“The changing distribution of workers might be able to explain up to one-half of the slowdown in labor productivity growth from 2.5% to 1.5% per year since the 1960s," said Dietrich Vollrath, a University of Houston economist. Indeed, this effect has accelerated since 2000, when workers, in aggregate, started to move from higher to lower productivity sectors.
Services productivity, besides its natural disadvantage, may be facing an added headwind: The sector is absorbing millions of workers whose underlying skills may not be well suited to the jobs they take on.
If people start doing work they are relatively good at, and if manufacturers shed their least efficient workers first, manufacturing productivity will improve as it downsizes but services-sector productivity will suffer as it absorbs workers who are a poor fit. (Sections in bold are mine).
"Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways are exacerbating huge, harmful algal blooms that create oxygen-deprived stretches of the gulf, the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay, according to a new report by Mighty, an environmental group chaired by former congressman Henry Waxman...
...Nutrients flowing into streams, rivers and the ocean from agriculture and wastewater stimulate an overgrowth of algae, which then decomposes. This results in hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, in the water, causing marine life either to flee or to die...
...America’s vast appetite for meat is driving much of this harmful pollution, according to Mighty, which blamed a small number of businesses for practices that are “contaminating our water and destroying our landscape” in the heart of the country..."
“Cream prices, which determine input costs for the butter business, have increased substantially during the first quarter,” the company said.
“This will put pressure on margins in our butter business. We have reduced our promotional activity on Country Life, which is adversely impacting volumes but mitigating some of the margin pressure.” (underlining mine)
1. Ceterus Paribus (holding all other variables constant--except the one we are addressing) ask yourself "Is this scenario a function of Demand or Supply?" Look at your Determinants listed above---make sure you confine yourself to these determinants and do not read more into it!
2. After determining which curve to shift ask yourself: ""Will this scenario have a POSITIVE ("good") or NEGATIVE ("bad") impact on Demand or Supply (whichever you decided in question #1)?
3. (a) If it has a positive impact the curve will shift RIGHT. This is true whether you are shifting the Demand OR Supply Curve.After you shift the appropriate curve, simply locate the new equilibrium point where Demand and Supply intersect showing a new Price and Market Quantity.
(b) If it has a negative impact the curve will shift LEFT. This is true whether you are shifting the Demand OR Supply Curve.
""Some analysts say bacon, meanwhile, is becoming a yearlong staple that consumers are eager to procure. That voracious demand has left wholesalers in a squeeze. Retailers “have turned hand-to-mouth, buying only what they need, waiting for production to increase and prices to decline,” said Dennis Smith, a commodities broker at Archer Financial Services in Chicago.
Pig farmers are struggling to keep up with demand. The national hog herd rose to a seasonal record of 71.7 million head in early June, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up 3% from a year earlier.
But it hasn’t been enough to satiate bacon demand. Stocks of pork bellies in commercial freezers fell to 31.6 million pounds in May, down 59% from a year earlier and the lowest figure for the month since the USDA began keeping track in the 1950s.""
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"...The core of the answer to this question can be read in the chart below, showing the highly skewed distribution of per capita health spending across the US population. The phenomenon is known as the “80-20 rule,” indicating that 20% of any large insured populations tends to account for 80% of all health care spending on that population...."
""Bison prices have been rallying as demand for the niche product is rising among U.S. consumers amid a favorable exchange rate and as more people seek out organic foods and healthy alternative proteins. The grass-fed meat has fewer calories, less cholesterol and fat than beef, and the animals are raised without hormones or antibiotics.""
""As demand gains, Canada’s ranchers are becoming more reluctant to send animals to slaughter, and instead are holding them back in favor of herd expansion. As a result, fewer bison are being exported for processing in the U.S., Canada’s biggest market, and domestic production probably fell 25 percent in 2016 from a year earlier to 10,500 animals, Kremeniuk said.""
Expectations of robust demand from China boosted rubber to a three-year high after buoyant car sales data for November lifted expectations of higher tyre demand.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers reported vehicle sales of 2.9m in November, up 16.6 per cent year on year. Tax breaks introduced this year on small passenger cars have spurred demand and while the November figure was down from a September peak of 26.1 per cent, it marked the sixth straight double-digit rise in growth.
Downtown areas across the country have been undergoing revitalizations in the last decade. While this has led to some concerns of bubbles, in reality it reflects a slower moving structural trend that extends back to the 1980s. New York City, for example, has come a long way. A 1981 film, Escape From New York, depicted the city's fictional near-term future, when a 400% increase in crime would lead the government to turn it into a giant prison. New research from the Census Bureau sheds some light on why the revitalizations that make Escape From New York seem less plausible today are occurring.
First, it’s important to not exaggerate the extent of the downtown revival. As Jed Kolko has documented, as far as population and job growth go, the move toward more dense places is mostly about a relatively small number of higher-income, working-age, educated households.
This is probably partly because of the inability of these places to get much denser, either because of regulatory or physical constraints. So instead of massively growing populations in downtown cores, we’re seeing slight population growth and significant price gains.
The census research—from Lena Edlund, Cecilia Machado and Maria Sviatschi—swats down a few theories of urban revitalization. They point out that lower crime rates are an unlikely driver, as the start of the revitalization predates the drop in crime. In addition, downtown revitalizations have been occurring in European cities that never had much of a crime wave to begin with. Traffic congestion outside the core is also an unlikely explanation, as even cities with declining populations, such as Detroit, have experienced downtown revitalizations.
They also point out that while amenities may play a role, many large urban downtowns have had a high level of cultural and other amenities for decades. Amenities are likely to amplify downtown revival, however, as increased purchasing power downtown increases amenities, which in turn draws in more high-income households that value the amenities. Amenities nevertheless are unlikely to be “ground zero," or a first mover, in the downtown revitalization trend.
Instead, the authors argue that greater labor force participation and longer hours of work among high-skilled households are the main driver. In theory, they suggest, when work hours are short, the more affordable suburbs are desirable. But when work hours are long, leisure time becomes scarcer and more valuable, and the shorter commute makes the city more desirable. As a result, as hours worked have gone up for skilled households over time, they have come to prefer the city more.
And indeed, hours worked have gone up for the rich. Educated women have entered the workforce in growing numbers, and skilled people are increasingly working long hours and consuming less leisure time. This scarcity of leisure time makes a shorter commute more important.The census analysis shows that house prices near the central business district of a city were lower than in the suburbs in 1980, but this has reversed over time. Since 1990, being close to downtown has had a stronger and stronger positive impact on prices. Their results also show that the value of being close to downtown has grown more in cities that experienced stronger growth in the demand for skilled labor.
Overall, theories about the causes of downtown revitalizations are difficult to test and this study is unlikely to be the last word. This research at least suggests that the role of increasing work hours among the most-skilled deserves more consideration.
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