Tidbits

  • Language as a trade barrier – “[I]f knowledge of English in all European countries increased by ten percentage points, European trade would rise by up to 15% on average. Bringing all European countries up to the level of English proficiency enjoyed by the Dutch could increase European trade by up to 70%.”
  • The third edition of Doug Irwin‘s Free Trade Under Fire will be out in a few months.
  • Foreign athletes can now play in the US for more than ten years.
  • Robert Baldwin criticizes the botched special safeguard mechanism that caused so much trouble for the Doha negotiations back in July.
  • The benefits of highly skilled immigration: “If immigrants were merely displacing natives, increases in the H-1B quota should not have led to increases in innovation. But Messrs Kerr and Lincoln found that when the federal government increased the number of people allowed in under the programme by 10%, total patenting increased by around 2% in the short run. This was driven mainly by more patenting by immigrant scientists. But even patenting by native scientists increased slightly, rather than decreasing as proponents of crowding out would have predicted.”