market Oil Markets Provide a Glimpse of the Post-Pandemic Future By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Apr 7, 2020 Apr 7, 2020Henry Kissinger warns that many existing domestic and international institutions that have helped govern the past decades will not survive the Covid-19 crisis. He is surely correct. Full Article
market Health care market consolidations: Impacts on costs, quality and access By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:30:00 -0400 Editor's note: On March 16, Paul B. Ginsburg testified before the California Senate Committee on Health on fostering competition in consolidated markets. Download the full testimony here. Mr. Chairman, Madame Vice Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am honored to be invited to testify before this committee on this very important topic. I am a professor of health policy at the University of Southern California and director of public policy at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. I am also a Senior Fellow and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution, where I direct the Center for Health Policy. Much of my time is now devoted to leading the new Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy, which is a partnership between USC and the Brookings Institution. I am best known in California for the numerous community site visits over many years that I led in the state while I was president of the Center for Studying Health System Change; most of those studies were funded by the California HealthCare Foundation. The key points in my testimony today are: Health care markets are becoming more consolidated, causing price increases for purchasers of health services, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future despite anti-trust enforcement; Government can still play an effective role in addressing higher prices that come from consolidation by pursuing policies that foster increased competition in health care markets. Many of these policies can be effective even in markets with high degrees of concentration, such as in Northern California. Consolidation in health care has been increasing for some time and is now quite extensive in many markets. Some of this comes from mergers and acquisitions, but an important part also comes from larger organizations gaining market share from smaller competitors. The degree of consolidation varies by market. In California, most observers believe that metropolitan areas in the northern part of the state have provider markets that are far more consolidated than those in the southern part of the state. Insurer markets tend to be statewide and are less consolidated than those in many other states. The research literature on hospital mergers is now substantial and shows that mergers lead to higher prices, although without any measured impact on quality.[1] The trend is accelerating for reasons that are apparent. For providers, it is becoming an increasingly challenging environment to be a small hospital or medical practice. There is more pressure on payment rates. New contracting models, such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), tend to require more scale. The system is going through a challenging transition to electronic medical records, which is expensive and requires specialized expertise to avoid pitfalls. Lifestyle choices by younger physicians lead them to pursue employment in large organizations rather than solo ownerships or partnerships in small practices. The environment is also challenging for small insurers. Multi-state employers prefer to contract with insurers that can serve all of their employees throughout the country. Scale economies are important in building the analytic capabilities that hold so much promise for effectively managing care. Insurer scale is important to make it worthwhile for providers to contract with them under alternative payment models. The implication of these trends is an expectation of increasing consolidation. There is need for both public and private sector initiatives in addition to anti-trust enforcement to foster greater competition on price and quality. How can competition be fostered? For the insurance market, public exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and private insurance exchanges that serve employers can foster competition among insurers in a number of ways. Exchanges reduce entry barriers by reducing the fixed costs of getting an insurer’s products in front of potential customers. Building a brand is less important when your products will be presented to consumers on an exchange along with information on the benefit design, the actuarial value and the provider network. Exchanges make it easier for consumers to make informed choices across plans. This, in turn, makes the insurance market more competitive. Among public exchanges, Covered California has stood out for making this segment of the insurance market more competitive and helping consumers make choices that are better informed. The rest of my statement is devoted to fostering competition among providers. I believe that fostering competition among providers is a higher priority because the consequences of lack of competition are potentially larger. In addition, a significant regulatory tool, minimum medical loss ratios, part of the ACA, is now in place and can limit the degree to which purchasers pay too much for health insurance in markets with insufficient competition. Fostering competition in provider markets involves two prongs—broadened anti-trust policy and other policies to foster market forces. Anti-trust policy, at least at the federal level, to date has not addressed hospital acquisitions of physician practices. These acquisitions lead to higher prices to physicians because hospitals can negotiate higher prices for their employed physicians than the physicians were getting in small practices. Although not yet extensive, a developing research literature is measuring the price impact.[2] Hospital employment of physicians can also be a barrier to physicians steering patients to high-value providers (another hospital or a freestanding provider). To the degree that it reduces the chance of larger physician groups or independent practice associations forming, hospital employment of physicians reduces potential competitors in contracting under alternative payment models. Another area not addressed by anti-trust policy is cross-market mergers. The concern is that a “must have” hospital in a multi-market system could lead to higher rates for system hospitals elsewhere. Anti-trust enforcement agencies have tended to look at markets separately, so this issue tends not to enter their analyses. Many have seen price and quality transparency as a tool to foster competition among providers. Clearly, transparency has become a societal value and people increasingly expect more information about organizations that are important to them in both the public and private sector. But transparency is often oversold as a strategy to foster competition in health care provider markets. For one thing, many benefit designs have few incentives to favor providers with lower prices. Copays are the same for all providers and with coinsurance, the insurer covers most of the price difference. Even high deductibles are limited in their incentives because almost all in-patient stays exceed large deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums also come into play for many who are hospitalized. Another issue is that the complexity of comparing prices is a “heavy lift” for many consumers. Insurers and employers now have excellent web tools designed to make it easier for patients to compare prices, but indications are that the tools do not get a lot of use. Network strategies have the potential to be more effective. The concept behind them is that the insurer is acting as a purchasing agent for enrollees. To the extent that they have the potential to shift volume from high-priced providers to low-priced providers, money can be saved in three distinct ways. The first is the higher proportion of services coming from lower-priced providers. The second is the additional discounts from providers seeking to become part of the limited or preferred network. Finally, if a large enough proportion of patients are enrolled in plans with these incentives, providers will likely increase the priority given to cost containment. In creating networks, insurers are increasingly using broader and more sophisticated measures of price as well as some measures of quality. Cost per patient per year or cost for all services involved in an episode is likely to have more relevance than unit prices. Using such measures to judge providers for networks has strong analytic parallels to reformed payment approaches, such as ACOs and bundled payments for episodes of care. Network strategies also create more opportunities for integration of care. For example, a limited network or a preferred tier in a broader network could be mostly limited to providers affiliated with a large health care system. Indeed, some health systems are developing their own health plan or partnering with an insurer to offer plans that favor their own providers. In this testimony, I discuss two distinct network strategies. One is the limited network, which includes fewer providers than has been the norm in private insurance. The other is the tiered network, where the network is broad but a subset of providers are included in a preferred tier. Patients pay less in cost sharing when they use the preferred providers. Limited networks are a more powerful tool to obtain lower prices because patient incentives are stronger. If patients opt for a provider not in the limited network, they are subject to higher cost sharing and might have to pay the provider the difference between the charge and what the plan allows. Results of these stronger incentives are seen in a number of studies by McKinsey and Co. that have shown that on the public exchanges, limited network plans have premiums about 15 percent lower than plans with broader networks. Public and private exchanges are an ideal environment for limited network plans. The fixed contributions or subsidies to purchase coverage mean that consumers’ incentives to choose a plan with a lower premium are not diluted—they save the full difference in premium. Exchanges do not have the “one size fits all” requirement that constrains many employers in using this strategy. If an employer is offering only one or two plans, it is important that an overwhelming majority of employees find the network acceptable. But a limited network on an exchange could appeal to fewer than half of those purchasing on the exchange and still be very successful. In addition, tools provided by exchanges to support consumers facilitate comparisons of plans by having each plan’s network accessible on a single web site. In contrast, tiered networks have the potential to appeal to a larger consumer audience. Rather than making annual choices of which providers can be accessed in network, tiered networks allow these decisions on a point-of-service basis. So the consumer always has the option to draw on the full network. Considering the greater popularity of PPOs than HMOs and the fact that tiered formularies for prescription drugs are far more popular than closed formularies, the potential market for tiered networks might be much larger. But this has not happened. In many markets, dominant providers have blocked the offering of tiered networks by refusal to contract with insurers that do not place them in the preferred tier. This phenomenon was seen in Massachusetts, where 2010 legislation prohibiting this practice led to rapid growth in insurance products with tiered networks. Some Californians are familiar with a related approach of reference pricing due to the pioneering work that CalPERS has done in this area for state and local employees. Reference pricing is really an “extra strength” version of the tiered network approach. An insurer sets a reference price and patients using providers that charge more are responsible for the difference (although providers sometimes do not charge patients in such plans any more than the reference price). So the incentive to avoid providers whose price exceeds the reference price is quite strong. While CalPERS has had success with joint replacements and some other procedures, a key question is what proportion of medical spending might be suitable to this approach. For reference pricing to be suitable, the services must be “shoppable,” meaning that they must be discretionary with the patient and can be planned in advance. One analysis estimates that only one third of health spending is “shoppable.”[3] While network approaches have a lot of potential for fostering competition in health care markets, including those that are consolidated, they face a number of challenges that must be addressed. First, transparency about networks must be improved. Consumers need accurate information on which providers are in a network when they choose plans and when they choose providers for care. Accommodation is needed for patients under treatment if their provider should drop out of a network or be dropped from one. Network adequacy regulations are needed to protect consumers from networks that lack access to some specialties or do not have providers close enough to their residence. They are also important to preclude strategies that create networks unlikely to be attractive to patients with expensive, chronic diseases. But if network adequacy regulation is too aggressive, it risks seriously undermining a very promising tool for cost saving. So regulators must very carefully balance consumer protection with cost containment. Some consider the problem of “surprise” balance bills, charges by out-of-network providers that patients do not choose, to be more significant in limited networks. This may be the case, but the problem is substantial in broader networks as well, and its policy response should apply throughout private insurance. Another approach to foster competition in provider markets involves steps to foster independent medical practices. Medicare has taken steps to ease requirements for medical practices to contract as ACOs. It recently took some steps to limit the circumstances in which hospital-employed physicians get higher Medicare rates than those in office-based practice. Private insurers have provided support to some practices to incorporate electronic medical records into their practices. To the degree that independent practice can be made more attractive relative to hospital employment, competition in provider markets is likely to increase. Additional restrictions on anti-competitive behavior by providers can also foster competition. These behaviors include “all or nothing” contracting requirements in which a hospital system requires insurers to contract with all hospitals in the system and “most favored nation” clauses in which insurers get providers to agree not to establish lower rates for other insurers. Although the focus of discussion about policy in this testimony has been about fostering competition, regulatory alternatives that substitute for competition should not be ignored. At this time, two states—Maryland and West Virginia—regulate hospital rates. Some states, mostly in the Northeast, have been looking at this approach. Although I respect what some states have accomplished with this approach in the past, I need to point out that the current environment poses additional challenges for rate setting. The notion that rates would be the same for all payers, a longstanding component in Maryland, is unlikely to be practical today because rate differences between private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid are so large. So differences would likely have to be “grandfathered.” More practical would be to limit regulation to commercial rates, as West Virginia has done since the 1980s. Another challenge is that with broad enthusiasm about the prospects for reformed payment, those contemplating rate setting need to make sure that the mechanism encourages payment reform rather than blocks it. Maryland has been quite careful about this and its recent initiative to broaden its program seems promising. But with the recent emphasis on multi-provider approaches to payment, such as ACOs and bundled payment, the limitation of regulatory authority to hospital rates could be a problem. So what are my bottom lines for legislative priorities? I have two. States should address restrictions on anti-competitive practices such as anti-tiering restrictions, all-or-none contracting restrictions, and most favored nation clauses. My second is to regulate network adequacy wisely. It is a potent tool for fostering competition, even in consolidated markets. Network strategies do have problems that need to be addressed, but it must be done while preserving much of the potency of the approach. A concluding thought involves acknowledging that provider payment reform approaches are likely to contribute to consolidation. Small hospitals and medical practices are not well positioned to participate, although virtual approaches can often be used in place of mergers, for example as California’s independent practice associations have enabled many small practices to participate. But I see payment reform as having major potential over time to reduce costs and increase quality. So my advice is to proceed with payment reform but also take steps to foster competition. Rate setting is best seen as a “stick in the closet” to use if market approaches should fail to control costs. [1] Gaynor, M., and R. Town, The Impact of Hospital Consolidation – Update, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Synthesis Report (June 2012). [2] Baker, L. C., M.K Bundorf and D.P. Kessler, “Vertical Integration: Hospital Ownership Of Physician Practices Is Associated With Higher Prices And Spending,” Health Affairs, Vol. 35, No 5 (May 2014). [3] Chapin White and Megan Egouchi, Reference Pricing: A Small Piece of the Health Care Pricing and Quality Puzzle. National Institute for Health Care Reform, Research Brief No. 18, October 2014. Downloads Download the testimonyDownload the slides Authors Paul Ginsburg Full Article
