Tag Archives: Education

One of the topics at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos is: Squeezed and angry: how to fix the middle class crisis. As a precursor, the WEF published the 135 page  Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2017, which ranks Switzerland 3rd behind Norway and Luxembourg on inclusion, out of a group of 30 advanced economies. In addition, unlike Luxembourg, which is headed slowly backwards, both Switzerland and Norway are moving towards higher inclusion. © Marcelmooij | Dreamstime.com...

The Local reports that in order to cut costs, Denmark’s parliament passed a bill in December that will lead to the imposition of an “education cap.” The bill restricts individuals who already have a higher education degree from pursuing a degree in another field at the same or a lower level.

80,000 hours, that’s how many hours we typically spent working over a lifetime, according to Benjamin Todd and the 80,000 hours team. They have published a book/ebook on how to make the best of it. Their advice for a dream job: Look for work you’re good at, work that helps others, supportive conditions: engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow; supportive colleagues; lack of major negatives like unfair pay; and work that fits your personal life. The book discusses strategies to...

Switzerland retains its number one spot in IMD‘s most recent 2016 World Talent Report. Unlike the other 60 nations in the study, which have seen their performance gyrate, a plot of Switzerland’s rank over the last ten years is a perfectly straight line. First ten years in a row. © Damedeeso | Dreamstime.com The study looks at three things: investment in people, ability to attract skilled foreigners, and readiness, a measure of the availability of skills in the talent pool. Investing in...

In the NZZ, Thomas Fuster and Jürg Müller interview David Autor. Autor on polarization: Der Arbeitsmarkt wird immer polarisierter. Auf der einen Seite haben wir viele gutbezahlte, hochqualifizierte und interessante Stellen. Auf der anderen Seite stehen schlechter entlöhnte und niedrigqualifizierte Stellen, bei denen es quasi darum geht, dem Wohl und Komfort der Wohlhabenden zu dienen. Das ist keine gesunde Entwicklung. Sie schlägt Stufen aus der Leiter des wirtschaftlichen Aufstiegs. Das...

Where you are born makes a big difference to the chances of getting a job when you leave school. In 2015, youth unemployment rates in some OECD countries such as Greece (49.8%), Spain (48.3%) and Italy (40.3%) were all close to 50%. In others such as Germany (7.2%), Austria (10.6%) and Switzerland (8.6%), youth unemployment was far lower. Why? The Young Workers Index 2016, an annual report by PWC, offers some insights. © Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com PWC’s analysis ranks 35 OECD...

In Nature, Tom Clynes reports about research indicating that École Normale Supérieure has the highest proportion of undergraduates that eventually win a Nobel prize. The California Institute of Technology comes second ahead of Harvard, Swarthmore, Cambridge, École Polytechnique, MIT, Columbia, Amherst, and Chicago.

The probability of Republican Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election on November 8 seems remote at the moment—economists on Credit Suisse’s Global Markets team put it at less than 10 percent. So if it did happen, it would come as a major surprise for financial markets. The last time that kind of seemingly low-likelihood event came to pass—during last June’s Brexit vote—most investors were caught wrong-footed. So how might they best prepare for something as unexpected as President...

In an NBER working paper entitled “The Scandinavian Fantasy: The Sources of Intergenerational Mobility in Denmark and the U.S.,” Rasmus Landersø and James J. Heckman argue that [m]easured by income mobility, Denmark is a more mobile society, but not when measured by educational mobility. … Greater Danish income mobility is largely a consequence of redistribution … policies. While Danish social policies for children produce more favorable cognitive test scores for disadvantaged children,...

Last year, the IMF has joined the MOOC movement. On edX, the online education platform founded by Harvard University and MIT, the IMF contributes a set of “IMFx” courses developed by its Institute for Capacity Development. Courses cover Debt sustainability analysis; Energy subsidy reform; and soon Financial programming and policies (analysis and program design) as well as Macroeconomic forecasting.