economic_development - Yule Heibel on Diigo

07 Jul 09

Canada's innovation gap - The Globe and Mail

Insightful (and often cutting) article on the status of innovation in Canada. Stephen Downes responded in a blog post, http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/07/innovation-in-canada.html, basically agreeing, saying that we need a bit of free market and a bit of government direction as well, and that we (Canadians) need to wean ourselves from our corporate overlords.

In an aside, the G&M journalist (Konrad Yakabuski) notes that Canadians already log more work hours than Americans and are workaholics compared to Europeans - who innovate more and therefore, because they work smarter, don't need to work harder. As it happens, I was just wondering about Canadians and partying/ sociability over the beginning of July (what with Canada Day and Independence Day). Canadians are far less social than Americans, in my experience. For Canadians, sociability and partying means getting drunk - it always has, for as long as I can remember. Americans in this respect are actually the kinder, gentler people. Is it because of work?

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article1203108 - Preview

innovation canada globeandmail productivity technology resources economic_development konrad_yakabuski

Barring an extension of the workweek - Canadians already put in more hours than Americans and are virtual workaholics compared with Europeans - innovation is the only sure way for Canada to be more productive. It is the key to maintaining our standard of living and providing increasingly costly public services for an aging population.
"Canada is not being productive because it's not being innovative," said Robert Brown, chief executive officer of Montreal-based CAE Inc., the world leader in aircraft flight simulators and training. "A lot of innovation occurs at the interface with the customer. But when you look at the make-up of Canada's economy, with so much dependence on resources, there is less contact between [our biggest] companies and end users."
7 more annotations...
- Strong governments in Asia and Finland, on the other hand, have been able to resist the self-interested demands of individual sectors, and have implemented country-wide innovation strategies that, while not without hiccups, ultimately increase the size of a country's economic pie over time.
- The consequences of this global power shift could show up in lower pension benefits, substandard health care and rickety infrastructure for future generations of Canadians. Early signs are already apparent to discriminating eyes, such as those of Mr. Curtis, a former chief economist in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
  
  "We are declining relative to many other parts of the world," he said. "You don't really feel it unless you're cosmopolitan and travel a lot. You now stay at the three-star hotel instead of the four. But our cities - and the country as a whole - are quite clearly relatively less well off than before."
- Where he sees languor in our policy apparatus, CAE's Mr. Brown detects an aversion to interventionist industrial strategy among governments. But as Canada has relied on the free market - auto bailouts notwithstanding - to determine its champions, governments elsewhere are actively nurturing their own winners.
  
  "We seem to believe the free-market system will work, but no one else operates that way," Mr. Brown said. "If you rely only on market forces, you are going to react to what others are doing, rather than anticipating what is going to happen."
- Research will become increasingly important to the competitiveness of Canadian auto plants as a strong loonie and wage concessions south of the border wipe out much of the edge they once held over U.S. facilities. But Washington's promise to provide $25-billion (U.S.) in loans to companies there to help develop more fuel-efficient cars threatens to widen the already gaping research chasm between each country's auto sector.
  
  "Without comparable support in Canada, manufacturing capacity could follow the funding, taking engineering work and suppliers with it," warns the Academies report.
  
  Still, foreign ownership is not the biggest reason for Canadian companies' R&D deficit. Despite a disproportionately large resource sector, compared with other developed countries, Canada has been a laggard when it comes to developing technology used to extract or process resources, or to blunt the environmental impact of such activities. Alberta's vow to plow $2-billion (Canadian) into the development of carbon capture and storage technologies is a start, but hardly a game-changing one.
  