market The market makers: Local innovation and federal evolution for impact investing By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 15:30:00 -0400 Announcements of new federal regulations on the use of program-related investments (PRIs) and the launch of a groundbreaking fund in Chicago are the latest signals that impact investing, once a marginal philanthropic and policy tool, is moving into the mainstream. They are also illustrative of two important and complementary paths to institutional change: fast-moving, collaborative local leadership creating innovative new instruments to meet funding demands; federal regulators updating policy to pave the way for change at scale. Impact investing, referring to “investment strategies that generate financial returns while intentionally improving social and environmental conditions,” provides an important tier of higher-risk capital to fund socially beneficial projects with revenue-generating potential: affordable housing, early childhood and workforce development programs, and social enterprises. It is estimated that there are over $60 billion of impact investments globally and interest is growing—an annual JP Morgan study of impact investors from 2015 reports that the number of impact investing deals increased 13 percent between 2013 and 2014 following a 20 percent increase in the previous year. Traditionally, foundations have split their impact investments into two pots, one for mission-related investments, designed to generate market-rate returns and maintain and grow the value of the endowment, and the other for program-related investments. PRIs can include loans, guarantees, or equity investments that advance a charitable purpose without expectation of market returns. PRIs are an attractive use of a foundation’s endowment as they allow foundations to recycle their limited grant funds and they count towards a foundation’s charitable distribution requirement of 5 percent of assets. However they have been underutilized to date due to perceived hurdles around their use–in fact among the thousands of foundations in the United States, currently only a few hundred make PRIs. But this is changing, spurred on by both entrepreneurial local action and federal leadership. On April 21, the White House announced that the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service had finalized regulations that are expected to make it easier for private foundations to put their assets to work in innovative ways. While there is still room for improvement, by clarifying rules and signaling mainstream acceptance of impact investing practices these changes should lower the barriers to entry for some institutional investors. This federal leadership is welcome, but is not by itself enough to meet the growing demand for capital investment in the civic sector. Local innovation, spurred by new philanthropic collaborations, can be transformative. On April 25 in Chicago, the Chicago Community Trust, the Calvert Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched Benefit Chicago, a $100 million impact investment fund that aims to catalyze a new market by making it easier for individuals and institutions to put their dollars to work locally and help meet the estimated $100-400 million capital needs of the civic sector over the next five years. A Next Street report found that the potential supply of patient capital from foundations and investors in the Chicago region was more than enough to meet the demand – if there were ways to more easily connect the two. Benefit Chicago addresses this market gap by making it possible for individuals to invest directly through a brokerage or a donor-advised fund and for the many foundations without dedicated impact investing programs to put their endowments to work at scale. All of the transactional details of deal flow, underwriting, and evaluation of results are handled by the intermediary, which should lead to greater efficiency and a significant increase in the size of the impact investing market in Chicago. In the last few years, a new form of impact investing has made measurement of social return to investments even more concrete. Social impact bonds (SIBs), also known as pay for success (PFS) financing, are a way for private investors (including foundations) to provide capital to support social services with the promise of a return on their investment from a government agency if some agreed-upon social outcomes are achieved. These PFS transactions range from funding to support high-quality early childhood education programs in Chicago to reduction in chronic individual homelessness in the state of Massachusetts. Both the IRS and the Chicago announcements are bound to contribute to the growth of the impact bond market which to date represents a small segment of the impact investing market. These examples illustrate a rare and wonderful convergence of leadership at the federal and local levels around an idea that makes sense. Beyond simply broadening the number of ways that foundations can deploy funds, growing the pool of impact investments can have a powerful market-making effect. Impact investments unlock other tiers of capital, reducing risk for private investors and making possible new types of deals with longer time horizons and lower expected market return. In the near future, these federal and local moves together might radically change the philanthropic landscape. If every major city had a fund like Benefit Chicago, and all local investors had a simple on-ramp to impact investing, the pool of capital to help local organizations meet local needs could grow exponentially. This in turn could considerably improve funding for programs—like access to quality social services and affordable housing—that show impact over the long term. Impact investing can be a bright spot in an otherwise somber fiscal environment if localities keep innovating and higher levels of government evolve to support, incentivize, and smooth its growth. These announcements from Washington and Chicago are examples of the multilevel leadership and creative institutional change we need to ensure that we tap every source of philanthropic capital, to feel some abundance in an era where scarcity is the dominant narrative. Editor's Note: Alaina Harkness is a fellow at Brookings while on leave from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is a donor to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the authors and not determined by any donation. Authors Alaina J. HarknessEmily Gustafsson-Wright Image Source: © Jeff Haynes / Reuters Full Article
market The muni market in the post-Detroit and post-Puerto Rico bankruptcy era By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 12 Jul 2016 14:10:00 -0400 Event Information July 12, 20162:10 PM - 4:00 PM EDTOnline OnlyLive Webcast Puerto Rico is the latest, but probably not the last, case of a local government confronting financial strains that call into question its ability to meet its obligations to bondholders while providing services to its taxpaying constituents. Puerto Rico is, of course, a special case because it is a territory, not a state or municipality. Will Puerto Rico’s problems have ripple effects for the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal bond market? What about the resolution of Detroit's bankruptcy? How will state and local governments and the courts weigh the interests of pensioners, employees, taxpayers and bondholders when there isn't enough money to go around? On Tuesday, July 12, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings webcasted the keynote address from the 5th annual Municipal Finance Conference, delivered by the sitting governor of Puerto Rico, Hon. Alejandro García Padilla. After Governor Padilla’s remarks on Puerto Rico’s future, Hutchins Center Director David Wessel moderated a panel on the politics and practice of municipal finance in the post-Detroit and post-Puerto Rico era. Join the conversation and tweet questions for the panelists at #MuniFinance. Video Keynote address by Alejandro García PadillaPanel: The muni market in the post-Detroit and post-Puerto Rico eraChanging patterns in household ownership of municipal debtMunicipal borrowing costs and state policies for distressed municipalitiesMunicipal finance structure and Chapter 9 creditor prioritiesTerm limits and municipal borrowing costsWhy has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?State strategies for detecting fiscal distress in local governmentsPensions and other post-employment benefits Transcript Download the uncorrected transcript (.pdf) Event Materials Garcia Padilla Slides20160712_munifinance_puertorico_detroit_transcript Full Article
market How did COVID-19 disrupt the market for U.S. Treasury debt? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 01 May 2020 12:41:44 +0000 The COVID-19 pandemic—in addition to posing a severe threat to public health—has disrupted the economy and financial markets, and prompted a strong desire among investors for safe and liquid securities. In that environment, one might expect U.S. Treasury securities to be the investment of choice, but for a while in March, the $18 trillion market… Full Article
market Prices in Emissions Permit Markets By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:18:00 -0500 ABSTRACT Of the many regulatory responses to climate change, cap-and-trade is the only one currently endorsed by large segments of the scientific, economic and political establishments. Under this type of system, regulators set the overall path of carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions, allocate or auction the appropriate number of emissions allowances to regulated entities and – through trading – allow the market to converge upon the least expensive set of abatement opportunities. As a result, the trading price of allowances is not set by the regulator as it would be under a tax system, but instead evolves over time to reflect the underlying supply and demand for allowances. In this paper, I develop a simple theory that relates the initial clearing price of CO2 allowances to the marginal cost premium of carbon-free technology, the maximum rate of energy capital replacement and the market interest rate. This theory suggests that the initial clearing price may be lower than the canonical range of CO2 prices found in static technology assessments. Consequently, these results have broad implications for the design of a comprehensive regulatory solution to the climate problem, providing, for example, some intuition about the proper value of a possible CO2 price trigger in a future cap-and-trade system. Downloads Download Authors Bryan K. Mignone Full Article
market Fostering competition in consolidated markets By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 On March 16, Paul B. Ginsburg testified before the California Senate Committee on Health on fostering competition in consolidated markets. Full Article
market Identifying Areas With Inadequate Access to Supermarkets By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:02:00 -0400 When my wife and I relocated from D.C.’s Logan Circle to Capitol Hill five years ago, the most tumultuous change in our lifestyle (aside from my not being able to walk to Brookings every day) concerned the much farther distance we’d have to travel to the nearest supermarket. We had the luxury of shopping at a very nice, if spendy, grocery store about two blocks from our home, which meant that we often did “just-in-time” dinner shopping on the way home from work. Now we were moving to a house where the distance to the nearest supermarket was 1.5 miles, not so walkable at 7 pm.Did we live in a “supermarket desert?” On the one hand, Capitol Hill is a pretty densely populated part of D.C., so 1.5 miles felt like a long way. And while the Hill is an economically diverse area, it’s large with significant pockets of affluence. On the other hand, like a lot of our neighbors, we own a car. So while nightly trips to the supermarket were out, it was hardly an onerous trip on the weekends. There are, however, many communities nationwide in which that trip to the supermarket is a long one, and most have much lower incomes than the Hill. That’s the conclusion from new research we conducted with help from The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a community development financial institution and research organization based in Philadelphia. TRF played a lead role in designing and implementing the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a program that provides grants and low-cost capital to facilitate the location of new supermarkets and fresh food retailers in that state’s underserved communities. That initiative is now the model for several other state and local programs, as well as the inspiration for a major new federal budget initiative that seeks to improve community health and economic development outcomes through supermarket attraction and expansion. With TRF, we looked at 10 metro areas across the country, ranging in size from Jackson, Miss. to Los Angeles. Unlike a lot of previous research that attempted to identify “food deserts,” TRF’s analysis looks at factors beyond distance to a supermarket that matter for access, including a community’s population density and level of car ownership. And it uses household income and expenditure data to help pinpoint the communities that have a significant untapped local demand for supermarkets. Across the 10 metro areas, about 1.7 million people (5 percent of total population) live in low- and moderate-income communities that are significantly underserved by supermarkets. African Americans, children, and very low-income families are over-represented in these areas. Greater Los Angeles alone accounts for half a million of the underserved; and in the Cleveland metro, more than one in nine residents lives in a low-supermarket-access community. Estimates suggest that upwards of $2.6 billion annually in grocery expenditures may “leak” out of these communities due to a lack of nearby supermarkets. The real upside of this research project is that all of the results are viewable online, through TRF’s PolicyMap service. So local economic development officials, neighborhood-based organizations, retailers, and others can examine the location and characteristics of low-supermarket-access areas in their own communities. On Capitol Hill, the analysis suggests that we’re pretty well served. Lots of car owners, and it’s really not that far to the store. Cross the Anacostia River, however, and it’s another story altogether. Pinpointing and describing the untapped opportunities for supermarket development is hopefully a first step toward reducing market obstacles to higher-quality, lower-cost food options for residents of communities like Ward 7 and Ward 8 nationwide. Authors Alan Berube Publication: The Avenue, The New Republic Image Source: © Sarah Conard / Reuters Full Article
