The Unassuming Economist

From a paper by Zheng Chris Cao:

“In recent years, international tourism has grappled with various impediments to cross-border activities triggered by geopolitical shifts. This study examines whether globalization is in retreat through the lens of international tourism. We employed spatial autoregressive models, in which several connectivity mechanisms are embedded, to analyze a global dataset of tourist flows. Our findings reveal that spatial dependence in tourism flows significantly weakened during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and became increasingly driven by institutional factors, while the effects of trade links and geographical proximity diminished. This study contributes to the literature on tourism globalization by providing empirical evidence of the megatrends of deglobalization. For tourism firms operating under the assumption of ongoing globalization, these megatrends signal a significant change in the business environment. Firms should be prepared to reorient their market focus and reallocate their resources toward institutionally aligned regions in an evolving global landscape.”

From a paper by Alyshia Gálvez:

“Since Jan. 1, 1994, the economies of the US, Mexico and Canada have been linked in the North American Free Trade Agreement which facilitated the flow of certain kinds of goods and capital across borders and around the continent, while limiting others. Designed as a strategy for ‘mutual prosperity’ (in Bill Clinton’s words at the inaugural ceremony), NAFTA, and its successor, the USMCA, has been a failure. While untangling the entwined economies could be even more destructive than maintaining the deal, what imaginative possibilities have been foreclosed by the current agreement and how could these be opened back up? This article will engage in grounded speculation: what could an alternative or ‘anti-’ Nafta look like? What would it mean to design for mobility, freedom and abundance? How could a reconfigured agreement allow for and facilitate participation in economic, cultural, social and other kinds of exchanges at all scales, not only in ways that facilitate the participation of massive transnational corporations? What could a model for hemispheric food sovereignty designed for health and sustainability look like?”

From a paper by Matthew Busigin:

“This paper presents a novel methodology for enhancing macroeconomic output gap models through systematic residual analysis. Starting with a baseline model incorporating unemployment rate, total capacity utilization, and exchange rate dynamics, we develop a comprehensive framework for identifying and incorporating missing economic variables. Our enhanced model achieves a dramatic improvement in explanatory power, increasing R2 from 86.7% to 95.2% (8.6 percentage point improvement) while reducing root mean square error by 40.2%. The methodology successfully identifies optimal lag structures for monetary policy transmission (6 months), labor market intensive margins (3 months), and fiscal policy effects (3 months). This approach demonstrates that systematic residual analysis, guided by economic theory, can substantially improve macroeconomic model performance and provides a replicable framework for model enhancement across various economic applications.”

From a paper by Manjari Johri:

“This paper explores how neoliberal economic policies shaped industrial growth in India, but
also contributed to widening social inequality and environmental degradation. This study
examines how India can balance the economic gains of neoliberal industrialisation with its
mission for environmental preservation and social development. Using the qualitative
approach, the paper has built its argument based on secondary sources like policy documents,
government reports, and corporate CSR disclosures. David Harvey’s insights provide an
understanding of neoliberalism and its impact on democratic principles of society and on the
environment. The research proposes that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), mandated by
India’s Companies Act of 2013, balances the capitalist agenda, maximising the profit share
through its activities in areas like renewable energy, afforestation, and community
development. The paper argues that achieving sustainable development requires rethinking
market priorities by focusing on ethical governance, social inclusion, and ecological
responsibility.”

From the US Department of Energy:

” This report reviews scientific certainties and uncertainties in how anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions have affected, or will affect, the Nation’s climate, extreme weather events, and selected metrics of societal well-being. Those emissions are increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through a complex and variable carbon cycle, where some portion of the additional CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries.

Elevated concentrations of CO2 directly enhance plant growth, globally contributing to “greening” the planet and increasing agricultural productivity [Section 2.1, Chapter 9]. They also make the oceans less alkaline (lower the pH). That is possibly detrimental to coral reefs, although the recent rebound of the Great Barrier Reef suggests otherwise [Section 2.2].

Carbon dioxide also acts as a greenhouse gas, exerting a warming influence on climate and weather [Section 3.1]. Climate change projections require scenarios of future emissions. There is evidence that scenarios widely-used in the impacts literature have overstated observed and likely future emission trends [Section 3.1].

The world’s several dozen global climate models offer little guidance on how much the climate responds to elevated CO2, with the average surface warming under a doubling of the CO2 concentration ranging from 1.8°C to 5.7°C [Section 4.2]. Data-driven methods yield a lower and narrower range [Section 4.3]. Global climate models generally run “hot” in their description of the climate of the past few decades − too much warming at the surface and too much amplification of warming in the lower- and mid-troposphere [Sections 5.2-5.4]. The combination of overly sensitive models and implausible extreme scenarios for future emissions yields exaggerated projections of future warming.

Most extreme weather events in the U.S. do not show long-term trends. Claims of increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts are not supported by U.S. historical data [Sections 6.1-6.7]. Additionally, forest management practices are often overlooked in assessing changes in wildfire activity [Section 6.8]. Global sea level has risen approximately 8 inches since 1900, but there are significant regional variations driven primarily by local land subsidence; U.S. tide gauge measurements in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate [Chapter 7].

Attribution of climate change or extreme weather events to human CO2 emissions is challenged by natural climate variability, data limitations, and inherent model deficiencies [Chapter 8]. Moreover, solar activity’s contribution to the late 20th century warming might be underestimated [Section 8.3.1].

Both models and experience suggest that CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and excessively aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial [Chapters 9, 10, Section 11.1]. Social Cost of Carbon estimates, which attempt to quantify the economic damage of CO2 emissions, are highly sensitive to their underlying assumptions and so provide limited independent information [Section 11.2].

U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays [Chapter 12].”