  "The failure of Canada to develop global export leaders in advanced machinery and equipment for the resource sector is one particularly telling indicator of the country's innovation shortcomings," the Academies report concludes.
- The Finnish Miracle is an example of an economy emerging from the pits to overtake those it used to envy. It's hardly the first. In 1982's The Rise and Decline of Nations, economist Mancur Olson advanced the idea that countries whose economic foundations have been suddenly shaken or destroyed subsequently tend to grow and innovate faster than more stable nations. The reason? Such crises break the hold of vested interests on government policy makers; dramatic change becomes a question of national survival.
- Mr. Olson cited the industrial resurgence of Japan and Germany in the postwar period to explain his thesis. While Japan and Germany prospered in 1970s, the economies of other developed countries, such as the U.S. and Britain, became bogged down in interest group politics, resulting in "institutional sclerosis" and slow growth.
  - But Germany and Japan (Germany in particular) also had a huge influx of post-war aid (Marshall Plan), which enabled them (Germany in particular) to rebuild its infrastructure. - on 2009-07-07
  Add Sticky Note
- Economically, we just muddle on

18 Apr 09

Is the Boulder model tenable for Ann Arbor?

Saw this in Boris Mann's FriendFeed (via his Google Reader bookmarks). Comment on Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group (which "funds primarily light-weight, inexpensive software startups") giving a talk in Ann Arbor. The push-back in the comment interesting insofar as it points to 2.0-bubble-ism and over-eagerness to build on clouds as opposed to "real things." But then again, one could ask, what are the real things? Isn't information real, too?

markmaynard.com/?p=4668 - Preview

boulder ann_arbor entrepeneurialism web2.0 economic_development jason_mendelson

01 Jan 09

The economic impact of high density development and tall buildings in central business districts: British Property Federation

A 9/10/08 pointer to a 44-pg PDF, "The economic impact of high density development and tall buildings in central business districts: British Property Federation." From the description:
QUOTE
There is increasing recognition of the need to increase the density of commercial development, especially in the centres of our towns and cities. The sustainability benefits of high density are relatively well known. For example, less urban sprawl means less need to use greenfield sites, more use of public transport and, with mixed use developments, a reduced need to travel.

However, there is also an economic case for increased commercial density, as specified in Policy Planning Statement (PPS) 6 and the State of the English Cities. In current debates about increasing commercial density in London – including through tall buildings – this economic element has been little mentioned, and is perhaps little understood.

This research has sought to explain and estimate the economic costs and benefits of high density commercial development in central business districts. The aim is to provide a more rounded picture of the economic impact of high density development and to strengthen the assessment of such development.
UNQUOTE

www.bpf.org.uk/...-in-central-business-districts - Preview

central_business_districts cities urbanism economic_development tall_buildings high_rise density

There is increasing recognition of the need to increase the density of commercial development, especially in the centres of our towns and cities. The sustainability benefits of high density are relatively well known. For example, less urban sprawl means less need to use greenfield sites, more use of public transport and, with mixed use developments, a reduced need to travel.

However, there is also an economic case for increased commercial density, as specified in Policy Planning Statement (PPS) 6 and the State of the English Cities. In current debates about increasing commercial density in London – including through tall buildings – this economic element has been little mentioned, and is perhaps little understood.

This research has sought to explain and estimate the economic costs and benefits of high density commercial development in central business districts. The aim is to provide a more rounded picture of the economic impact of high density development and to strengthen the assessment of such development.

05 Aug 08

Protein® Feed | Could Globalization Be Going In Reverse?

"The world is flat" or "the world is spiky" or ..."the world is complex," maybe? At any rate, this article questions the idea that outsourcing will continue to continue, spreading outward in some sort of new and flattened topography (akin to a downward spiral insofar as the search for ever cheaper labor and laxer labor laws continues, but not wholly downward because economically, there's an upward trend associated with it, too - hence perhaps the "flat" topography). And it presents some interesting data as well as suppposition for why this might be so. It's not just the huge up-tick in transportation costs (although that's a key factor), it's also the logistics -- including "reverse logistics." For example, consumers *want* to do better, and are becoming more aware of the "carbon footprint" of the products they buy.

proteinos.com/...balization-be-going-in-reverse - Preview

globalization trends economic_development manufacturing transportation factories shipping