market Supermarket Access in Low-Income Areas By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400 The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) performed a detailed analysis of supermarket access in 10 metropolitan areas, and the results are discussed in a new video, “Getting to Market." Results from the analysis encourage users to view the locations of, and generate reports about, low-supermarket-access communities within the 10 metropolitan areas. This is highly useful data for those working at the national and local levels to tackle the problem of inadequate access through public policy and private investment. You can also access these data alongside any of PolicyMap’s 10,000 data indicators and full functionality at www.policymap.com For those interested in other metropolitan areas, TRF has made available a nationwide analysis of low-supermarket-access communities at www.trfund.com. Media Memo » Profiles of 10 Metropolitan Areas (PDFs) Atlanta, GA Little Rock, AR Baltimore, MD Los Angeles, CA Cleveland, OH Louisville, KY Jackson, MS Phoenix, AZ Las Vegas, NV San Francisco, CA Below are samples of data found on our interactive map Map of the San Francisco area showing Low Access Areas with the access score for the area. Access scores are the degree to which a low/moderate-income community's residents are underserved by supermarkets. Map of Baltimore showing Low Access Areas against the estimated percentage of families that live in poverty. Map of Cleveland showing Low Access Areas against the estimated population above the age of 65. Video Supermarket Access in Metro Areas Full Article
market The welfare effects of peer entry in the accommodation market: The case of Airbnb By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 15 Oct 2019 13:02:33 +0000 The Internet has greatly reduced entry and advertising costs across a variety of industries. Peer-to-peer marketplaces such as Airbnb, Uber, and Etsy currently provide a platform for small and part-time peer providers to sell their goods and services. In this paper, Chiara Farronato of Harvard Business School and Andrey Fradkin of Boston University study the… Full Article
market Trends and Developments in African Frontier Bond Markets By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 15:19:00 -0500 Most sub-Saharan African countries have long had to rely on foreign assistance or loans from international financial institutions to supply part of their foreign currency needs and finance part of their domestic investment, given their low levels of domestic saving. But now many of them, for the first time, are able to borrow in international financial markets, selling so-called eurobonds, which are usually denominated in dollars or euros. The sudden surge in the demand for international sovereign bonds issued by countries in a region that contains some of the world’s poorest countries is due to a variety of factors—including rapid growth and better economic policies in the region, high commodity prices, and low global interest rates. Increased global liquidity as well as investors’ diversification needs, at a time when the correlation between many global assets has increased, has also helped increase the attractiveness of the so-called “frontier” markets, including those in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the issuance of international sovereign bonds is part of a number of African countries’ strategies to restructure their debt, finance infrastructure investments, and establish sovereign benchmarks to help develop the sub-sovereign and corporate bond market. The development of the domestic sovereign bond market in many countries has also help strengthen the technical capacity of finance ministries and debt management offices to issue international debt. Whether the rash of borrowing by sub-Saharan governments (as well as a handful of corporate entities in the region) is sustainable over the medium to long term, however, is open to question. The low interest rate environment is set to change at some point—both raising borrowing costs for the countries and reducing investor interest. In addition, oil prices are falling, which makes it harder for oil-producing countries to service or refinance their loans. In the medium term, heady economic growth may not continue if debt proceeds are only mostly used for current spending, and debt is not adequately managed. Download the full paper (PDF) » Authors Amadou Sy Full Article
market Unpredictable and uninsured: The challenging labor market experiences of nontraditional workers By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 14:30:21 +0000 As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. labor market has deteriorated from a position of relative strength into an extraordinarily weak condition in just a matter of weeks. Yet even in times of relative strength, millions of Americans struggle in the labor market, and although it is still early in the current downturn,… Full Article
market Antibiotic Development and Market Failure: No Quick Fix By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:57:00 -0400 The news Monday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the incidence of resistant infections is disturbing but not surprising. CDC estimates that over two million Americans every year are affected by drug-resistant infections and of those, 23,000 die annually. The report notes that these figures are conservative and are likely an underestimate of the burden of resistant infections. While these numbers reflect domestic rates, antibiotic resistance is a global issue as well. To further compound the issue, today’s antibiotic pipeline is nearly dry and has been for some time, with only a handful of large pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotech firms still engaged in antibiotic development. The threat of a so-called ‘post-antibiotic era’ – a time when there are no longer any effective antibiotic treatments – could become a reality without a concerted and comprehensive effort to combat this global threat. The evolution of drug resistance is an inherent risk of antibiotic use. The CDC report cited the development of new antibiotics and diagnostic tools, as well as programs and policies to support appropriate use of antibiotics, as being among the core strategies to combat resistance. Clinical effectiveness and the relatively low cost of antibiotics have had the unintended consequence of contributing to overuse, accelerating the development of antibiotic resistance to all major classes of antibiotics. While there are some diagnostic tools available to support targeted treatment, it is often more time- and cost-effective for a physician to prescribe a relatively inexpensive, broad-spectrum antibiotic than to conduct a diagnostic test (if one exists at all). Antibiotic overuse can also be driven by patients who see antibiotics as safe and often low-cost cure-alls. Recognizing that these past patterns of overuse are dangerous, the clinical community is working diligently to curb inappropriate use and promote public health through stewardship and education programs. However, given the weakness of the current antibiotic development environment, it may be too little-too late; rates of resistance continue to rise globally while the number of effective therapies to treat many pathogens is dwindling. According to the CDC, resistance can be ”slowed but not stopped” – there will always be a need for novel antibiotics that can combat the evolution of these pathogens. The current system for manufacturer return on investment for antibiotics, which are typically reimbursed at very low levels, is oriented towards volume sales. As a result, stewardship and educational programs geared toward limiting use of novel antibiotics create an ‘antibiotic development paradox.’ How can we incentivize investment in developing new effective antibiotics and also have successful programs that limit the use of these antibiotics in an effort to prevent or delay the development of resistance? Unless this fundamental conflict in the current business model is addressed, pharmaceutical firms are unlikely to expand development efforts. How do we turn the tide? There are several proposals that address aspects of the antibiotic development paradox with the goal of reinvigorating the antibiotic drug development ecosystem in a way that maximizes our ability to stay ahead of resistance. While none of these proposals alone will solve this problem, each could support the long-term goal of reinvigorating antibiotic discovery, development, and treatment. Creating incentives for drug development Antibiotic drug development has been a losing prospect for drug developers and has driven many of them to exit the antibiotic innovation space in the last few decades in favor of other therapeutic areas that have much larger markets and are easier areas to study. In order to make antibiotic development more attractive, various mechanisms have been proposed to stimulate or better reward successful clinical development. Incentives that can lower the financial risks associated with development include grants, tax credits, public-private partnerships, and intellectual property protections. Post-approval, prizes, advanced market commitments, and value-based pricing could all potentially provide additional incentives to invest in this research. Some potential incentives were discussed at the Incentives for Change: Addressing the Challenges in Antibacterial Drug Development workshop convened by Brookings in February 2013. Balancing benefit and risk for severely-ill patients Other incentives are related to the drug approval process. Novel mechanisms for expedited development and approval can speed time to market while still meeting traditional evidentiary requirements for safety and efficacy. In the last several years, a number of proposals – including from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology – have sought to reduce development time and cost and increase regulatory clarity through a more targeted clinical trial process directed at the highest-risk patients. A narrower study population would allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make a more targeted assessment of the product’s safety, efficacy, and benefit-risk profile that could accelerate innovation for patients with serious drug-resistant infections. The need to steward these antibiotics, which was noted as a core action in the CDC report, would be especially important to both prevent the growth of resistance and to reduce the risk of adverse effects in less seriously-ill populations. Additional information on the proposed limited-use pathway and appropriate use is available on the Brookings website. De-link reimbursement from return on investment In order to attract investment for new antibiotic research, we must develop a business model that can support ongoing and expanding development without compromising the effectiveness of new therapies. Recognizing the need to “de-link” return on investment from the volume of antibiotics sold, efforts to move away from the volume-based reimbursement system could become an attractive path forward. Promising models, which were discussed at the Brookings workshop in February, included several guaranteed payment schemes supported by public funding. Taken to an extreme, such a system could even allow new antibiotics to be reserved indefinitely until needed, removing the developer’s incentive to sell any drugs in the years following approval. While such a program would likely be expensive (with sufficient returns estimated on the order of $1.75-2.5 billion over five years), government intervention is needed to fix this public health crisis and dangerous market failure. Its societal value in curtailing resistance and providing critical drugs would outweigh the cost to taxpayers. The antibiotic development paradox will require a multi-pronged strategy that includes incentives to support front-end drug discovery and development, and new reimbursement policies that de-link unit volume sales from return on investment. However, this is by no means a quick fix. Even if this approach is successful, it will take decades for manufacturers to rebuild lost antibiotic development infrastructure and expertise, and to successfully develop and market new treatments. For the few drugs currently in development, even with expedited development and review pathways, they are still years from reaching the market. Authors Gregory W. DanielHeather ColvinSophie Mayer Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters Full Article
market African Lions: A ‘new elite’ in the South African labor market? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 09:29:00 -0400 While the South African labor market faces many large challenges, some more subtle trends might also be developing that undermine the country’s growth. Yes, the current level of unemployment stands at 24 percent. True, school dropout rates remain high: Only 50 percent of students will make it to the last year of high school, which means that the number of skilled workers in the country remains low. In addition, income inequality in South Africa is an overwhelming obstacle—with the country having one of the highest Gini coefficients (a statistical tool commonly used to measure inequality) in the world—and has been slowing its fight against poverty. In their recent paper, Demographic, employment, and wage trends in South Africa, Haroon Bhorat, Karmen Naidoo, Morné Oosthuizen, and Kavisha Pillay examine important, perhaps precarious, trends in South African employment, such as the combination of South Africa’s weak educational system and labor demand biased toward skilled workers and the significant rise in temporary employment over full-time positions. However, the authors argue that perhaps the most interesting is the spike in public sector employment and the subsequent development of a new segment of the labor market, what they call a “new elite”: the unionized public sector employee. The shift to services and the public sector Like so many of sub-Saharan African countries, South Africa’s labor makeup (as well as contributions to GDP) has swiftly been shifting towards the services sector, especially since 2001. Table 1 clearly shows the dramatic shift in labor towards community, social, and personal (CSP) services and financial services: These two areas accounted for 73 percent of the shift in employment between 2001 and 2012 (Column 3). Employment Shares Share of Change (ΔEi/ΔE) (a) 2001 2012 (2001-2012) Primary 0.15 0.07 -0.28 Agriculture 0.1 0.04 -0.2 Mining 0.05 0.02 -0.08 Secondary 0.2 0.21 0.21 Manufacturing 0.14 0.12 0.04 Utilities 0.008 0.008 0.004 Construction 0.05 0.07 0.16 Tertiary 0.63 0.71 1.08 Trade 0.21 0.21 0.2 Transport 0.04 0.6 0.11 Financial 0.09 0.13 0.31 CSPS 0.17 0.22 0.42 Private households 0.09 0.08 0.04 Total 1 1 1 Note: 1. CSPS stands for community, social, and personal services, which is predominantly made up of public sector employment.) 2.