A new interactive calculator from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development allows users to compare how different countries compare on various indicators of economic, social, and civic well being. Click below to access the calculator.
A nifty piece of research by the European economists Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessmann finds that “firms and people living in what used to be the [Austro-Hungarian] Empire have higher trust in courts and police” compared to those on opposite sides of the former Hapsburg border. From the article:
Our results show that past formal institutions can leave a long-lasting legacy through cultural norms – even after some are generations of being governed by other authorities. Nearly a century after its demise, the Habsburg Empire lives on in the people living within its former borders – in their attitudes towards and interactions with local state institutions. Comparing individuals living on either side of the long-gone Habsburg border within the same modern-day country, we find that respondents in a current household survey who live on former Habsburg territory have higher levels of trust in courts and police. They are also less likely to pay bribes for these local public services, demonstrating that the institutional heritage influences not only preferences and unilateral decisions but also bilateral bargaining situations in citizen-state interactions.
And because Policy Points likes maps, but rarely gets to use them, below is a map of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, circa 1900, placed over the modern map.
Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the April version of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) …
The total number of job openings in April was 3.0 million, and the total number of unemployed workers was 13.7 million (unemployment is from the Current Population Survey). As a result, the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings was 4.6-to-1 in April, a deterioration from the March ratio of 4.3-to-1. April marks two years and four months that the “job seekers ratio” has been substantially above 4-to-1. A job seekers ratio of 4-to-1 means that for 3 out of 4 unemployed workers, there simply are no jobs. The highest this ratio ever got in the early 2000s downturn was 2.8-to-1 in the middle of 2003.
Economix points out that, at 37.9 weeks, the average spell of unemployment in the United States is at the highest level recorded since 1948.
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