Enlaces 10.03.2014

Qué puede hacer Obama en Ucrania, por Jordi Pérez Colomé.

¿Qué puede hacer Obama? Si pretende seguir con la pretensión de tener un amigo en el Kremlin solo puede aguantar la tormenta, que Putin consiga lo que quiera sin más muertos y que todo se olvide pronto. Si la situación en Ucrania se complica, deberá subir las críticas y las acciones y olvidarse de colaborar.

Is U.S. Economic Stagnation Inevitable? Economic doom through aging, ignorance, inequality, debt and technological stagnation, by Ronald Bailey.

This is doubtful. Consider Gordon’s assertion that “future advances in medicine related to the genome have already proved to be disappointing.” It is true that many researchers had hoped that decoding the genetic makeup of human beings would have generated new cures faster than it has, but medical progress is likely to speed up soon. For example, using results garnered from cheap whole genome sequencing, physicians will be able to employ medical search engines enabled by Big Data and artificial intelligence to precisely diagnose and design very specific treatments for individual patients. Physicians will likely to be able to repair broken genes, seed failing organs with refreshed stem cells, or even use 3D printing to create replacement organs. Surgical robots will guide doctors in installing the newly printed livers and kidneys. Driverless vehicles might even deliver the replacement organs.

Gordon, Robert J. Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds. 2012. (Included in Culture).

This paper raises basic questions about the process of economic growth. It questions the assumption, nearly universal since Solow’s seminal contributions of the 1950s, that economic growth is a continuous process that will persist forever. There was virtually no growth before 1750, and thus there is no guarantee that growth will continue indefinitely. Rather, the paper suggests that the rapid progress made over the past 250 years could well turn out to be a unique episode in human history. The paper is only about the United States and views the future from 2007 while pretending that the financial crisis did not happen. Its point of departure is growth in per-capita real GDP in the frontier country since 1300, the U.K. until 1906 and the U.S. afterwards. Growth in this frontier gradually accelerated after 1750, reached a peak in the middle of the 20th century, and has been slowing down since. The paper is about “how much further could the frontier growth rate decline?”

A Leading Light in Africa, in Wordfolio.

Recent forecasts by the World Bank say Ghana’s GDP growth for 2014 will grow by a mere 7.4 per cent. At a time when many first-world economies are still hard pressed to barely tread water, 7.4 per cent is highly enviable. Put in Ghana’s recent context, however, it almost seems low. Take into consideration that in 2011, the economy expanded by 15 per cent thanks to the commencement of oil production – ranking its GDP growth third in the world after Macao and Mongolia – and suddenly 7.4 per cent seems meek in comparison.

Africa rising. A hopeful continent, in The Economist.

African statistics are often unreliable, but broadly the numbers suggest that human development in sub-Saharan Africa has made huge leaps. Secondary-school enrolment grew by 48% between 2000 and 2008 after many states expanded their education programmes and scrapped school fees. Over the past decade malaria deaths in some of the worst-affected countries have declined by 30% and HIV infections by up to 74%. Life expectancy across Africa has increased by about 10% and child mortality rates in most countries have been falling steeply.