(a) The ratio of the percentage change in the share of employment to the overall change in employment over the period (share of change in employment). This measure shows, within each broad sector, where the sources of employment growth are. For example, employment in the tertiary sector is 1.08 times (or 108 percent of) the level of employment in 2001, which is the sum of the changes for all the industries within this sub-sector. CSPS then is the greatest contributor to employment growth in the tertiary sector. Source: Bhorat et al. (2014) using PALMS dataset (2012). Importantly, the authors emphasize, the CSP sector, which accounted for 42 percent of this shift, is mostly made up of public sector jobs—hinting that expansion of the public sector has contributed to this trend. The share of public sector employment rose to 17.5 percent by the end of 2014 from 14.2 percent in 2004. In addition, they note that the largest expansion of the public sector came in 2009, just after the global financial crisis, showing that the public sector was more capable of absorbing” excess unskilled and medium-skilled labor at times of economic and labor market distress.” Another important trend the authors point to within the shift to the public sector between 2008 and 2014 is that a great number of jobs in which employment grew quickly involve unskilled workers (such as sweepers, farmhands and laborers, helpers and cleaners, construction and maintenance laborers, and garbage collectors) and medium-skilled workers (such as police and traffic officers, institution and home-based care workers, prison guards, cooks, and childcare workers) (Figure 1). For a deeper analysis of South African labor market’s skill needs, see the full paper. Figure 1: Share of change in public sector jobs by detailed occupation (2008 Q1-2014 Q4) Notes: These occupations are the largest 42 public sector occupations, making up 80 percent of total employment in the public sector in 2014, and 97 percent of the change in the number of public sector jobs over the 2008-14 period. Source: StatsSA QLFS 2008Q1; StatsSA QLFS 2014Q4; own calculations. From these trends, the authors infer that the South African government’s Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP)—which “creates jobs through government-funded infrastructure projects, through its non-profit organization and community work program, as well as through its public environment and culture programs”—has played a major part in the expansion of the public sector. Interestingly, though, the authors also find that overall the public sector has a bigger proportion of high-skilled employees than the private sector), though, between 2008 and 2013 the public sector barely saw a change in its proportion of high-skilled workers. Rather, it experienced its largest growth in the medium- and low-skilled jobs, as noted in Figure 1. They note that this phenomenon suggests that “the state [is] able to absorb excess unskilled and medium-skilled labor at times of economic and labor market distress.” The private sector’s proportion of high-skilled workers, on the other hand, grew by 25 percent. There is then, they say, a “mismatch” between the supply and demand of South Africa’s labor market when it comes to high-skilled workers. After exploring this trend, the authors also delve into the demographic differences between public and private sector workers. For example, they find that the average public sector worker is older (41 versus 38) and likely to have a higher educational level on average. There are more women in the public sector—52 percent compared to 44 percent. There are also more Africans—77 percent in the public sector (up from 72 percent in 2008) and 66 percent in the private sector (unchanged). The authors argue that these two statistics demonstrate that public sector has “transformed” its labor force at a faster pace since both are groups that historically have been marginalized in the South African labor market. The impact of unions in the South African labor market The public sector in South Africa also has a higher unionization rate: 69.2 percent compared to the private sector’s 24.4 percent rate in 2013). As public sector employment has grown, the authors say, so has its proportion of workers in unions. Unions in South Africa are influential, as the authors note, “Powerful labor unions are often associated with creating a wage premium for their members, given their ability to mobilize industrial action and negotiate in favor of their members during times of wage negotiations.” Indeed, this seems to be the case. Past studies have found that bargaining power—as part of a bargaining council or a union—presents a wage premium. The authors have similar results: The average public sector worker makes 11,668 rand ($1,209) per month compared to an average private sector employee (7,822 rand per month). Most importantly, though, when the authors disaggregate based on participation in a union, they actually find that, among non-unionized workers, the private sector employee actually receives a higher wage than the public sector worker, by about 952 rand per month. This finding, they say, suggests that the public sector premium might be tied to public sector union membership. The authors admit a caveat: Public sector union workers tend to be white, older, and better educated than their non-unionized public sector counterparts. In fact, non-union public sector workers are 80 percent African and 10 percent colored[1] (two groups more likely to be under the EPWP). In addition, non-union occupations are usually less skilled (elementary occupations, service and sales occupations, and technical and associate professional occupations). However, they emphasize, “Ultimately though, the wage distributions above suggest that, at least in terms of earnings, a dual labor market may indeed be prevalent in the South African labor market.” (For the authors’ full quantitative analysis, including an examination of how this trend interacts with state-owned enterprises and temporary workers, see the full paper.) Thus, they argue, a “new labor elite” is forming. 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. [1] In this paper, “African” is used to refer to people classified by the apartheid state as “native,” “Bantu,” or “black.” “Colored” refers mainly to people in the Western Cape province, and is an ethnic label for people of mixed ethnic origin who possess ancestry from Europe, Asia, and various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa. Authors Christina Golubski Full Article
market Help wanted: Better pathways into the labor market By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:57:00 -0400 Employment is down among everyone between the ages of 16 and 64—particularly among teens, but with a great deal of variation by geography, race, and education. The disparity between blacks and whites is especially stark. For example, unemployment among white young adults peaked at 14% in 2010—still considerably lower than unemployment rates for black young adults at any point in the 2008 to 2014 time period. Unemployment for black 20- to 24-year-olds rose to 29.5% in 2010 and fell to 22.3% in 2014, compared to 10.3% among whites in 2014. While there is no silver bullet, higher levels of education and work experience clearly improve job prospects down the line for young people. There are multiple strategies local and regional leaders can use to build more structured pathways into employment. Teens and young adults (referring to 16- to 19-year-olds and 20- to 24-year-olds, respectively) are not monolithic populations. Age is an obvious differentiator, but so are a number of other factors, such as educational attainment, skill level, interests, parental support, and other life circumstances. Schools, families, and neighborhoods all play a role in a young person’s trajectory—both positive and negative. But at the most basic level, a program for a 17-year-old high school student is likely not appropriate for a 23-year-old, regardless of educational attainment. Successful programs integrate education, training, work-readiness, and youth development principles, but the particular blend of these elements and settings vary: more school-based and educationally focused programs for younger youth, and more community-based and career-focused programs with strong ties to education for older youth. An admittedly non-comprehensive review includes the following types of promising and proven programs: For high school students: Paid internship programs, such as Urban Alliance and Genesys Works High school programs that bridge school and work with occupationally-focused courses and career exposure, such as Career Academies, Linked Learning, High Tech High, Advanced Career, Alamo Academies, and P-Tech, some of which also incorporate post-secondary courses and credentials into their programs Youth apprenticeships, such as state programs in Georgia and Wisconsin For out-of-school youth and young adults: Highly structured programs offering work readiness and technical skills development, often in partnership with community colleges, and coupled with paid internships, such as Year Up, i.c.stars, npower, and Per Scholas Programs that offer stipends and combine academics, job training, mentoring, and supportive services while carrying out community improvement projects, such as YouthBuild and Youth Corps The sobering fact is that promoting employment and economic security among young people is not a straightforward proposition. To succeed in today’s economy and earn middle-class wages, a young person needs to complete several steps: graduate from high school or earn an alternate credential; enroll in and complete some post-secondary education or job training; preferably gain meaningful work experience; and enter the labor market with in-demand skills. (A decent economy and some luck help, too.) There are many points along that path from which a young person can get off-track, particularly young people of color and those from high-poverty neighborhoods. And while high youth unemployment is increasingly in the news these days, the difficulties youth without college degrees face in finding good jobs has been a problem for decades. Programs such as the ones listed above are part of the solution. But they are not enough, given the magnitude of the problem. In order to produce better employment outcomes at scale, leaders from all sectors and levels of government need to make broader shifts in how education and workforce programs are designed, and how they interact with each other and employers. That is a heavy lift, but it is worth it to address the high costs imposed by the status quo: high unemployment, poverty, and untapped potential. Authors Martha Ross Image Source: © Brian Snyder / Reuters Full Article
market Financial inclusion in Latin America: Regulatory trends and market opportunities By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 10:00:00 -0400 Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series on the 2015 Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) Report and Scorecard, which were launched at a Brookings public event in August. Previous posts have highlighted regional findings from Southeast and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as selected financial inclusion milestones from FDIP countries. This post focuses on key financial inclusion achievements and challenges regarding the five Latin American FDIP countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Financial inclusion growth and opportunities in Latin America With its well-developed banking infrastructure and growing mobile ecosystem, Latin America presents a unique set of opportunities and obstacles with respect to promoting greater financial inclusion. From 2011 to 2014, there was a 12 percentage point increase in the number of adults in Latin America and the Caribbean with formal financial accounts, according to the World Bank’s Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database. As noted in the 2015 GSMA report “Mobile financial services in Latin America & the Caribbean,” in 2014 Latin America and the Caribbean saw the fastest growth of any region in terms of new registered mobile money accounts. Moreover, these accounts are often used for more advanced transactions that go beyond simple transfers: As stated in a 2015 post published by the GSMA, “ecosystem transactions (transactions that involve third parties, e.g. bill payment, merchant payment or bulk payment) already make up 27% of transaction volumes in Latin America & the Caribbean.” In contrast, only 6 percent of transaction volumes over the same period were considered ecosystem transactions in East Africa, where mobile money has been most widely adopted and used. Moving forward, facilitating greater adoption of a suite of digital financial services (e.g., savings) will be a vital component of promoting sustainable financial inclusion in the region. Recent regulatory changes in several Latin American countries designed to promote a greater diversity of service providers should propel financial inclusion growth, although a need for regulatory clarity persists in some places. Financial inclusion strengths and challenges germane to our five Latin American FDIP countries are explored below. Brazil: Branchless banking leadership combined with dynamic mobile market Brazil achieved the highest ranking of any Latin American country on the Brookings 2015 FDIP Scorecard, ranking 3rd overall with a score of 78 percent. Brazil’s economy is the largest in Latin America, with a GDP (in current US dollars) of about $2.3 trillion as of 2014; for comparison, Mexico, the Latin American country with the second largest economy, had a GDP of about $1.3 trillion within that same period. Brazil received strong country commitment and mobile capacity scores (89 and 83 percent, respectively) in the 2015 FDIP Scorecard and earned the highest regulatory environment score among the Latin American FDIP countries, which also included Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. As noted in the 2015 FDIP Report, Brazil launched a National Partnership for Financial Inclusion in November 2011, which has supported the development of a number of enabling financial inclusion initiatives. In 2013, Law 12865 and associated regulations permitted non-banks to issue e-money as payments institutions. Brazil boasted the largest mobile market in Latin America as of 2014, with a unique subscribership rate of about 57 percent in 2015 (a lower unique subscribership rate than Chile’s by about 7 percentage points, but otherwise higher than that of any of the other Latin American FDIP countries). Brazil received 4th place on the 2015 FDIP Scorecard for adoption of selected traditional and digital financial services. As with many other countries in Latin America, branchless banking (i.e., access to formal financial services beyond a traditional brick-and-mortar bank) through “agents” is popular in Brazil — as of 2014, Brazilian banks’ agent networks had a presence in all of the country’s approximately 6,000 municipalities, contributing to formal account growth. Chile was the only Latin American country that received a higher ranking for the adoption dimension, placing 2nd. In terms of account usage, government-to-person payments comprise a significant source of activity for formal accounts: The 2014 Global Findex report noted that among recipients of government payments in Brazil, 88 percent received their transfers directly into an account. Yet according to the Global Findex, about 32 percent of Brazilian adults age 15 and older still do not have accounts with a formal financial institution or mobile money provider. As with the other Latin American countries in the FDIP sample, mobile money adoption in Brazil has remained low: Brazil received the lowest score (one out of three possible points) for all six mobile money indicators included in the 2015 FDIP Scorecard. However, given that as of 2014 Brazil had the fifth-largest global smartphone market in the world in terms of subscribers, a combination of growing smartphone penetration and an increasingly enabling regulatory environment should drive greater adoption of digital financial services in the future. Chile: Opportunities for enhanced e-money regulatory clarity Chile tied with Colombia and Turkey for 6th place on the overall 2015 FDIP Scorecard. Chile’s financial inclusion environment is characterized by a firm national commitment to financial