May 09,2013

UP Links 09 May 2013

+ Kari Kohn

Martin Wolf on Germany Exporting Its Model

Germany is reshaping the European economy in its own image. It is using its position as the largest economy and dominant creditor country to turn members of the eurozone into small replicas of itself – and the eurozone as a whole into a bigger one. This strategy will fail.

Public Transportation Patterns Across Cities

Ridership is an identifier for how cities are utilized—whether they are centralized, decentralized or have multiple focal points, whether activity concentrates during rush hour as people are entering or leaving the city center(s), or whether activity is spread out over time. As the transit passenger data suggests, Geneva is centralized while Zurich appears to have multiple centers, and activity is concentrated during rush hours. Activity in San Francisco on the other hand is more evenly spread out, both spatially and over the course of the day. These insights are not only useful for city planners and transit authorities, who can get a sense of what areas see high and low ridership and understand what areas are underserved by public transit.

Stuart E. Eizenstat and Robert I. Lerman on the Potential of Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships train youths and adults by combining work-based learning with classroom instruction in a unified program that leads to a recognized and valued occupational credential. Trainees earn money and contribute to production while they learn, often in a plant where they can be employed full time. They graduate with a sense of pride and identity as a member of an occupational group. Employers bear most of the training costs, but the value added by apprentices often exceeds their wages; employers also save recruitment and training costs and can be confident that apprentices who complete their programs have job-relevant skills.

Infrastructure Needs in the Developing World

The infrastructure requirements alone in emerging-market economies and low-income countries are huge – 1.4 billion people still have no reliable electricity, 900 million lack access to clean water, and 2.6 billion do not have adequate sanitation. At the same time, an estimated two billion people will move to cities in the next quarter-century. And policymakers must ensure that the investments are environmentally sustainable.

To meet these and the other challenges confronting the developing world, infrastructure spending will have to rise from around $800 billion to at least $2 trillion annually in the coming decades. Otherwise, it will be impossible to achieve long-term poverty reduction and inclusive growth.

The New York Times Magazine on the Role of Urbanization in Poverty Reduction

Since 1980, the proportion of the developing world living in urban areas has grown to about 50 percent, from 30 percent, and according to the World Bank, that migration of hundreds of millions has been instrumental in pulling down poverty rates — and will be for a broader set of countries going forward. Cities bolster access to health services and public resources; infant-mortality rates, for instance, are 40 percent lower in urban Cambodia than in rural Cambodia. And workers themselves become more productive, often by making the switch from labor-intensive work like farming to capital-intensive work like manufacturing. Urban poverty is hardly attractive — slums are cramped, unplanned, unhygienic places — but it is, in many cases, less deadly.