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Why it’s harder for American workers to get ahead, and what we can do about it

On this 400th episode of the Brookings Cafeteria podcast, Marcela Escobari, a senior fellow in Global Economy and Development at Brookings, talks about her new report on how to tackle the worker mobility crisis in the U.S. economy. In the face of rising inequality, stagnating wages, a shrinking middle class, and now a global pandemic, many American workers are finding it difficult getting ahead. And today, millions of low-wage workers lack job security and benefits and face the threat of dislocation due to automation and other factors.
Also, in a new Sustainable Development Spotlight, Senior Fellow George Ingram shares his insights on why we need better data quality reporting to track donor funding that advances gender equality. Too often, Ingram says, women and girls are left out of the development process, leading to inequitable societies and less productive economies. Listen to this segment also on SoundCloud.

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Report
Moving up: Promoting workers’ upward mobility using network analysis

Marcela Escobari, Ian Seyal, and Carlos Daboin Contreras
Monday, June 14, 2021

2021
Jul
8

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Making progress on gender equality: It’s time for more transparency

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11:15 AM EDT

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Marcela Escobari

Senior Fellow – Global Economy and Development, Center for Sustainable Development

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Managing Editor, Podcasts and Digital Projects

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Remote work wanted? Analyzing online job postings during COVID-19

In early 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic started to affect the health of millions around the world, epidemiologists and public health experts pointed to social distancing as the key measure to control the spread of the virus. From an economic perspective, it became immediately clear that the ability to work from home would determine workers’ outcomes.

Indeed, our estimates using Current Population Survey basic monthly samples from 2020 suggest that employment in “teleworkable” occupations (those that don’t require working outdoors, using protective equipment, moving around, or operating machinery ) contracted by 7.3 percent between February and April 2020 compared to an 18.6 percent contraction for “non-teleworkable” occupations. Since then, demand for non-teleworkable occupations surged, and the employment gap between teleworkable and non-teleworkable occupations narrowed to only a 1.7 percentage point difference.
Arguably, social distancing should have also meant greater resilience in hiring efforts for teleworkable occupations during the pandemic. However, this was not the case: By May 2020, postings in teleworkable occupations had dropped by 40 percent, while those for not-remotable had dropped only by 25 percent. As postings for non-teleworkable occupations had recovered to 13 percent below pre-pandemic levels by December 2020, teleworkable postings remained 35 percent behind their February benchmark (Figure 1).
In a new working paper, we use Burning Glass Technologies (BGT) data on online job postings to disentangle this counterintuitive pattern. We find that employers’ hesitation to hire workers for whom on-site experience is crucial to their productivity could be one of the factors behind the slow recovery of postings for teleworkable occupations.
Figure 1. Job postings, employment, and “remotability” of work during 2020

Source: Authors’ analysis of Burning Glass Technologies (BGT) online job postings data and IPUMS CPS.
One plausible explanation for teleworkable occupations’ lagging job postings is that as social distancing disproportionately affected non-teleworkable occupations, the bulk of the hiring efforts focused on that group as the economy reopened. This hypothesis, however, does not explain why non-teleworkable job postings shrank by 30 percent over the first two months of the pandemic, while teleworkable postings did so by 35.8 percent, nor does it explain the persistent lag for teleworkable postings toward the end of 2020. Moreover, our analyses show that even after taking away the effect on employment losses on this trend—drop in postings—remotable occupations show a slower postings recovery than the rest.
Another factor behind the reduced hiring efforts toward teleworkable occupations could be their relatively low presence in “essential” or “critical” industries (e.g., health care, logistics, or food manufacturing), whose demand stayed strong during most of 2020. Indeed, this explains why demand for front-line workers—those in roles that are both non-teleworkable and play a large role in essential industries—surged. However, hiring efforts towards teleworkable occupations were even lower among those often required by essential industries, like administrative assistants and accounting clerks, both occupations with 40 percent fewer job postings in December 2020 than in February 2020. Interestingly, we also find that the robust hiring demand for “front-line” workers did not translate to stronger employment in these occupations during the pandemic.

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So far, the best explanation for companies’ lackluster demand for teleworkable occupations is that, though employers made special effort to retain employees performing tasks that rely on experience and can be performed from a distance, they disproportionately halted their hiring. For example, employment levels for general and operation managers at the end of 2020 were just 10 percent below February 2020, while their postings lagged by almost 28 percent. Evidently, acquiring much of the experience for—in this case—managing an organization, is challenging without initial in-person interactions.
Something’s got to give. If companies continue to extend their work from home policies, HR managers will need new ways to help workers acquire valuable experience. More generally, as the fraction of workers that will continue working remotely once the economy fully reopens is yet to be seen, our results highlight that the relatively stable employment of teleworkable occupations during the pandemic did not imply better employability for those eager to enter these occupations. In a socially distancing labor market, workers searching for remote jobs may face a more limited hiring demand than expected.