inclusion (earning a country commitment score of 89 percent) but a less developed mobile money environment than the other Latin American FDIP countries. While Chile’s unique mobile subscribership rate and 3G network coverage rate by population are higher than and on par with other countries in the region, respectively, Chile’s mobile money offerings are limited. The lack of a robust mobile money market contributed to Chile’s mobile capacity score of 72 percent, the lowest score among the FDIP Latin American countries. Chile’s regulatory environment score (67 percent) was also the lowest of the Latin American FDIP countries, primarily due to a lack of regulatory clarity surrounding digital financial services. Developing or clarifying regulations pertaining to electronic money in particular could potentially drive more engagement with the sector and advance the diversity of mobile money providers and offerings. Further, supporting the interoperability of digital and traditional financial services could enhance the utility of these products for customers. Given that 37 percent of adults in Chile did not have an account with a formal financial provider as of 2014, there is also room for growth in terms of expanding financial inclusion. However, it should be noted that Chile earned the highest adoption ranking of any Latin American country featured in the 2015 FDIP Scorecard. While Chile’s adoption levels with respect to mobile money services were limited, adoption rates of other formal financial services were among the highest of the FDIP countries. Chile received three out of three possible points for all but one indicator (savings at a formal financial institution) related to traditional financial services. Chile’s performance on the adoption dimension of the scorecard contributed to its 6th place ranking overall. While Chile’s mobile money adoption rates are low, use of other digital financial services is increasingly popular. For example, as noted in the “2015 Maya Declaration Progress Report,” since 2012 the number of CuentaRUT accounts (accounts that feature debit cards associated with a savings account provided by Chile’s BancoEstado) has increased by about 47 percent. As of 2014, there were over 7 million active CuentaRUT cards in Chile. Colombia: Regulatory advancements coupled with sustained country commitment As noted above, Colombia tied with Chile for 6th place on the overall 2015 FDIP Scorecard. Colombia has demonstrated strong commitment to financial inclusion, including through involvement in multinational organizations such as the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI). An example of Colombia’s national-level financial inclusion commitment is the 2006 establishment of Banca de las Oportunidades, an entity charged with fostering regulatory reforms conducive to financial inclusion. Another key player in the financial inclusion space is the Intersectoral Economic and Financial Education Committee, created in February 2014 under Decree 457. In terms of the country’s regulatory environment, Law 1735 of 2014 permitted new institutions, called Sociedades Especializadas en Depósitos y Pagos Electrónicos, to offer mobile financial services. As part of the law, proportionate “know-your-customer” (KYC) requirements were also instituted for under-resourced customers in order to facilitate greater access to financial services among low-risk populations. In July 2015, Decree 1491 implemented Colombia’s financial inclusion law and highlighted the regulatory regime for the mobile money market. Colombia’s regulatory environment earned a score of 89 percent, ranking it 2nd among the Latin American FDIP countries in this dimension. On the supply side, banking correspondents (also known as agents) have been utilized to extend financial access to underserved populations. As of 2015, all of Colombia’s 1,102 municipalities had at least one financial access point, defined as bank branches, banking correspondents, and ATMs. Another innovative approach to branchless banking in Colombia is bank Davivienda’s initiative to use DaviPlata mobile wallet accounts to distribute government transfers to more than 900,000 recipients of welfare program “Familias en Accion.” With respect to demand side figures, Colombia tied with Mexico for 7th place on the adoption dimension. As of 2014, about 38 percent of adults in Colombia had an account with a formal financial institution, and about 2 percent of adults were mobile money account holders. In terms of advancing future mobile money use, Colombia received the highest score of the Latin American countries on the mobile capacity dimension; thus, Colombia is well-positioned to advance access to and use of mobile money services in the future. Promoting usage of appropriate, quality financial services is critical, as dormancy rates have been identified as an obstacle to financial inclusion; about half of accounts in Colombia (including savings accounts, simplified accounts, and electronic deposits) were identified as dormant in 2014. Mexico: Recent reforms may enhance competition and drive digital takeup Mexico ranked 9th on the overall 2015 FDIP Scorecard, with adoption of traditional and digital financial services as its highest-ranked dimension. Among the Latin American FDIP countries, Mexico features the greatest parity in terms of formal financial account ownership rates among men and women, at about 39 percent each. In terms of national-level commitment to financial inclusion, Mexico tied with Peru for the highest ranking among the Latin American countries. AFI’s Maya Declaration was signed at the 2011 Global Policy Forum held in Riviera Maya, Mexico, signaling Mexico’s public commitment to financial inclusion. With respect to mobile capacity, as of the first quarter of 2015 Mexico’s unique subscribership rates were the lowest of the Latin American countries. Mexico tied with Chile and Brazil for 3G network coverage by population. In terms of mobile money, Mexico’s market is still developing; several providers were available as of May 2015, but the extent of offerings was somewhat limited. As noted in the GSMA’s “Mobile Economy: Latin America 2014” report, new telecommunications reforms recently passed in Mexico are expected to affect the mobile market and potentially increase competition among the telecommunications sector. This increased competition could in turn drive the development of a greater array of innovative, affordable mobile money products. Regarding Mexico’s regulatory environment, the country has been lauded for its risk-based KYC requirements that enable underserved individuals to access low-value accounts without fulfilling the full array of traditional identification processes, which can sometimes be burdensome for under-resourced groups. Under Mexico’s four-tiered KYC system (introduced in 2011), “level one” (very low-risk) accounts feature monthly deposit limits and a maximum balance limit of about 400 dollars; accounts can be opened at a bank branch, banking agent, over the internet, or by telephone. Higher-tier accounts have more stringent KYC requirements. A 2015 AFI article noted that Mexico's banking and securities regulator, the Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores, indicated about 7.5 million new accounts were opened between August 2011 and September 2012, including over 4 million “level one” accounts. Mexico tied with Colombia for 7th place on the adoption dimension of the 2015 FDIP Scorecard. About 39 percent of adults in Mexico held accounts with a formal financial institution as of 2014, while about 3 percent of adults held mobile money accounts. As with other countries in Latin America, debit card and credit card use were much higher than mobile money use as of 2014, although usage of both kinds of cards was lower in Mexico than in several other Latin American FDIP countries such as Brazil and Chile. Initiatives such as the Saldazo debit card, which enables customers to use a debit card associated with a savings account and does not require a minimum balance, have helped drive adoption of digital financial services in Mexico. Peru: Enabling regulatory environment, but constrained adoption of financial services Peru presents perhaps one of the most interesting paradoxes among the FDIP countries. While Peru’s regulatory environment has been consistently recognized as among the best in the world for enabling financial inclusion, adoption of formal financial services remains quite low. Peru received 17th place overall on the 2015 FDIP Scorecard, which can primarily be attributed to its low adoption score: Peru received a 15th place ranking on the adoption dimension, the lowest score among the Latin American FDIP countries. However, we anticipate that recent regulatory changes in Peru, coupled with increasing smartphone penetration rates (Peru’s 2014 adoption rates were about 12 percentage points below the Latin American average), will facilitate adoption of digital financial services and drive greater financial inclusion in the future. With respect to the supply side aspect of financial inclusion, as of 2014 about 92 percent of Peru’s population lived in a district with access to financial services, according to the Superintendencia de Banca, Seguros y AFP (SBS) del Peru. Nonetheless, demand side figures lag behind: The Global Findex found that only about 29 percent of adults had an account with a formal financial provider as of 2014. Peru received a “1” for two-thirds of the non-mobile money indicators on the adoption dimension of the 2015 FDIP Scorecard, and mobile money adoption was negligible. Moreover, as of 2014 there was a 14 percentage point disparity in financial account ownership between men and women, the highest financial inclusion “gender gap” among the Latin American FDIP countries. However, given Peru’s strong national commitment to financial inclusion (reflected in Peru’s country commitment score of 94 percent) and legislative initiatives designed to promote an enabling regulatory environment, we fully anticipate that financial inclusion growth will accelerate in the future. For example, Peru recently finalized its national financial inclusion strategy, as discussed in our earlier post. Moreover, Peru has adopted laws and regulations that permit a greater diversity of players to enter the financial services market. Law 2998 of January 2013 allowed both banks and non-banks to issue e-money, and October 2013 regulations issued by the SBS enabled e-money issuers to follow a simplified account opening process. These initiatives should facilitate greater access to and usage of formal financial accounts in the future. In terms of electronic payments specifically, diversifying the mobile money market and increasing unique subscribership could help facilitate greater adoption of mobile money services. Demand side factors, such as ensuring that services are a good fit for customers, are also critical — as evidenced by the fact that Mexico, which had comparable smartphone adoption rates to Peru and lower unique subscribership rates as of 2014, features significantly higher rates of mobile money adoption across all demographics than Peru. Peru is making a concerted effort to develop innovative electronic platforms — for example, the Peruvian Association of Banks (ASBANC) is working on the creation of an electronic money platform accessible by both financial institutions and telecommunications companies. Implementation of this interoperable platform is expected to promote further adoption of digital financial services. Authors Robin LewisJohn VillasenorDarrell M. West Image Source: © Nacho Doce / Reuters Full Article
market @ Brookings Podcast: The Arctic as an Emerging Market By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400 Climate change and the search for resources have turned the Arctic into an emerging market and an important trade route. Senior Fellow Bruce Jones, director of the Managing Global Order project, says that the top of the world poses possibilities for international tensions among interested nations claiming sovereignty, but at least so far, no serious conflicts have emerged. Video Bruce Jones: Arctic Region’s Importance for Trade, Transit and Energy Is Increasing Authors Bruce Jones Full Article
market Reverse mortgages: Promise, problems, and proposals for a better market By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 16:37:59 +0000 Many households approach retirement age with inadequate financial resources, but substantial equity in their residence along with a preference to remain in their homes. For these households, retirement planning presents the challenge of deciding between staying in their home or having sufficient income. In theory, reverse mortgages offer a solution whereby older homeowners can “age… Full Article
market The unfulfilled promise of reverse mortgages: Can a better market improve retirement security? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:00:03 +0000 Abstract With the gradual disappearance of private-sector pensions and gradually increasing life expectancy, Americans must increasingly take responsibility for managing their own retirement. Many older households end their working years with limited financial resources, but have accumulated substantial equity in their homes—making home equity a potential source of retirement income. Reverse mortgages offer one avenue… Full Article
market Regional leaders need to join together to stay competitive in the global market By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 15:37:41 +0000 In 2014, St. Petersburg, Fla. mayor Rick Kriseman and Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn went on a trade mission to Chile. But, in recognizing that scale matters in such attempts at global competitiveness, the two mayors made their trip not as representatives of two separate cities, but as dual ambassadors of the Tampa Bay region. Prior… Full Article
market Life after coronavirus: Strengthening labor markets through active policy By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 21:16:59 +0000 Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the growing consensus was that the central challenge to achieving inclusive economic prosperity was the creation of good jobs that bring more workers closer to a true “middle-class” lifestyle (Rodrik, 2019). This simple goal will be hard to meet. The lingering effects of the coronavirus crisis will add to the… Full Article
market The labor market experiences of workers in alternative work arrangements By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 14:30:14 +0000 Abstract Nearly 16 million workers (10.1 percent of the workforce) were in nontraditional work arrangements in 2017, including independent contractors, workers at a contract firm, on-call workers, and workers at a temp agency. As a group, nontraditional workers are more likely to be found in certain industries (e.g., business and repair services) and occupations (e.g.,… Full Article
market Unpredictable and uninsured: The challenging labor market experiences of nontraditional workers By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 14:30:21 +0000 As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. labor market has deteriorated from a position of relative strength into an extraordinarily weak condition in just a matter of weeks. Yet even in times of relative strength, millions of Americans struggle in the labor market, and although it is still early in the current downturn,… Full Article
market How tight is the US labor market? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 19 Mar 2020 01:01:22 +0000 The number of jobs employers are trying to fill is higher relative to the number of unemployed people than at any time in the last quarter century, yet both wages and prices have been surprisingly stable. One reason for that surprising disconnect might be that this standard metric overstates the tightness of the labor market,… Full Article
