests, strategic imperatives, and human rights concerns, and has led efforts on Capitol Hill to debate the war in Yemen. Cofman Wittes, director of the Center for Middle East Policy, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion. 

 Join the conversation on Twitter at #USSaudi.

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Nearly 30 years ago, the economists Robert Solow and Stephen Roach caused a stir when they pointed out that, for all the billions of dollars being invested in information technology, there was no evidence of a payoff in productivity. Businesses were buying tens of millions of computers every year, and Microsoft had just gone public, netting Bill Gates his first billion. And yet, in what came to be known as the productivity paradox, national statistics showed that not only was productivity growth not accelerating; it was actually slowing down. “You can see the computer age everywhere,” quipped Solow, “but in the productivity statistics.”

Today, we seem to be at a similar historical moment with a new innovation: the much-hyped Internet of Things – the linking of machines and objects to digital networks. Sensors, tags, and other connected gadgets mean that the physical world can now be digitized, monitored, measured, and optimized. As with computers before, the possibilities seem endless, the predictions have been extravagant – and the data have yet to show a surge in productivity.

A year ago, research firm Gartner put the Internet of Things at the peak of its Hype Cycle of emerging technologies.

As more doubts about the Internet of Things productivity revolution are voiced, it is useful to recall what happened when Solow and Roach identified the original computer productivity paradox. For starters, it is important to note that business leaders largely ignored the productivity paradox, insisting that they were seeing improvements in the quality and speed of operations and decision-making. Investment in information and communications technology continued to grow, even in the absence of macroeconomic proof of its returns.

That turned out to be the right response. By the late 1990s, the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt had disproved the productivity paradox, uncovering problems in the way service-sector productivity was measured and, more important, noting that there was generally a long lag between technology investments and productivity gains.

Our own research at the time found a large jump in productivity in the late 1990s, driven largely by efficiencies made possible by earlier investments in information technology. These gains were visible in several sectors, including retail, wholesale trade, financial services, and the computer industry itself. The greatest productivity improvements were not the result of information technology on its own, but by its combination with process changes and organizational and managerial innovations.

Our latest research, The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype, indicates that a similar cycle could repeat itself. We predict that as the Internet of Things transforms factories, homes, and cities, it will yield greater economic value than even the hype suggests. By 2025, according to our estimates, the economic impact will reach $3.9-$11.1 trillion per year, equivalent to roughly 11% of world GDP. In the meantime, however, we are likely to see another productivity paradox; the gains from changes in the way businesses operate will take time to be detected at the macroeconomic level.

One major factor likely to delay the productivity payoff will be the need to achieve interoperability. Sensors on cars can deliver immediate gains by monitoring the engine, cutting maintenance costs, and extending the life of the vehicle. But even greater gains can be made by connecting the sensors to traffic monitoring systems, thereby cutting travel time for thousands of motorists, saving energy, and reducing pollution. However, this will first require auto manufacturers, transit operators, and engineers to collaborate on traffic-management technologies and protocols.

Indeed, we estimate that 40% of the potential economic value of the Internet of Things will depend on interoperability. Yet some of the basic building blocks for interoperability are still missing. Two-thirds of the things that could be connected do not use standard Internet Protocol networks.

Other barriers standing in the way of capturing the full potential of the Internet of Things include the need for privacy and security protections and long investment cycles in areas such as infrastructure, where it could take many years to retrofit legacy assets. The cybersecurity challenges are particularly vexing, as the Internet of Things increases the opportunities for attack and amplifies the consequences of any breach.

But, as in the 1980s, the biggest hurdles for achieving the full potential of the new technology will be organizational. Some of the productivity gains from the Internet of Things will result from the use of data to guide changes in processes and develop new business models. Today, little of the data being collected by the Internet of Things is being used, and it is being applied only in basic ways – detecting anomalies in the performance of machines, for example.

It could be a while before such data are routinely used to optimize processes, make predictions, or inform decision-making – the uses that lead to efficiencies and innovations. But it will happen. And, just as with the adoption of information technology, the first companies to master the Internet of Things are likely to lock in significant advantages, putting them far ahead of competitors by the time the significance of the change is obvious to everyone.

