So what does Wal Mart do to the local labour market when it opens?

Pretty much straight forward, I would have said when I read this paper. But the challenge is to consider whether all relative factors are considered? Would you say that there is such a high inefficiency (40%!!!) in local labour markets that a Wal Mart worker is equal to 1.4 local workers? I can understand that country level retail earnings will drop but will they ship in better workers? Of course not, so the productivity difference is evidenced by better computers, better supply chains, better purchasing, etc. etc.

Very curious results.

We estimate the effects of Wal-Mart stores on county-level retail employment and earnings, accounting for endogeneity of the
location and timing of Wal-Mart openings that most likely biases the evidence against finding adverse effects of Wal-Mart stores.
We address the endogeneity problem using a natural instrumental variables approach that arises from the geographic and time
pattern of the opening of Wal-Mart stores, which slowly spread out from the first stores in Arkansas. The employment results
indicate that a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying that each Wal-Mart
worker replaces approximately 1.4 retail workers. This represents a 2.7 percent reduction in average retail employment. The payroll
results indicate that Wal-Mart store openings lead to declines in county-level retail earnings of about $1.4 million, or 1.5 percent.
Of course, these effects occurred against a backdrop of rising retail employment, and only imply lower retail employment growth
than would have occurred absent the effects of Wal-Mart.

Technorati Tags: economics,employment,globalisation,USA

Hilarious story about a conference visit!

This was absolutely hilarious!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

What a shame:@ Mullah accidently blows up self, sons

See here: (i will avoid making jokes about draining the gene pool...)


A LANDMINE blew up in the home of a religious cleric in southern Afghanistan, killing the mullah, two of his sons and two other men who had been preparing an attack, police said today.
The group was likely associated with the Taliban, he said. The extremist militants are particular active in Helmand province, where they are said to be tied up with opium and heroin traffickers.
Taliban suicide and roadside bombings are generally aimed at Afghan and international soldiers but kill more civilians.


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Perhaps one of the biggest bribe taker ever?

If you draw a ratio between the illegal earnings through bribery and the usual legal earnings through salaries and sales, then i guess this man will be the top of the scale who took $145 million in bribes while his monthly salary was $100.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

On a smoggy day, you cannot see China

This was gobsmacking! That's smog, that dirty greyish cloud over very large parts of china is smog!



All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

A South African take on the Ant and the Grasshopper!

Remember this post? Now read this. I Quote:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

The Media show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The world is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? The ANC stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing "We shall overcome" and "mshimi wami" . The ANC then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

The liberals proclaim that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the ANC drafts the "Black Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act" retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs -- and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes -- his home is confiscated by the government.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in (which just happens to be the ant's old house) crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.



All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Berlin hardens trade stance with Iran

Berlin seems to be turning up the heat on Iran. See here. I quote:

Germany is cracking down on business with Iran far more systematically than suspected, unpublished figures from the economics ministry showed on Monday.
The new data show a dramatic drop in export credit guarantees granted to German exporters doing business with Iran last year, and a steady drop in exports to the country since 2005.
Iran was only Germany’s 40th biggest export market in 2006, according to figures from the Federal Statistical Office, with exports to the country totalling €4.15bn. The Islamic Republic is Germany’s 75th biggest source of imports . But Germany has been the biggest exporter to the country for the past 30 years. Iranian experts think China could have taken its place last year.

Curious, what exactly is Germany exporting to Iran which costs that much? Remeber Germany has had some dealings with both Iraq and Iranian attempts to build a bomb!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

India court in moustache notice

How dare they!, I am going to support the poor man!

India's Supreme Court has issued a notice to a state-run airline asking it to explain why an air steward was sacked for wearing a big moustache. ....
"How can somebody be removed from a job because of the size of his moustache?" the Supreme Court bench comprising Justice HK Sema and Justice Markanday Katju asked on Monday.

EXACTLY! says the beadyman twirling his mustache!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Inbreeding - some more thoughts

The first time I heard about this was in Saudi Arabia, when a colleague's wife, who is a midwife talked about it. My colleague works in an international bank and has worked in many countries around the world and his wife, being a midwife, also worked. So when she said that 4 out of 10 babies born in Saudi Arabia are genetically challenged, I fell out of bed.