For the first time in recent decades, it seems there are now real reasons to question the logic underlying the official future of ever-increasing global trade.
The biggest, of course, is the rapidly mounting cost of transportation. As oil prices rise, reports the New York Times, shipping costs are driving decisions to shorten supply chains:
9 more annotations...
- But transportation costs are not the only reasons why globalization as we know it might be in for some rapid evolution. Consider:
- *Far-flung supply chains may drop costs (even with higher oil prices), but the multiply climate change emissions. That already presents a marketing challenge as consumers grow more aware of their carbon footprints. And if political consensus emerges on pricing carbon (as seems likely), some of the price advantages of global complexity could vanish overnight.
- *Manufacturers and others are already increasingly aware of, and worried about, supply chain diversity. When the entire supply of a critical part or material comes from a distant factory or mine, every company that depends on that part or material is at risk. Increasingly, companies are trying to find multiple sources (and alternative sources), preferably close to home.
- *Some of the economic advantages of globalization have come from companies gaining the ability to skirt labor and environmental laws by doing business in countries with high levels of political corruption (corruption they have often helped create). But now, transparency activism has blown the cover of secrecy off these practices; now it is easier than ever to cause enormous brand damage simply by revealing an unsavory backstory.
- *Much of the logic of globalization assumes a one-way flow of materials, mined and grown in the poorest countries, manufactured into consumer goods in China, Brazil or Mexico, sold on the shelves of megastores in Europe or North America, then shipped away to the landfill. But as we move into zero waste and closed-loop systems (where there is no "away"), reverse logistics start to become a real concern. Producers become responsible for their products, meaning that running their current supply chains in reverse doubles (at least) their already mounting transportation costs. This alone could drive more local manufacturing.
- *Globalization suffers from some big disruptive vulnerabilities. An extreme act of terror, say a dirty bomb in a shipping container, could easily bring the whole system screeching to a halt. Ditto bird flu. Same with mass migrations triggered by environmental degradation and climate change in already desperately poor countries. Heck, even the right kind of invasive species scare could put a hiccup in the system, but some of these could stop trade altogether for quite some time.
- Especially in the developed world -- where we can draw on a huge basin of wealth and a huge capacity for innovation -- even a dramatic reversal in globalization would not fundamentally undermine our civilization (though it would certainly contribute to a number of real changes already underway, like greater urbanization, local food movements, cradle-to-cradle design and so on). We won't be headed back to de-industrialized farming any time soon.
- But if the scenario of a reversal in globalization in fact comes to pass, there will be some economic upheaval, and that upheaval will create winners and losers -- an effect that will be magnified if economic chaos occurs at the same time that the impacts of climate change begin to be felt in earnest. Some regions will plan ahead and do well. Others will suffer.
- One point is probably worth making in conclusion: because communications technologies are (comparatively speaking) dematerialized, a reversal in material trade patterns almost certainly would not also mean a reversal in intellectual trade patterns -- rising oil prices or climate change won't shut down the web or stop Bollywood from making movies or prevent innovators from licensing their ideas in other countries. In fact, it might be that expertise, innovation and culture will flow more freely in a world where goods flow more slowly. We might actually grow more interconnected in a world where supply chains shrank.
  - "...expertise, innovation and culture will flow more freely in a world where goods flow more slowly." = Interesting perspective/ idea, with implications for *location* (obviously)... - on 2008-08-05
  Add Sticky Note

08 May 08

"On Jane Jacobs" by Richard Florida (Creative Class Exchange)

Nice synthesis by Richard Florida (written for his Globe & Mail column) of Jane Jacobs's approach to thinking about economies. Let's hope it makes more people read her 2000 book, The Nature of Economies.

creativeclass.typepad.com/...on-jane-jacobs.html - Preview

jjacobs economic_development

22 Dec 07

Wellesley Institute | Toronto - City of Disparities

- portal page for the report, "Toronto -- City of Disparities" PDF and related press releases, maps, etc. The report was written by J. David Hulchanski, PhD, MCIP, Director, Centre for Urban and Community Studies and Professor, Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Research Bulletin #40, published December 2007.

