Poorest Brazilians are as poor as the world's poorest...

...and the richest Brazilians are as rich as the world's richest. Furthermore, the median Brazilian has an income close to the poorest 5% Americans.
Very cool graph (via Economix; I suggest the whole post):

The graph comes from "The Haves and the Have-Nots,” by Brancko Milanovic. (He is the coauthor (with Lindert and Williamson) of a great paper).

China overtakes USA!!!

In 2008, the China's GDP per capita was US$6,725. This is a little bit higher than the GDP per capita of the USA... in 1928! Source: Maddison.

Happy Birthday, prof Coase!

On December 29th, we has turned 100 year old. Amazing. He is still productive and in July his new book will be available: How China Became Capitalist. Here goes a brilliant recent interview . Excerpts:

WN: (...) You have high hopes that the future of economics is in China. What makes you think so?

RC: It is obvious. It is the size of Chinese population. A new idea is always accepted only by a small proportion of the population. But a small proportion of the Chinese is a big number.

(...)

RC: I am now 100 years old. At my stage, life requires a constant effort. As I told you many times, do not get old. (...)

Coase's Theorem and Ricardo's Comparative Advantage are the best single ideas in Economics. Simple, non-trivial and even inteligent people find it hard to grasp. In his twenties, Coase had already proved that he was a genius. The question posed in The Nature of the Firm "Why do firms exist?" opened a whole new research program and has changed economic thought forever. The answer, almost everybody agree, is transaction costs.

Spatial Econometrics Summer School - Rome 2011

Here. Instructors and presenters: Paelinck, Greene, Kelejian, Pesaran, Baltagi, Arbia and Bivand. Wow!

“Immigration and the origins of regional inequality: Government-sponsored European migration to Southern Brazil before World War I”.

Here goes the link to the new paper written by Irineu de Carvalho Filho (IMF) and I. Comments are welcome!

(Yep... vacations are over and I am blogging again...)

Happy Holidays

Someone very important was born on a Xmas day. (Sorry, this is a repeated post.)
Inspired by my friend Shikida, here goes my gift to the my pacient and generous readers:

Economic History Blog is Back!

Here. Very cool google ngrams!
(BTW, check: Atlantic X Pacific and Japan X Brazil.

Catching-up....

Sorry for the lack of new posts. I've been very busy and last week I was in Ethiopia...

- The map of US slavery. (HT, Urban Demographics);
- Google ngram: a inflation X unemployment;
- Time was in love with the president of Brazil in 1954. (HT,"O" Anônimo);
- Inflation targeting and the crisis.

OECD Regional Statistics

Impressive. (HT Waldery Rodrigues Jr. and Patrícia Morita).

Self-promotion

They are talking about the book that contains, among many very interesting papers, the one that Shikida, Nogueról, and I have written on the stature of Brazilians.

Links

This blog has been sleepy lately thanks to my limited time management skills. In order to keep it alive, just a few links:
- Slavery and inequality: what is the causal link?;
- R is what you need. Forbes says so. (HT, Urban Demographics);
- Republic of Letters. Please, click. (I forgot who sent me the link).

MapCrunch, the most addictive site. Ever.

Here. Select "Slideshow", choose a couple of countries and enjoy. (Via BoingBoing).

Walter Isard (1919-2010)

The founder of Regional Science has passed away. Here is his obituary.
Many thanks.

Commodity Lottery, XXI edition

The idea of a commodity lottery is well known among the students of Latin American economic history. It goes like that: the path of development that each country took was related to the characteristics of its main (natural resource based product) natural product exports: income elasticity and price, the possibility of linkages and global competition ... Exporting bananas or rubber is very different from exporting meat or coffee.
Well, now the argument of bad luck comes back. The great "New Economic Geographer" Gordon Hanson writes (via MR) in Why Mexico is not Rich? that the reason behind Mexico's misfortune is that its specialization pattern lies in goods similar to those of China.

China’s size, high rate of growth, and increasing outward orientation mean that its emergence is surely changing international prices, improving the terms of trade for countries that produce its importables and deteriorating the terms of trade for countries that produce its exportables. Mexico fits squarely in the latter camp, whereas Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru fit in the former.

XKCD brillant as ever

Source.
Luis Fernando Verissimo, a Brazilian writer, once proposed "voodoopuncture". Instead of going to the acupuncturist, you would be treated without leaving home. The voodoopuncturist would stick acupunture needles in the voodoo dolls of you! I add that voodoopuncture could be outsourced to Haiti and/or China. It is a win-win-win situation!

Services or Manufacturing. Which sector is the main driver of growth?

Bhagwati challenges the manufacturing fallacy. In addition, this article argues that the services sector played a major role in the revival of Indian manufacturing. (HT Escolhas e Conseqüências).

I am convinced that Colin Clark's division of the economy in three sectors is not that useful anymore. For instance, how much of a US$200 Nike shoe was produced in the services sector?

Regional policy in Europe

This article deals with an issue that has been on my mind for a long time: how to justify regional policies? The article is interesting, but I must say that it pays no attention to the Regional Science literature on the issue.

Correlation and Causation

xkcd

"Living Standards in Latin American History: Height, Welfare, and Development, 1750-2000 "

The book -just published!- is part of the David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies, is distributed by Harvard University Press , and it is available at Amazon. One of its papers is Growth and Inequalities of Height in Brazil, 1939-1981, an anthropometrical study written by Nogueról, Shikida and myself. A previous version of the paper is available here.

Historical Maps of Africa and much more

Here.

(HT Lucas Mation).