Forum for Innovation

The Forum for Innovation reads the Internet so that you don’t have to, sharing a short list of curated blog posts for your Friday reading. 

The day after Valentine’s Day, it’s worth remembering that love is a valuable thing. Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers write in Bloomberg about the value of love as more than just noted academics, but as an actual couple. They point to a groundbreaking Gallup poll that found 70% of respondents across the globe reported a “love-filled day.” The poll showed that while wealthier individuals were slightly more likely than others to report feeling love, the effect was still pretty negligible, and no such result was found when comparing rich nations to poor ones. Instead, culture mattered a lot. Japan needed a few more good hugs; only 59% had felt love the prior day. Central Asian countries also tended to do poorly. Those in The Philippines may be the ones giving the hugs, since over 90% reported feeling loved. Stevenson and Wolfers believe that love is shown to make economies and societies more resilient. Rich or poor, love represents the best form of insurance around for when bad times come. The poll shows then culture does matter for the strength of an economy and its long term prosperity. As the Beatles once said, “money can’t buy me love,” but love is surely valuable. 

The National Association of Manufacturers has four goals for America, laid out here in GE’s Ideas Lab:

1. “The United States will be the best place in the world to manufacture and attract foreign direct investment.
2. Manufacturers in the United States will be the world’s leading innovators.
3. The United States will expand access to global markets to enable manufacturers to reach the 95 percent of consumers who live outside our borders.
4. Manufacturers in the United States will have access to the workforce that the 21st-century economy demands.” 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects it’ll take another five years for America’s GDP to recover to its “normal” trajectory of five years ago. In other words, the CBO is forecasting a lost decade. Keith Hennessey profiles this unhappy news. 

Once you start thinking of a city as a concrete unit of analysis, like a business, a whole range of terrifically practical and important questions arise. Credit goes to noted economist Paul Romer for leading the way. 

Giovanni Peri has three principles for immigration reform:

1. Simplification is important; removing a myriad of overlapping provisions will allow employers to compete in a clearly navigable labor market
2. Allotment of temporary visas that are tradable and adjustable based on labor market demand, which will in turn make immigration laws much easier to enforce 
3. Productivity is paramount for economic growth, and so it is that foreign STEM workers have generated 10-20% annual productivity growth that resulted in 4% more wealth per person from 1990 to 2010.