wellesleyinstitute.com/toronto-city-disparities - Preview

canada cities economic_development income_disparity j_david_hulchanski toronto urbanism

Toronto is no longer a “city of neighbourhoods” but has become a “city of disparities”. That is a key finding of powerful new research from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Urban and Community Studies. The “City of Disparities” research bulletin, The Three Cities Within Toronto: Income Polarization among Toronto's Neighbourhoods, 1970 - 2000, and media realease set out the dramatic growth in income gaps over the past three decades – as the rich get richer, the poor grow more numerous and the middle-income shrink. Set together on one page, four maps chart the grim progress towards a grossly inequitable city. This research confirms and builds on earlier research from TD Economics, which marks growing poverty in Toronto, and the United Way of Greater Toronto which confirms this critical trend.

An Update to TD Economics' 2002 Report on the GTA Economy (application/pdf Object)

- 33-pg PDF update by Toronto Dominion Bank on GTA (Greater Toronto Area)

www.td.com/...db0707_gta.pdf - Preview

canada cities economic_development economy td_bank toronto

21 Oct 07

Reason Magazine - The Secrets of Intangible Wealth by Ronal Bailey

www.reason.com/...122854.html - Preview

development economic_development economics reason_magazine wealth

But what is intangible wealth, and how on earth is it measured? And what does it mean for the world's people—poor and rich? That's where the story gets even more interesting.

Two years ago the World Bank's environmental economics department set out to assess the relative contributions of various kinds of capital to economic development. Its study, "Where is the Wealth of Nations?: Measuring Capital for the 21st Century," began by defining natural capital as the sum of nonrenewable resources (including oil, natural gas, coal and mineral resources), cropland, pasture land, forested areas and protected areas. Produced, or built, capital is what many of us think of when we think of capital: the sum of machinery, equipment, and structures (including infrastructure) and urban land.

But once the value of all these are added up, the economists found something big was still missing: the vast majority of world's wealth! If one simply adds up the current value of a country's natural resources and produced, or built, capital, there's no way that can account for that country's level of income.

The rest is the result of "intangible" factors—such as the trust among people in a society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and effective government. All this intangible capital also boosts the productivity of labor and results in higher total wealth. In fact, the World Bank finds, "Human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries."

Once one takes into account all of the world's natural resources and produced capital, 80% of the wealth of rich countries and 60% of the wealth of poor countries is of this intangible type. The bottom line: "Rich countries are largely rich because of the skills of their populations and the quality of the institutions supporting economic activity."
the rule of law explains 57 percent of countries' intangible capital. Education accounts for 36 percent.
1 more annotations...
- The World Bank study bolsters the deep insights of the late development economist Peter Bauer. In his brilliant 1972 book Dissent on Development, Bauer wrote: "If all conditions for development other than capital are present, capital will soon be generated locally or will be available . . . from abroad. . . . If, however, the conditions for development are not present, then aid . . . will be necessarily unproductive and therefore ineffective. Thus, if the mainsprings of development are present, material progress will occur even without foreign aid. If they are absent, it will not occur even with aid."
  
  The World Bank's pathbreaking "Where is the Wealth of Nations?" convincingly demonstrates that the "mainsprings of development" are the rule of law and a good school system.

Yule Heibel's Library tagged economic_development → View Popular

Canada's innovation gap - The Globe and Mail

Is the Boulder model tenable for Ann Arbor?

The economic impact of high density development and tall buildings in central business districts: British Property Federation

Protein® Feed | Could Globalization Be Going In Reverse?

"On Jane Jacobs" by Richard Florida (Creative Class Exchange)

Wellesley Institute | Toronto - City of Disparities

An Update to TD Economics' 2002 Report on the GTA Economy (application/pdf Object)

Reason Magazine - The Secrets of Intangible Wealth by Ronal Bailey

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Sponsored Links

Top Contributors

Groups interested in economic...

Global Education Collaborative