Editor's Note: This opinion originally appeared on Project Syndicate August 6, 2015.

       

Nearly 30 years ago, the economists Robert Solow and Stephen Roach caused a stir when they pointed out that, for all the billions of dollars being invested in information technology, there was no evidence of a payoff in productivity. Businesses were buying tens of millions of computers every year, and Microsoft had just gone public, netting Bill Gates his first billion. And yet, in what came to be known as the productivity paradox, national statistics showed that not only was productivity growth not accelerating; it was actually slowing down. “You can see the computer age everywhere,” quipped Solow, “but in the productivity statistics.”

Today, we seem to be at a similar historical moment with a new innovation: the much-hyped Internet of Things – the linking of machines and objects to digital networks. Sensors, tags, and other connected gadgets mean that the physical world can now be digitized, monitored, measured, and optimized. As with computers before, the possibilities seem endless, the predictions have been extravagant – and the data have yet to show a surge in productivity.

A year ago, research firm Gartner put the Internet of Things at the peak of its Hype Cycle of emerging technologies.

As more doubts about the Internet of Things productivity revolution are voiced, it is useful to recall what happened when Solow and Roach identified the original computer productivity paradox. For starters, it is important to note that business leaders largely ignored the productivity paradox, insisting that they were seeing improvements in the quality and speed of operations and decision-making. Investment in information and communications technology continued to grow, even in the absence of macroeconomic proof of its returns.

That turned out to be the right response. By the late 1990s, the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt had disproved the productivity paradox, uncovering problems in the way service-sector productivity was measured and, more important, noting that there was generally a long lag between technology investments and productivity gains.

Our own research at the time found a large jump in productivity in the late 1990s, driven largely by efficiencies made possible by earlier investments in information technology. These gains were visible in several sectors, including retail, wholesale trade, financial services, and the computer industry itself. The greatest productivity improvements were not the result of information technology on its own, but by its combination with process changes and organizational and managerial innovations.

Our latest research, The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype, indicates that a similar cycle could repeat itself. We predict that as the Internet of Things transforms factories, homes, and cities, it will yield greater economic value than even the hype suggests. By 2025, according to our estimates, the economic impact will reach $3.9-$11.1 trillion per year, equivalent to roughly 11% of world GDP. In the meantime, however, we are likely to see another productivity paradox; the gains from changes in the way businesses operate will take time to be detected at the macroeconomic level.

One major factor likely to delay the productivity payoff will be the need to achieve interoperability. Sensors on cars can deliver immediate gains by monitoring the engine, cutting maintenance costs, and extending the life of the vehicle. But even greater gains can be made by connecting the sensors to traffic monitoring systems, thereby cutting travel time for thousands of motorists, saving energy, and reducing pollution. However, this will first require auto manufacturers, transit operators, and engineers to collaborate on traffic-management technologies and protocols.

Indeed, we estimate that 40% of the potential economic value of the Internet of Things will depend on interoperability. Yet some of the basic building blocks for interoperability are still missing. Two-thirds of the things that could be connected do not use standard Internet Protocol networks.

Other barriers standing in the way of capturing the full potential of the Internet of Things include the need for privacy and security protections and long investment cycles in areas such as infrastructure, where it could take many years to retrofit legacy assets. The cybersecurity challenges are particularly vexing, as the Internet of Things increases the opportunities for attack and amplifies the consequences of any breach.

But, as in the 1980s, the biggest hurdles for achieving the full potential of the new technology will be organizational. Some of the productivity gains from the Internet of Things will result from the use of data to guide changes in processes and develop new business models. Today, little of the data being collected by the Internet of Things is being used, and it is being applied only in basic ways – detecting anomalies in the performance of machines, for example.

It could be a while before such data are routinely used to optimize processes, make predictions, or inform decision-making – the uses that lead to efficiencies and innovations. But it will happen. And, just as with the adoption of information technology, the first companies to master the Internet of Things are likely to lock in significant advantages, putting them far ahead of competitors by the time the significance of the change is obvious to everyone.

Editor's Note: This opinion originally appeared on Project Syndicate August 6, 2015.