market (De)stabilizing the ACA’s individual market: A view from the states By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 19:54:25 +0000 The Affordable Care Act (ACA), through the individual health insurance markets, provided coverage for millions of Americans who could not get health insurance coverage through their employer or public programs. However, recent actions taken by the federal government, including Congress’s repeal of the individual mandate penalty, have led to uncertainty about market conditions for 2019.… Full Article
market The labor market experiences of workers in alternative work arrangements By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 14:30:14 +0000 Abstract Nearly 16 million workers (10.1 percent of the workforce) were in nontraditional work arrangements in 2017, including independent contractors, workers at a contract firm, on-call workers, and workers at a temp agency. As a group, nontraditional workers are more likely to be found in certain industries (e.g., business and repair services) and occupations (e.g.,… Full Article
market Unpredictable and uninsured: The challenging labor market experiences of nontraditional workers By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 14:30:21 +0000 As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. labor market has deteriorated from a position of relative strength into an extraordinarily weak condition in just a matter of weeks. Yet even in times of relative strength, millions of Americans struggle in the labor market, and although it is still early in the current downturn,… Full Article
market There’s no recession, but a market correction could cause one By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 09 May 2017 17:12:41 +0000 Before last Friday’s employment release, some pessimistic observers feared a recession was near. The latest GDP release from the BEA showed real output growth slowed to a crawl in the first quarter, rising at an annual rate of only 0.7 percent. And that followed the report on March employment that had shown an abrupt slowdown… Full Article
market The new oil market: Chaos or order? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 07 Aug 2017 20:43:46 +0000 The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell recently projected oil prices will remain “lower forever.” This comes after a decade of the most chaotic gyrations of oil markets since the 1970s. But unlike that earlier period, when production cuts by the new OPEC cartel led to a quadrupling of world oil prices, this one has included… Full Article
market Making sense of China’s stock market mess By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 03:34:00 -0400 Nearly two years ago China’s Communist Party released a major economic reform blueprint, whose signature phrase was that market forces would be given a “decisive role” in resource allocation. That Third Plenum Decision and other policy pronouncements raised hopes that Xi Jinping’s government would push the nation toward a more efficiency-driven growth model in which the private sector would take a greater share of economic activity and the state would exercise its leadership less through direct ownership of assets than through improved governance and regulation. Over the past two weeks, Xi’s bureaucrats launched the most heavy-handed intervention in China’s stock markets in their twenty-five year history. Spooked by a sudden 19% plunge in the Shanghai Composite Index, regulators halted initial public offerings, suspended trading in shares accounting for 40% of market capitalization, forced state-owned brokers to promise to buy stocks until the index reached a higher level, mobilized state-controlled funds to purchase equities, and promised unlimited support from the central bank. At first these measures failed to prevent a further fall. But by the end of last week, the market stabilized, at a level 28% below its June 12 peak but still up 82% from a year ago, when the bull run started. What ever happened to the “decisive role” of market forces? A skeptic would argue that the contradiction between market-friendly rhetoric and dirigiste reality shows up the hollowness of Xi’s reform program. Under this reading, the promised economic restructuring is unlikely to make much progress, either because Xi doesn’t really believe in it, or because the power of entrenched interest groups and bad old habits is simply too great to overcome. This view finds support in both the embarrassing stock-market spectacle and the fitful progress of reforms. Progress in a few areas has been solid: slashing of bureaucratic red tape has led to a surge in new private businesses; full liberalization of interest rates seems likely following the introduction of bank deposit insurance in May; Rmb 2 trillion (US$325 billion) of local government debt is being sensibly restructured into long-term bonds; tighter environmental regulation and more stringent resource taxes have contributed to a surprising two-year decline in China’s consumption of coal. But many other crucial reforms are missing in action. Most important, almost nothing has been done to dredge the dismal swamp of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which deliver a return on assets only half that of private companies, but still suck up a share of national resources (capital, labor, land and energy) grossly disproportionate to their contribution to output. Given this record, it is plausible to interpret the stock market’s wild ride over the past year as a diversionary tactic by a government facing economic growth that ground ever lower and reforms that seemed ever more stuck in the mud. First Beijing tried to pump things up by encouraging retail investors to return to a stock market they had abandoned after the last bubble burst in 2007, and let brokers extend huge amounts of credit to enable investors to double their bets on margin. By early July, margin credit stood at Rmb 2 trillion, four times as much as a year earlier. That figure equaled 18% of the “free float” value of the market (i.e. the value of all freely tradable shares, excluding those locked up in the hands of strategic long-term shareholders). Even after a recent decline, margin credit is nearly 14% of Shanghai’s free-float market capitalization, compared to less than 6% in New York and under 1% in Tokyo. The Chinese government also tried to entice foreign investors by permitting them to invest in the Shanghai market via brokers in Hong Kong. And for a while it seemed possible that domestic A-shares would be included in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which would have forced global institutions to move billions of dollars of equity investments to Shanghai in order to ensure their funds matched their index benchmarks. (In early June, MSCI deferred that decision for at least another year.) Amid a dearth of good economic news, the government could point to a buoyant stock market as evidence that it was doing something right. And after a couple of years spent cracking down on wealth-making activities through a fierce anti-corruption campaign, Beijing could also reassure business and financial elites that it had their interests at heart. For a while it worked: the Shanghai index more than doubled in the 12 months before its June peak. But the ill-informed enthusiasm of novice investors, magnified by credit, pushed valuations to absurd levels that could lead only to an ugly crash. Now that the crash has come, China’s leaders must face the grim reality of a broken market, a stagnant economy, and a stalled reform program. This account has much truth to it. The government did encourage the stock bubble, and its blundering intervention last week did undermine the credibility of its commitment to markets. Yet there is another way of looking at things that is both less dire and better attuned to China’s complexities. Little evidence suggests that the stock market lay anywhere near the center of policy makers’ concerns, during either the boom or the crash. The main aims of macroeconomic policy over the last nine months have been to support investment growth by a cautious monetary easing, and to stabilize a weakening property market (important because construction is the key source of demand for heavy industry). The stock market was a sideshow: an accidental beneficiary of easier money, and the fortuitous recipient of funds from investors fleeing the weak property market and seeking higher returns in equities. There was good reason for policy makers not to pay much attention to the stock market. China’s market is essentially a casino detached from fundamentals. It neither contributed much to economic growth while it was rising, nor threatened the economy when it collapsed. In countries such as the U.S.—where about half of the population own stocks, equities make up a big chunk of household wealth, and corporations rely heavily on funds raised on the stock market—a big stock-market fall can inflict great pain on the economy by slashing household wealth and spending, and making it harder for companies to finance their investments. China is different: less than 7% of urban Chinese have any money in the market, and their equity holdings are dwarfed by their far larger investments in property, wealth management products, and bank deposits. Equity-raising accounts for less than 5% of total corporate fund-raising; bank loans and retained earnings remain by far the biggest sources of investment funds. But hold on—if the market were really so economically irrelevant, then why did the government panic and try to prop it up with such extreme measures? It’s a fair question. One plausible answer is that the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), which oversees the market, got worried by the chaos and begged the State Council to mobilize support so that it could gain time to deal with the underlying problems, such as excessive margin borrowing. This explanation certainly seems to be the one the State Council wants people to believe. Despite its strong actions, the Council and its leader, Premier Li Keqiang, have stayed studiously silent on the stock market. The implied message is: “Okay, CSRC, we’ve stopped the bleeding and bought you some time. Now it is up to you to fix the mess and return the market to proper working order. If you fail, the blame will fall on you, not us.” If this interpretation is right, we can expect restrictions on trading and IPOs to be gradually lifted over the next several months, and rules on margin finance tightened to ensure that the next rally rests on a firmer foundation. The episode highlights the built-in contradictions in China’s present economic policies. Based on numerous statements and policy moves over the last 15 years, there can be no doubt that influential financial reformers want bigger and more robust capital markets—including a vibrant stock market—in order to reduce the economy’s reliance on politically-driven bank lending. Moreover, the success of proposed “mixed ownership” plan for SOE reform likely depends on having a healthy stock market, in which the state shareholding in big companies can be gradually diluted by selling off stakes to private investors. But the financial reformers are not the only game in town. As analysts like me should have taken more care to emphasize when it was released, the Third Plenum Decision is no Thatcherite free-market manifesto. In addition to assigning a “decisive role” to market forces, it reaffirms the “dominant role” of the state sector. Like all big policy pronouncements during China’s four decades of economic reform, it is less a grand vision than an ungainly compromise between competing interests. One interest group is the financial technocrats who want a bigger role for markets in the name of more efficient and sustainable economic growth. Another consists of politicians and planners who insist on a large state role in the economy so as to maintain the Party’s grip on power, protect strategically important industries and assets, and provide a mechanism for coordination of macro-economic policies. In short Xi and his colleagues, like all their predecessors since Deng Xiaoping, are trying to have it both ways: improve economic performance by widening the scope of markets, but guide the outcomes through direct intervention and state ownership of key actors and assets. Both elements, from the leadership’s standpoint, are necessary; the critical question is how they are balanced. Free-market fundamentalists might say such an approach is unsustainable and doomed to failure. But they have been saying that since reforms began in 1978, and so far they have been proved wrong by China’s sustained strong economic performance. Of course the task now is tougher, since China no longer enjoys the tailwinds of favorable demographics and booming global export markets. Moreover, “market guidance” is fairly easy to pull off in physical markets such as those for agricultural commodities, industrial metals or even property, where the government can manipulate supply and demand through control of physical inventories. It is far trickier in the ether of financial markets, where transactions take nanoseconds and billions of dollars of value can vanish in the blink of an eye. Yet Beijing will doubtless keep trying to develop bigger and better capital markets, while at the same time intervening whenever those markets take an inconvenient turn. It is too early to say whether this strategy will prove successful, but one thing is for sure: we will see plenty more wild rides in the Shanghai stock market in the years to come. Arthur Kroeber is non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings-Tsinghua Center and head of research at economic consultancy Gavekal Dragonomics. Authors Arthur R. Kroeber Image Source: Aly Song / Reuters Full Article
market Brookings experts comment on oil market developments and geopolitical tensions By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 14:39:19 +0000 The global COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing sharp decline in oil demand, coupled with an ongoing price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, have brought oil prices to the brink. This month, those prices fell to an 18-year-low, and world leaders have been meeting in emergency sessions to try to navigate the crisis. On April 10,… Full Article
