CNE – Centro Para Una Nueva Economía – Center for a New Economy
Non-profit, economic research and policy development organization
Last week, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, led by Del. Donna M. Christensen (D-U.S.V.I.), and the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Informacion Policy, Census, and National Archives, led by Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), held a joint oversight hearing on “Census Data: Special Issues Related to U.S. Territories.”
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data from the 2006 Puerto Rico Community Survey. This survey is the local equivalent of the American Community Survey that is carried out annually to update demographic, economic, housing, and social data at the state and county level in the United States.
Industrial policy is defined as any government initiative that (i) stimulates specific economic activities, (ii) promotes structural change from low productivity to higher productivity activities, and (iii) foments the change from traditional activities to more dynamic activities, regardless of whether those activities are located within industry or manufacturing per se.
In 2005, Washington state considered enacting a bill to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians. Microsoft, one of the largest employers in that state, caved in to pressure from conservative groups and initially decided not to support the measure.
Local bankers and entrepreneurs have long complained of having to pay a “Puerto Rico premium” to entice U.S. and foreign investors to invest in the island. This premium often takes the form of a slightly higher yield or return on local investments that nonetheless have a risk profile similar to comparable investments in the United States.
The data for net revenues received by the commonwealth government’s general fund during the first six months of fiscal year 2007-08 is in. Unfortunately, Puerto Rico’s budget problems remain unabated.
Academics, economists, politicians and other assorted talking heads usually hold up the Irish economy as a model for Puerto Rico to emulate. In the mid-1980s Ireland was referred to as the “economic basket case of Europe” but by 2001 it was spoken of in reverential tones; it has transformed into the fearsome “Celtic tiger”.
John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the first half of the 20th century, wrote in his seminal “General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” (1936) that “practical men, who believe themselves to ve quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