Remote work wanted? Evidence from job postings during COVID-19

Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic pushed firms to comply with social distancing guidelines, the relative demand for work that could be performed from home was expected to increase. However, while employment in “remotable” occupations was relatively resilient during the pandemic, online job postings—which measure demand for new hires—for these occupations dropped disproportionately. This apparent contradiction is not explained by prior job “churning” in “non-remote” jobs, nor by the recomposition of the labor market across economic sectors. The underperformance of postings in “remotable” jobs during the pandemic concentrates in essential occupations and occupations with high returns to experience.
Download the working paper

The carbon price conundrum

With less than three months until the United Nations climate change summit (COP26) in Glasgow in November, formal and informal discussions and pre-negotiations are now in full swing. A new U.S. administration recognizes the urgency of the situation, and there is much broader political support globally for ambitious climate policies. The world still has a chance to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels.

But as a major new assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows, the race between climate change and emissions reductions remains tight. Limiting the damage already done will require the use of all available tools and broad global participation. As two recent carbon-pricing-related proposals demonstrate, however, there remain important differences between approaches to reach those goals.
The 2015 COP21 summit in Paris did not seek a binding international treaty that would impose policies on countries. Accordingly, the approach enshrined in the Paris climate agreement allowed for countries to declare their own voluntary emissions-reduction goals—Nationally Determined Contributions—and climate policies, with the understanding that these would become more ambitious over time.
And yet, the European Union has now proposed a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that represents a departure from the voluntary spirit of the Paris accord. The new mechanism, part of a package of climate measures announced in mid-July, would impose the equivalent of tariffs on imports from countries where producers pay a carbon price below that of the EU’s, set either directly or through an emissions trading system (ETS).
Though the proposal is silent on regulatory measures that have an equivalent effect, it is reasonable to assume that the EU would be open to accepting them if they are ambitious enough. Such acceptance would be particularly important to avoid conflict with the United States, where regulations will likely continue to be the main part of climate policies.
At first, the EU’s CBAM would cover imports of relatively simple products—electricity, iron and steel, cement, aluminum, and some fertilizers—but it would be extended to other goods that would involve more complex value chains over time. Importers would have to buy CBAM certificates (reflecting carbon content) that would cost what the EU’s ETS permits cost domestic producers, thus effectively imposing the EU’s carbon price on exporters in countries subject to the CBAM.

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The EU would apply the CBAM irrespective of the exporting country’s per capita income, and without regard for the principle generally agreed in Paris that developing countries need more time to adopt higher carbon prices or their equivalent. It is pushing ahead despite the fact that most developing countries cannot readily mobilize the large upfront financing necessary for large green investments.
Another recent proposal comes from senior staff at the International Monetary Fund, which envisions international carbon price floors (ICPFs), differentiated by national income levels. While the authors do not frame ICPFs explicitly as an alternative to CBAMs, they argue that agreed minimum but differentiated carbon prices would reduce the pressure for border-adjustment schemes and be more in keeping with the voluntary spirit of the Paris agreement.
An ICPF arrangement could at first involve just a few large emitters. For example, according to the IMF, if a “climate club” of just six participants could agree on minimum prices of $75 per ton of carbon dioxide for the U.S., Canada, the EU, and the United Kingdom as high-income countries, $50 per ton for China as a high middle-income country, and $25 per ton for India as a low middle-income one, this, in addition to current policies, “could help achieve a 23% reduction in global emissions below baseline by 2030.”
Although the EU’s CBAM and the ICPFs could operate simultaneously, the former requires the calculation of the carbon intensity of specific products. So, exporters from a country that is party to an ICPF agreement would still have to acquire the CBAM certificates, unless the EU were to exempt that country from its border-adjustment scheme on the basis of a “high enough” ICPF. But this would raise issues at the World Trade Organization, as it would imply different carbon border taxes, and thus different trade policies, for different countries.
A “new” climate-related CBAM exemption for low-income countries probably could be negotiated at the WTO, but a similar provision for middle-income countries such as China or India would face firm opposition from advanced economies. Yet, without such an exemption, the EU’s CBAM (or similar border measures by others such as the U.S.) will continue to trigger strong objections from middle- and lower-middle-income countries and could endanger a consensual global accord at the Glasgow summit.
In contrast, the IMF’s general approach has a chance of gaining universal support. An ICPF arrangement would face no WTO-related barriers, because it does not involve trade or trade-related policies, and joining the “club” would be voluntary and could take place at different times.
But the six-member example above is only illustrative—as the IMF acknowledges—and we should not let its simplicity deceive us. While the principle of ICPFs could be broadly appealing, specific income-related prices or equivalent policies would still have to be negotiated.
It is not at all obvious, for example, whether India would agree to a price floor of $25 per ton of CO2, or whether that price would be acceptable to the U.S. and the EU. Although some countries might adopt them, ICPFs should rather be interpreted as shorthand for a package of climate policies where the level and timing of ambition differ according to a country’s stage of development.
Ultimately, a universal agreement in Glasgow will require advanced economies to accept national differences in climate ambition. China’s commitments—given the level of the country’s emissions and its technological and economic capacity—will of course be crucial to achieving a satisfactory global accord.
As the carbon-pricing debate continues, rich countries may think the threat of CBAMs gives them useful leverage. But they should focus more on helping to mobilize the finance that most developing countries need for the green transformation. This would likely be a more effective way to shift the emphasis to the great opportunities arising from new technologies and achieve crucial global climate goals, while preserving the chance of a “whole of humanity” accord on this planetary challenge.

