Free Market Mojo

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• Did Trade Liberalization Help Women in Mexico?


• What is Attracting Criminals to the Euro Zone?


• Losing Your Job May Cost You Your Friends Too


• 18 American Veterans Commit Suicide Every Day

Did Trade Liberalization Help Women in Mexico? Posted: 31 Jul 2010 06:00 AM PDT In their latest NBER paper, Ernesto Aguayo-Tellez, Jim Airola and Chinhui Juhn examine the impact of trade liberalization policies on women's labor market outcomes in Mexico. Of course, women benefit from non-protectionist, liberal trade policies. The authors find that “women's relative wage remained stable while employment increased, leading to an increase in women's wage bill share.” Between-industry shifts, consistent with trade-based explanations, account for up to 40 percent of the growth in women's wage bill share between 1990 and 2000. Comparing across industries, we find tariff cuts and exports are positively related to industry growth and women benefited since some of the fastest growing industries were female-intensive industries…Finally, we find suggestive evidence that household bargaining power shifted in favor of women. Expenditures shifted from goods associated with male preference, such as men's clothing and tobacco and alcohol, to those associated with female preference such as women's clothing and education.

What is Attracting Criminals to the Euro Zone? Posted: 31 Jul 2010 05:00 AM PDT Big bills. And now criminals are playing an important role in boosting the euro zone’s  financial stability, the Wall Street Journal reports. That’s thanks to their demand, according to European authorities, for high-denomination euro bank notes, in particular the €200 and €500 bills. The European Central Bank issues these notes for a hefty profit that is welcome at a time when its response to the financial crisis has called its financial strength into question. The high-value bills are increasingly “making the euro the currency of choice for underground and black economies, and for all those who value anonymity in their financial transactions and investments,” wrote Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, in a recent research report. The business of issuing euro notes, produced at almost zero cost, is “wildly profitable” for the ECB, Mr. Buiter wrote.

Losing Your Job May Cost You Your Friends Too Posted: 31 Jul 2010 03:00 AM PDT Among the many emotional drawbacks associated with long-term unemployment is the loss of friends, according to a new study from Pew Research Center According to Pew, nearly half (46%) of those unemployed six months or more say joblessness has strained family relations. This is compared to 39% of those who were unemployed for less then three months. Meanwhile, more than four-in-ten (43%) long-term unemployed say they lost contact with close friends.

18 American Veterans Commit Suicide Every Day Posted: 31 Jul 2010 02:00 AM PDT This is really a national tragedy that I wish wasn’t so: Every day is a national tragedy. This is not hyperbole. Eighteen veterans kill themselves every day, a figure that represents twenty percent of the suicides in this country, and veterans constitute twenty-three percent of this nation’s homeless population. Veterans represent nine percent of America’s population, so those numbers, to me, are staggering.

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