market The market makers: Local innovation and federal evolution for impact investing By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 15:30:00 -0400 Announcements of new federal regulations on the use of program-related investments (PRIs) and the launch of a groundbreaking fund in Chicago are the latest signals that impact investing, once a marginal philanthropic and policy tool, is moving into the mainstream. They are also illustrative of two important and complementary paths to institutional change: fast-moving, collaborative local leadership creating innovative new instruments to meet funding demands; federal regulators updating policy to pave the way for change at scale. Impact investing, referring to “investment strategies that generate financial returns while intentionally improving social and environmental conditions,” provides an important tier of higher-risk capital to fund socially beneficial projects with revenue-generating potential: affordable housing, early childhood and workforce development programs, and social enterprises. It is estimated that there are over $60 billion of impact investments globally and interest is growing—an annual JP Morgan study of impact investors from 2015 reports that the number of impact investing deals increased 13 percent between 2013 and 2014 following a 20 percent increase in the previous year. Traditionally, foundations have split their impact investments into two pots, one for mission-related investments, designed to generate market-rate returns and maintain and grow the value of the endowment, and the other for program-related investments. PRIs can include loans, guarantees, or equity investments that advance a charitable purpose without expectation of market returns. PRIs are an attractive use of a foundation’s endowment as they allow foundations to recycle their limited grant funds and they count towards a foundation’s charitable distribution requirement of 5 percent of assets. However they have been underutilized to date due to perceived hurdles around their use–in fact among the thousands of foundations in the United States, currently only a few hundred make PRIs. But this is changing, spurred on by both entrepreneurial local action and federal leadership. On April 21, the White House announced that the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service had finalized regulations that are expected to make it easier for private foundations to put their assets to work in innovative ways. While there is still room for improvement, by clarifying rules and signaling mainstream acceptance of impact investing practices these changes should lower the barriers to entry for some institutional investors. This federal leadership is welcome, but is not by itself enough to meet the growing demand for capital investment in the civic sector. Local innovation, spurred by new philanthropic collaborations, can be transformative. On April 25 in Chicago, the Chicago Community Trust, the Calvert Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched Benefit Chicago, a $100 million impact investment fund that aims to catalyze a new market by making it easier for individuals and institutions to put their dollars to work locally and help meet the estimated $100-400 million capital needs of the civic sector over the next five years. A Next Street report found that the potential supply of patient capital from foundations and investors in the Chicago region was more than enough to meet the demand – if there were ways to more easily connect the two. Benefit Chicago addresses this market gap by making it possible for individuals to invest directly through a brokerage or a donor-advised fund and for the many foundations without dedicated impact investing programs to put their endowments to work at scale. All of the transactional details of deal flow, underwriting, and evaluation of results are handled by the intermediary, which should lead to greater efficiency and a significant increase in the size of the impact investing market in Chicago. In the last few years, a new form of impact investing has made measurement of social return to investments even more concrete. Social impact bonds (SIBs), also known as pay for success (PFS) financing, are a way for private investors (including foundations) to provide capital to support social services with the promise of a return on their investment from a government agency if some agreed-upon social outcomes are achieved. These PFS transactions range from funding to support high-quality early childhood education programs in Chicago to reduction in chronic individual homelessness in the state of Massachusetts. Both the IRS and the Chicago announcements are bound to contribute to the growth of the impact bond market which to date represents a small segment of the impact investing market. These examples illustrate a rare and wonderful convergence of leadership at the federal and local levels around an idea that makes sense. Beyond simply broadening the number of ways that foundations can deploy funds, growing the pool of impact investments can have a powerful market-making effect. Impact investments unlock other tiers of capital, reducing risk for private investors and making possible new types of deals with longer time horizons and lower expected market return. In the near future, these federal and local moves together might radically change the philanthropic landscape. If every major city had a fund like Benefit Chicago, and all local investors had a simple on-ramp to impact investing, the pool of capital to help local organizations meet local needs could grow exponentially. This in turn could considerably improve funding for programs—like access to quality social services and affordable housing—that show impact over the long term. Impact investing can be a bright spot in an otherwise somber fiscal environment if localities keep innovating and higher levels of government evolve to support, incentivize, and smooth its growth. These announcements from Washington and Chicago are examples of the multilevel leadership and creative institutional change we need to ensure that we tap every source of philanthropic capital, to feel some abundance in an era where scarcity is the dominant narrative. Editor's Note: Alaina Harkness is a fellow at Brookings while on leave from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is a donor to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the authors and not determined by any donation. Authors Alaina J. HarknessEmily Gustafsson-Wright Image Source: © Jeff Haynes / Reuters Full Article
market The great reversal: How America gave up on free markets By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 17:50:41 +0000 American markets, once a model of competition for the world, have experienced a growing concentration of economic power in a few large corporations. The rise of corporate economic—and political—power has emerged as one of the most important issues of our time. It is destined to be a key point of debate in the coming U.S.… Full Article
market Mandate-Based Health Reform and the Labor Market: Evidence from the Massachusetts Reform By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: The full paper (PDF) can be downloaded at yale.edu.ABSTRACTWe model the labor market impact of the three key provisions of the recent Massachusetts and national “mandate-based" health reforms: individual and employer mandates and expansions in publicly-subsidized coverage. Using our model, we characterize the compensating differential for employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) -- the causal change in… Full Article
market Willingness to Pay for Health Insurance: An Analysis of the Potential Market for New Low-Cost Health Insurance Products in Namibia By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:18:00 -0400 ABSTRACT This study analyzes the willingness to pay for health insurance and hence the potential market for new low-cost health insurance product in Namibia, using the double bounded contingent valuation (DBCV) method. The findings suggest that 87 percent of the uninsured respondents are willing to join the proposed health insurance scheme and on average are willing to insure 3.2 individuals (around 90 percent of the average family size). On average respondents are willing to pay NAD 48 per capita per month and respondents in the poorest income quintile are willing to pay up to 11.4 percent of their income. This implies that private voluntary health insurance schemes, in addition to the potential for protecting the poor against the negative financial shock of illness, may be able to serve as a reliable income flow for health care providers in this setting. Read the full paper on ScienceDirect » Authors Emily Gustafsson-WrightJacques van der GaagAbay Asfaw Publication: ScienceDirect Image Source: © Adriane Ohanesian / Reuters Full Article
market The Private Sector and Sustainable Development: Market-Based Solutions for Addressing Global Challenges By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: The private sector is an important player in sustainable global development. Corporations are finding that they can help encourage economic growth and development in the poorest of countries. Most importantly, the private sector can tackle development differently by taking a market-based approach. The private sector is providing new ideas in the fight to end global… Full Article
market Job market news just keeps getting better By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 13:21:00 -0500 Employers continued to boost payrolls in 2015, capping six straight years of job gains. It was the third year in a row in which employment gains topped 210,000 a month. In the 12 months ending in November, public and private payrolls increased 220,000 a month, or about 1.9 percent over the year. Virtually all the growth in payrolls was in the private sector, which added 212,000 jobs a month. The public sector added modestly to its payrolls last year, but the number of government employees remains more than one million (4.4 percent) below the peak level attained in 2010. Nearly all major industries except mining contributed to job gains in the past 12 months, though gains in manufacturing were weaker than in any year since the expansion began in 2010. Payrolls in the mining industry tumbled more than 10 percent, hurt by a steep fall in oil and gas prices and the decline in exploration for new energy reserves. The construction industry continued to add to payrolls last year at about the same pace as in the previous two years, although the level of employment is still about 1.2 million (15 percent) below the peak level achieved in 2006. Based on the age composition of the U.S. population, between 65,000-80,000 new jobs are needed every month to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Since late 2010, monthly payroll gains have comfortably exceeded this threshold. As a result, the jobless rate has declined steadily. In the 12 months through November 2015, the unemployment rate dropped another 0.8 percentage point, falling to 5.0 percent. The jobless rate is now within a half percentage point of its level immediately before the Great Recession. Since reaching a peak in the autumn of 2009, the unemployment rate has been cut in half. We’ve also seen improvement in other indicators of job market distress in the past year. The number of Americans who want full-time jobs but have been forced to take part-time positions fell more than 11 percent in the 12 months through November 2015. About 9 million workers who wanted a full-time job were employed part-time in the middle of 2010. That number has fallen to about 6 million in recent months. Similarly, the number of Americans in long spells of unemployment continues to shrink. Workers reporting they were unemployed 6 months or longer fell to 2.05 million in November, representing a considerable improvement since 2010. In that year, more than 6 million jobless workers reported they had been looking for work for at least a half a year. The most welcome news for Americans who hold jobs is that inflation-adjusted wage levels improved last year. Real average hourly earnings increased 1.8 percent between November 2014 and November 2015, and real weekly earnings climbed 1.6 percent. These gains represent a considerable improvement compared with earlier years in the recovery, when real wage gains were negligible. Nonetheless, nominal wage gains in 2015 were only slightly faster than they were in earlier years of the recovery. The reason for the startling turnaround in real wage growth is that consumer prices increased very little over the past year. In the 12 months ending in November, the CPI edged up just 0.5 percent, almost a full percentage point more slowly than the average rate of consumer inflation in the previous three years. The slowdown was driven by lower prices for energy and other key commodities. (The “core” consumer inflation rate, which strips out the effects of price changes in energy and food, was 2.0 percent last year, a bit higher than the rate in the previous year.) Back when politicians and voters cared more about inflation than they currently do, Brookings economist Arthur Okun proposed an economic indicator called the “misery index” to summarize the dual hardships of inflation and unemployment. To measure economic misery Okun suggested adding the current unemployment rate and a measure of consumer price inflation. In Chart 1 below I have added the civilian unemployment rate and the trailing 12-month percentage change in the CPI. In the 11 months of 2012 through November, the misery index averaged just 5.4, its lowest level since the 1950s and well below its average levels in the 1990s (8.8) and in the period from 2000 to 2007 (7.8). When inflation is benign and has remained subdued for a long time, Americans may forget the pain they feel when price increases are frequent and large. Okun’s misery index fell to an exceptionally low level in 2015, even if a small majority of Americans continues to believe the economy is getting worse. The good news in 2015 is that unemployment continued to fall and real wages began to rise. The less welcome news is that key measures of labor force participation failed to improve. For example, the labor force participation rate of Americans between 25 and 54 was the same in November 2015 as it was in November 2014. More worryingly, it was 2.1 percentage points below its level in November 2007, just before the Great Recession. So far we have seen no rebound in participation among people in prime working ages, despite abundant signs that it’s easier to land a job. Low participation is the main explanation for depressed employment rates among prime-age Americans. Participation rates are not only low in comparison to levels seen before the Great Recession, they are also now below those in other rich countries. Charts 2 and 3 compare employment-to-population rates among 25-54 year-olds in seven OECD member countries (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The charts show employment rates separately for men and women in two different years, 2000 and 2014. The countries are ranked, from left to right, by their employment rates in 2014. In 2000 the U.S. had the second highest male employment rate (Chart 2) and the second highest female employment rate (Chart 3) of the seven countries listed. By 2014, the U.S. had the lowest male and female employment rates among the countries compared. Although several nations saw declines in their prime-age male employment rate, only the U.S. also experienced a decline in its prime-age female employment rate. The other six countries all saw increases in female employment. The main reason for the drop in prime-age U.S. employment was the decline in prime-age participation. An enduring puzzle of the current recovery is the failure of participation rates to rebound, even in the face of steady improvement in the job market. Authors Gary Burtless Full Article
market U.S. job market goes from strength to strength as global stock markets tremble By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 Jan 2016 12:06:00 -0500 The latest BLS employment report showed remarkable strength in the U.S. job market even as global financial markets were trembling. Employers added 292,000 to their payrolls in December. Upward revisions in previous BLS estimates also boosted gains in October and November. In the last quarter of 2015, payrolls increased at a rate of 284,000 per month, a remarkable performance in the face of rising uncertainty about prospects for the world economy. U.S. employers added a total of 2.65 million jobs in 2015, the second best calendar-year gain of the current recovery. (Gains were stronger in 2014 but smaller in earlier years of the recovery.) As usual, private employers accounted for an overwhelming share of the job gains. Ninety-seven percent of the gains in the fourth quarter and 96 percent of the gains last year occurred as a result of employment gains in the private sector. Whatever the uncertainty of the world economic outlook, U.S. employers have enough confidence in their own prospects to keep adding to their payrolls at a healthy clip. Public employment remains about 375,000 (1.7 percent) lower than it was at the onset of the Great Depression. Though government payrolls are now growing, in percentage terms they have been rising much more slowly that private payrolls. Sizeable job gains were recorded in construction, transportation, motion pictures, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality industries, and health care. Gains were modest or negligible in manufacturing and retail trade. Payrolls fell for the twelfth consecutive month in mining, primarily as a result of continued weakness in world energy prices. Average hourly pay in private firms edged down 1 cent in December, but the nominal wage was 2.5 percent higher than its level 12 months earlier. This is a somewhat faster rate of improvement compared with the gains workers saw between 2010 and 2014. In terms of purchasing power, U.S. workers are clearly enjoying faster pay gains as a result of lower inflation. The 12-month change in real hourly earnings through November was 1.8 percent, the fastest rate of improvement in the current recovery. The BLS household survey also contained a big helping of good news. The unemployment rate remained unchanged, at 5.0 percent, but that was the result of sizeable employment gains combined with a notable influx into the active labor force. The number of survey respondents who said they were employed jumped 485,000, and the number saying they held a job or were actively looking rose 466,000. Over the past 12 months the labor force has increased only 1.69 million, but the number of household survey respondents who say they hold a job has increased 2.49 million. Contrary to predictions that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act would push employers to put workers on part-time schedules, an overwhelming share of job growth has been in full-time positions. The number of survey respondents who said they held full-time jobs increased 504,000 in December. It has increased 2.6 million over the past year. The gray cloud in the latest jobs report is the continued weakness in the prime-age labor force participation rate. The participation rate of men and women between 25 and 54 years old is now 80.9 percent, exactly the same as its level a year ago but more than 2 percentage points below its level before the Great Recession. Most labor economists anticipate that easier job finding and rising real hourly pay will bring more potential workers back into the workforce. Among Americans in their prime working years, however, that resurgence in participation is hard to see. Authors Gary Burtless Image Source: GARY HERSHORN Full Article