Then I was reminded of this again when the furore over this Pakistani origin Brits broke out in the UK. I quote:

Mrs Cryer raised the issue two years ago after research showed that British Pakistanis were 13 times more likely to have children with disorders than the general population.
Speaking on the Radio 4 Today programme, Mrs Cryer said: "The vast majority of marriages in the Muslim community in Bradford, 80 per cent, are trans-continental. The vast majority of those are to cousins. Many of those do result in either infant mortality or in recessive disorders."
Asked if the problem was recognised in the British Pakistani community, she said: "They are in denial at the moment. But I am hoping that now we have broken the silence leaders will start to have a debate about it and perhaps even give advice and say: 'Look, you can carry on marrying your cousins but there is a price to pay.'
"The price to pay is often in either babies being born dead, babies being born very early and babies being born with very severe genetically-transmitted disorders. This is a blight on that community but particularly on specific families." In one family she knew, all three daughters had to have liver transplants. "One girl has had, I think, four liver transplants to the point where she's so worn down by all of this the poor girl is having to receive psychiatric help as well. No one wants to wish that sort of thing on their children."

I then went and looked for the references and found it in an abstract.

First-cousin marriage may be a significant risk factor for specific types of congenital heart disease in a consanguineous population. Inbreeding studies suggest an autosomal recessive component in the cause of some congenital heart defects. We studied a large sample of patients with structural congenital heart defects (CHD) identified through the Congenital Heart Disease Registry at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After exclusions of chromosome abnormalities and non-participation, data were collected on 891 consecutive patients who were registered between January and August, 1998. Data on first- cousin consanguinity and type of CHD diagnosis were collected. A z test of proportions was used to determine the association between consanguinity and subtypes of CHD. Data indicate that the proportion of first cousins in the CHD sample is higher than the proportion in the general population, supporting a hypothesis of autosomal recessive gene involvement in congenital heart disease. When subgroups of CHD were analyzed, first-cousin consanguinity was significantly associated with ventricular septal defect (VSD), atrial septal defect (ASD), atrioventricular septal defect (AVSD), pulmonary stenosis (PS), and pulmonary atresia (PA). There was no relationship between consanguinity and tetralogy of Fallot (TOF), tricuspid atresia (TA), aortic stenosis (AS), co-arctation of the aorta (CoA), and patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). Thus, in a population with a high degree of inbreeding, consanguinity may exacerbate underlying genetic risk factors, particularly in the offspring of first cousins. There may be a recessive component in the causation of some cardiac defects.

My gut feel is that its cultural and the fact that women are in purdah. So the families only get together and external people dont. So when you are having cousins spending time together, its but natural to have cousin marriages. Complicated, not sure if I know the full answer but this surely is avoidable given the advances in genetic engineering?

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Photo Essay: Encounters of the Green Kind

I like gardening and on a recent vacation, took quite a lot of photo's of flowers, gardens and the like. But totally blaming Dee for making me conscious of the fact that I have been shamefully negligent in writing about flowers, I decided to put together some photo's which I found interesting in Lucknow.

These photographs are from all over the city, but mostly from in and around my in-law's place. I am also totally ignorant about the names of the flowers, but operating on the assumption that you dont have to know the name of the breed to love your doggie or the name of the train driver to enjoy the train ride, I am blissfully (ignorance is bliss?) going to plonk some photo's here. So not much commentary here, I am afraid.

Enjoy.

The colours were brilliant when observed closely, and velvety in texture.   This flower looked so lonely and childish, but still brave, pushing up! The familar marigold flower. Did you guys eat the hearts of these flowers? we used to. Pretty yummy with a dash of salt and chilly powder.   These two pictures of the same flower, one on the left which shows the deep rich colour in the middle of the flower, while the one on the right shows the proud stamen. Now one wonders how they would get pollinated if the pollen buds were so far away from the honey bits at the bottom. two colours of rhododendrons. I like the orange bits. Reminds me a bit of the flame of the forest tree.
Jack and the beanstalk? lovely tall creepers going up the wall. The two on the left are very thick and growing rapidly, while the one on the right is still a kid.   Some trees around the house. Very nicely maintained, I must admit. 
 

  

  some shrubs and potted plants.


Very bright flowers.

The above two are from the Residency Gardens.

 

The set of 9 above are from the Chota Imambara gardens.  There is a bee on one of the flowers as well.
 

Here's the night garden at home.

If you wanted to see all the photo's in a bigger resolution in a slideshow, then please click here.

Technorati Tags: Photo Essay