Saturday, April 5

BUSINESS

US unemployment data fail to capture COVID-19’s full impact – here’s how to fix it fast
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BUSINESS

US unemployment data fail to capture COVID-19’s full impact – here’s how to fix it fast

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed dangerous weaknesses in America’s aging public data system. In one of the greatest jobs crises in the past 100 years, the labor force measures of employment and unemployment are too slow, not local and too often unreliable and irrelevant. The consequences are serious. Governments at all levels are trying to make decisions about how to reduce the cost of joblessness – including whether to provide supplemental unemployment benefits. And they are doing this without sufficient evidence. On Friday, Sept. 4, the latest federal labor force report will come out, and it will not portray the extent of job loss in the communities that desperately need government help. The current system is not designed to respond to such massive shocks, but there are ways to fill t...
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Trump greenlights drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but will oil companies show up?
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BUSINESS, VIDEO REELS

Trump greenlights drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but will oil companies show up?

The Trump administration has announced that it is opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development – the latest twist in a decades-long battle over the fate of this remote area. Its timing is truly terrible. Low oil prices, a pandemic-driven recession and looming elections add up to highly unfavorable conditions for launching expensive drilling operations. In the longer term, the climate crisis and an ongoing shift to a lower-carbon economy raise big questions about future oil demand. I’ve researched the U.S. energy industry for more than 20 years. As I see it, conservative Republicans have backed oil and gas production in ANWR since the 1980s for two overriding reasons. First, to increase domestic oil production and reduce dependence on “foreign oil,” a euphemis...
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Diversity pledges alone won’t change corporate workplaces – here’s what will
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BUSINESS

Diversity pledges alone won’t change corporate workplaces – here’s what will

Dozen of companies, from Apple to Zappos, have reacted to George Floyd’s killing and the protests that followed by pledging to make their workforces more diverse. While commendable, to me it feels a bit like deja vu. Back in 2014, a host of tech companies made similar commitments to diversify their ranks. Their latest reports – which they release annually – show they’ve made little progress. Why have their efforts largely failed? Were they just empty promises? As a gender diversity scholar, I explored these questions in my recent paper published in the Stanford Technology Law Review. The problem is not a lack of commitment but what social scientists call “unconscious bias.” Big tech, little progress Today’s efforts to promote diversity are certainly more specific than the tech industry’...
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Lawmakers keen to break up ‘big tech’ like Amazon and Google need to realize the world has changed a lot since Microsoft and Standard Oil
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BUSINESS

Lawmakers keen to break up ‘big tech’ like Amazon and Google need to realize the world has changed a lot since Microsoft and Standard Oil

Big tech is back in the spotlight. The chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are testifying before Congress on July 29 to defend their market dominance from accusations they’re stifling rivals. Lawmakers and regulators are increasingly talking about antitrust action and possibly breaking the companies up into smaller pieces. I study the effects of digital technologies on lives and livelihoods across 90 countries. I believe advocates of breaking up big technology companies, as well as opponents, are both falling prey to some serious myths and misconceptions. Myth 1: Comparing Google with Standard Oil Arguments for and against antitrust action often use earlier cases as reference points. The massive 19th-century monopoly Standard Oil, for example, has been referred to as ...
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Stocks are plummeting – could coronavirus cause a recession?
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BUSINESS, COVID-19

Stocks are plummeting – could coronavirus cause a recession?

Fears are growing that the new coronavirus will infect the U.S. economy. U.S stocks are headed for their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; companies including Apple and Walmart have been warning of potential sales losses from COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to prepare for the outbreak to spread to the United States, with unknown but potentially “bad” consequences. Lately, many people have asked me, as an economist, a question I haven’t heard in years: Could a virus really send the global and U.S. economies into recession – or worse? Put more pertinently, will COVID-19 trigger an economic meltdown? What a virus can do The worry is understandable; viruses are scary things. I’ve read my share of medical thrillers based on some new virus...
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By filing for bankruptcy, the Boy Scouts may compensate more survivors of sexual abuse
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BUSINESS

By filing for bankruptcy, the Boy Scouts may compensate more survivors of sexual abuse

The Boy Scouts of America has filed for bankruptcy to figure out how to fairly compensate thousands of survivors of alleged sexual abuse who accuse the Scouts of neglecting to protect them. Revelations regarding decades of the abuse of children and long-running institutional failures to stop the abuse are raising questions about the future of the Boy Scouts and what will become of its troops. The Scouts’ initial bankruptcy documents state that 275 lawsuits are pending in state and federal courts across the country, and that attorneys for survivors estimate another 1,400 claims will be filed. The Scouts disclosed that they have spent US$150 million on settlements and legal fees between 2017 and 2019. I’m a legal scholar who has studied the bankruptcy cases filed by hundreds of nonprofit...
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How To Use Social Media For Branding Like A Celebrity
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BUSINESS, SOCIAL MEDIA

How To Use Social Media For Branding Like A Celebrity

Being a celebrity is a never ending task. The fame and fortune that come with this status require constant effort to maintain. As a celebrity, it is very important to maintain one's brand. The brand is what makes people keep talking about you and thus making you a celebrity. As such, a celebrity should maintain their brand. One of the tools that they can use to accomplish this is social media. There are many platforms for celebrity branding. They include YouTube, Facebook Groups and LinkedIn Groups. Read on to learn how to become a celebrity in your niche with the assistance of social media. They use social media accounts to treat their fans like friends To build their brands, celebrities using social media to get closer to their friends. The celebrities use their accounts to speak to th...
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What We Could Do With a $5 Carbon Charge on Your Flight
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BUSINESS

What We Could Do With a $5 Carbon Charge on Your Flight

Like it or not, the world will be flying more in the decades ahead—and flights are for many in the developed world the largest part of an individual’s (and often a business’s) carbon footprint. The aviation sector can do a lot to cut carbon emissions and is keen to do so, not least on grounds of cost reduction, using more efficient aircraft, and looking at alternative fuels. All this is helpful, but unfortunately not enough. If aviation is going to contribute to meeting global carbon reduction goals, there is also going to be a need for offsets. An offset is basically a way for a polluting sector (like aviation) to pay for action in another sector, so that a benefit equivalent to the damage being caused is created. It is a fraught and controversial area, but one that will be necessary if a...
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US probes Amazon’s cloud business in antitrust investigation
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BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY

US probes Amazon’s cloud business in antitrust investigation

The scope of the investigation has been expanded to determine whether products by Amazon Web Services harm competition. U.S. antitrust enforcers have broadened their scrutiny of Amazon.com Inc. beyond its retail operations to include its massive cloud-computing business, according to people familiar with the matter. Investigators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have been asking software companies recently about practices around Amazon’s cloud unit, known as Amazon Web Services, said the people, who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The outreach by the FTC signals that the agency, which is already looking at Amazon’s conduct in its vast online retail business, is taking a broader look at the company to determine whether...
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Amazon sues over loss of defence deal to Microsoft
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BUSINESS

Amazon sues over loss of defence deal to Microsoft

Amazon is expected to argue that political influence by President Donald Trump led to loss of cloud computing deal. Amazon.com Inc. filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging the Defense Department’s choice of rival Microsoft Corp. for a Pentagon cloud-computing contract worth as much as $10 billion. The lawsuit, which was filed under seal in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, marks Amazon’s most aggressive push to defend its competitive edge in the lucrative and cutthroat world of federal government contracts. Amazon previously said it planned to formally protest its loss of the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud contract because the evaluation process was deficient. “It’s critical for our country that the government an...
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