market Clean Energy Finance Through the Bond Market: A New Option for Progress By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400 State and local bond finance represents a powerful but underutilized tool for future clean energy investment. For 100 years, the nation’s state and local infrastructure finance agencies have issued trillions of dollars’ worth of public finance bonds to fund the construction of the nation’s roads, bridges, hospitals, and other infrastructure—and literally built America. Now, as clean energy subsidies from Washington dwindle, these agencies are increasingly willing to finance clean energy projects, if only the clean energy community will embrace them. So far, these authorities are only experimenting. However, the bond finance community has accumulated significant experience in getting to scale and knows how to raise large amounts for important purposes by selling bonds to Wall Street. The challenge is therefore to create new models for clean energy bond finance in states and regions, and so to establish a new clean energy asset class that can easily be traded in capital markets. To that end, this brief argues that state and local bonding authorities and other partners should do the following: Establish mutually useful partnerships between development finance experts and clean energy officials at the state and local government levels Expand and scale up bond-financed clean energy projects using credit enhancement and other emerging tools to mitigate risk and through demonstration projects Improve the availability of data and develop standardized documentation so that the risks and rewards of clean energy investments can be better understood Create a pipeline of rated and private placement deals, in effect a new clean energy asset class, to meet the demand by institutional investors for fixed-income clean energy securities Downloads ReportPress Release Authors Lewis M. MilfordDevashree SahaMark MuroRobert SandersToby Rittner Image Source: © Steve Marcus / Reuters Full Article
market Are there structural issues in U.S. bond markets? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 03 Aug 2015 09:00:00 -0400 Event Information August 3, 20159:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDTSaul/Zilka RoomsThe Brookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Ave., NWWashington, DC With keynote addresses by Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell and Counselor to the Treasury Secretary Antonio WeissBond markets are the principal source of credit for businesses and governments in the United States, with almost $40 trillion of outstanding debt. They are also the main mode of investment for pension funds, mutual funds, and many other investors, which is why the safety and efficiency of these markets is, therefore, crucial. On August 3, the Economic Studies program at Brookings hosted a number of experts to discuss the structure of bond markets in the U.S. and how changes over the last few years are affecting market liquidity, volatility, and overall safety and efficiency. Keynote addresses by Governor Jerome Powell and Counselor Antonio Weiss focused on the Treasury bond market with a panel of experts examining corporate bond markets. After each session, the speakers and panelists took audience questions. Antonio Weiss with Jerome Powell and Douglas Elliott (l-r) Martin Baily with Kashif Riaz, Annette Nazareth, Steve Zamsky and Dennis Kelleher (r-l) Video Keynote Addresses on the U.S. Treasury MarketsPanel on the Corporate Bond Markets Audio Are there structural issues in U.S. bond markets? Transcript Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 20150803_bond_markets_transcript20150803_liquidity_kelleher_presentation Full Article
market Not just for the professionals? Understanding equity markets for retail and small business investors By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 09:00:00 -0400 Event Information April 15, 20169:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDTThe Brookings InstitutionFalk Auditorium1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.Washington, DC 20036 Register for the EventThe financial crisis is now eight years behind us, but its legacy lingers on. Many Americans are concerned about their financial security and are particularly worried about whether they will have enough for retirement. Guaranteed benefit pensions are gradually disappearing, leaving households to save and invest for themselves. What role could equities play for retail investors? Another concern about the lingering impact of the crisis is that business investment and overall economic growth remains weak compared to expectations. Large companies are able to borrow at low interest rates, yet many of them have large cash holdings. However, many small and medium sized enterprises face difficulty funding their growth, paying high risk premiums on their borrowing and, in some cases, being unable to fund investments they would like to make. Equity funding can be an important source of growth financing. On Friday, April 15, the Initiative on Business and Public Policy at Brookings examined what role equity markets can play for individual retirement security, small business investment and whether they can help jumpstart American innovation culture by fostering the transition from startups to billion dollar companies. You can join the conversation and tweet questions for the panelists at #EquityMarkets. Video Keynote address by Richard G. Ketchum Panel DiscussionKeynote address by Roger Ferguson Audio Not just for the professionals? Understanding equity markets for retail and small business investors Transcript Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials Equity Markets Retirement Security 2016 Apr 15 (2)20160415_equity_markets_transcript Full Article
market The effect of COVID-19 and disease suppression policies on labor markets: A preliminary analysis of the data By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 16:20:54 +0000 World leaders are deliberating when and how to re-open business operations amidst considerable uncertainty as to the economic consequences of the coronavirus. One pressing question is whether or not countries that have remained relatively open have managed to escape at least some of the economic harm, and whether that harm is related to the spread… Full Article
market Progress in Emerging Markets is Being Put at Risk By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Finance ministers of the Group of Eight leading economies have commissioned a study on the role of financial market speculation in recent oil price rises. In India, the regulator recently suspended trade in futures markets for several commodities, blaming speculators for price rises. The global credit crisis has made the financial sector vulnerable to populist… Full Article
market Immigration and the U.S. labor market: A look ahead By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 16:24:34 +0000 Full Article
market How did COVID-19 disrupt the market for U.S. Treasury debt? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 01 May 2020 12:41:44 +0000 The COVID-19 pandemic—in addition to posing a severe threat to public health—has disrupted the economy and financial markets, and prompted a strong desire among investors for safe and liquid securities. In that environment, one might expect U.S. Treasury securities to be the investment of choice, but for a while in March, the $18 trillion market… Full Article
market The Marketplace of Democracy : Electoral Competition and American Politics By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400 Brookings Institution Press and Cato Institute 2006 312pp. Since 1998, U.S. House incumbents have won a staggering 98 percent of their reelection races. Electoral competition is also low and in decline in most state and primary elections. The Marketplace of Democracy combines the resources of two eminent research organizations—the Brookings Institution and the Cato Institute—to address the startling lack of competition in our democratic system. The contributors consider the historical development, legal background, and political aspects of a system that is supposed to be responsive and accountable yet for many is becoming stagnant, self-perpetuating, and tone-deaf. How did we get to this point, and what—if anything—should be done about it? In The Marketplace of Democracy, top-tier political scholars also investigate the perceived lack of competition in arenas only previously speculated on, such as state legislative contests and congressional primaries. Michael McDonald, John Samples, and their colleagues analyze previous reform efforts such as direct primaries and term limits, and the effects they have had on electoral competition. They also examine current reform efforts in redistricting and campaign finance regulation, as well as the impact of third parties. In sum, what does all this tell us about what might be done to increase electoral competition? Elections are the vehicles through which Americans choose who governs them, and the power of the ballot enables ordinary citizens to keep public officials accountable. This volume considers different policy options for increasing the competition needed to keep American politics vibrant, responsive, and democratic. Brookings Forum: "The Marketplace of Democracy: A Groundbreaking Survey Explores Voter Attitudes About Electoral Competition and American Politics," October 27, 2006. Podcast: "The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition and American Politics," a Capitol Hill briefing featuring Michael McDonald and John Samples, September 22, 2006. Contributors: Stephen Ansolabehere (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), William D. Berry (Florida State University), Bruce Cain (University of California-Berkeley), Thomas M. Carsey (Florida State University), James G. Gimpel (University of Maryland), Tim Groseclose (University of California-Los Angeles), John Hanley (University of California-Berkeley), John mark Hansen (University of Chicago), Paul S. Herrnson (University of Maryland), Shigeo Hirano (Columbia University), Gary C. Jacobson (University of California-San Diego), Thad Kousser (University of California-San Diego), Frances E. Lee (University of Maryland), John C. Matsusaka (University of Southern California), Kenneth R. Mayer (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Michael P. McDonald (Brookings Institution and George Mason University), Jeffrey Milyo (University of Missouri-Columbia), Richard G. Niemi (University of Rochester), Natheniel Persily (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Lynda W. Powell (University of Rochester), David Primo (University of Rochester), John Samples (Cato Institute), James M. Snyder Jr. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Timothy Werner (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Amanda Williams (University of Wisconsin-Madison). ABOUT THE EDITORS John Samples John Samples directs the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute and teaches political science at Johns Hopkins University. Michael P. McDonald Downloads Sample Chapter Ordering Information: {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-5579-1, $24.95 Add to Cart{CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 978-0-8157-5580-7, $54.95 Add to Cart Full Article
market The Marketplace of Democracy: A Groundbreaking Survey Explores Voter Attitudes About Electoral Competition and American Politics By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 10:00:00 -0400 Event Information October 27, 200610:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDTFalk AuditoriumThe Brookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Ave., NWWashington, DC Register for the EventDespite the attention on the mid-term races, few elections are competitive. Electoral competition, already low at the national level, is in decline in state and primary elections as well. Reformers, who point to gerrymandering and a host of other targets for change, argue that improving competition will produce voters who are more interested in elections, better-informed on issues, and more likely to turn out to the polls. On October 27, the Brookings Institution—in conjunction with the Cato Institute and The Pew Research Center—presented a discussion and a groundbreaking survey exploring the attitudes and opinions of voters in competitive and noncompetitive congressional districts. The survey, part of Pew's regular polling on voter attitudes, was conducted through the weekend of October 21. A series of questions explored the public's perceptions, knowledge, and opinions about electoral competitiveness. The discussion also explored a publication that addresses the startling lack of competition in our democratic system. The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition and American Politics (Brookings, 2006), considers the historical development, legal background, and political aspects of a system that is supposed to be responsive and accountable, yet for many is becoming stagnant, self-perpetuating, and tone-deaf. Michael McDonald, editor and Brookings visiting fellow, moderated a discussion among co-editor John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, and Andrew Kohut and Scott Keeter from The Pew Research Center, who also discussed the survey. Transcript Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 2006102720061027ppt Full Article
market Taxing capital income: Mark-to-market and other approaches By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:13:03 +0000 Given increased income and wealth inequality, much recent attention has been devoted to proposals to increase taxes on the wealthy (such as imposing a tax on accumulated wealth). Since capital income is highly skewed toward the ultra-wealthy, methods of increasing taxes on capital income provide alternative approaches for addressing inequality through the tax system. Marking… Full Article
market Whole Foods Market to Stop Sales of Unsustainable Seafood By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:00:00 -0400 An initiative to stop selling red-rated seafood by 2013 had been launched a year early and will go into effect on Earth Day 2012. Full Article Living
market Don't judge a supermarket for empty shelves, it might be fighting food waste By www.treehugger.com Published On :: Fri, 19 Jan 2018 09:08:10 -0500 Sorry, shoppers, but empty supermarket shelves could be a good thing. Full Article Living