Sustainable Development Spotlight: Make progress on gender equality with more data transparency

Nigeria’s Twitter ban is a misplaced priority

In early June 2021, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced the indefinite suspension of Twitter after the platform deleted one of his tweets and temporarily suspended his account. The tweet pertained to Nigerian secessionists and to treating “those who misbehave today” in “the language they will understand,” infringing on Twitter user rules prohibiting content that threatens or incites violence. Despite the ban, many Nigerians still have access to the site using virtual private networks (VPN) and can share their opinion on other apps, like Indian-based microblogging site Koo.

The deletion of the tweet is part of a larger conversation around the role of social media in politics and the national conversation. Indeed, in recent years, the world has seen social media platforms like Twitter impact democracy and politics, social movements, foreign relations, businesses, and economies around the world.
President Buhari’s retaliation sparked massive global and national reactions. In this piece, we analyze the reaction of Twitter users to this move using a collection of over 2.6 million tweets generated from June 4 to June 11, 2021 that contain any mention of “Nigeria” (details on the methodology can be found at the end of the blog).
Tweets within the collection pertained to several overarching topics like the ongoing kidnappings of school and university students or the #EndSARS movement that helped mobilize a campaign to end policy brutality. However, the majority of the tweets were focused on the government’s ban of Twitter, which expressed concern over the move and its implications for the state of Nigeria’s democracy. Many tweets criticized President Buhari’s actions as an infringement on their freedom of expression and access to information—both crucial pillars of democracy.

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Notably, most content on Twitter is not original, as users with a large follower base drive the discussion through retweets, likes, and comments; in fact, 85 percent of tweets in this collection are retweets. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the top 50 retweeted users, encompassing over 30 percent of the 2.6 million tweets, which can give insights into who has the most input within the conversation. Over 49 percent of the top users are political activists like Nnamdi Kanu, who was actually the most retweeted account within the collection. (Nnamdi Kanu founded the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a movement to create an independent state in southern Nigeria.) Media blogs and journalists comprise the second-largest share of top users, with accounts like the Twitter Public Policy feed and news coverage from both Nigerian and international media outlets.
Figure 1. Top 50 most retweeted users in collection

Source: Authors, using data from Twitter.
Political activists have the most dominant voice in the conversation while institutional actors and organizations have some of the smallest. While Nigerian citizens and activists continue to use the platform, the Nigerian government has effectively shut itself out from the conversation with only the governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, still maintaining a presence on Twitter.
Importantly, hashtags are a powerful way to voice an opinion or bolster a movement, as seen with the #EndSARS protests that broke out in October 2020. Taking a deeper look at the content of the tweets, as seen in Figure 2, #keepiton, #twitterban, #openinternet, #june12protest, and #twittersuspendbuharisaccount are some of the most popular hashtags.
Figure 2. Hashtag usage in response to Twitter ban

Source: Authors, using data from Twitter.
Emoji usage within the tweets can also offer insights into the reactions, with a focus on the “yellow face” emojis that can correlate to six primary emotional categories: surprise, sadness, disgust, fear, anger, and neutral. Figure 3 shows the top 10 face emojis used in the collection, with “tears of joy” being the most popular. Both of the laughing emojis typically correspond to tweets that show disbelief of the president’s ban or chided his actions with tweets like: “Using Twitter to announce the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria.” Other prominent emojis include the “sobbing face,” primarily corresponding to tweets remembering the Lekki Toll Gate Massacre and responding to the Twitter ban. Emojis like the “red angry face” are more specifically used in discussion of the ban as misplaced priority of the government when the nation is struggling with many more serious issues like poor infrastructure (particularly shortages of electricity), corruption, weak institutions, and increased insecurity and mass student kidnappings.
Figure 3. Top 10 emojis used in response to Twitter ban

Source: Authors’ calculations using data from Twitter.
Nearly 70 percent (over 850,000) of the tweets with location entries are from Nigeria, with the most common locations being Lagos, Aduja, and “Biafra”—a former secessionist state in the southeast region of Nigeria. While the discussion is primarily centered in Nigeria, many tweets are from users all over the world, with the top three countries after Nigeria being the United States, United Kingdom, and India. Within Africa, countries like Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya have the highest rates of tweets discussing the ban in Nigeria, and their responses largely echo the same concerns and anger as the rest of the world.
This brief examination reveals that this move has led to damage of Nigeria’s image on the world stage, as key diplomatic and economic allies like the EU and U.S. have condemned the ban at a time when the country “needs to foster inclusive dialogue and expression of opinions, as well as share vital information in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. The global spotlight from the ban also highlights the government’s evident ineffectiveness in addressing serious economic, social, security, and political challenges.

The ban can also harm Nigeria’s growth as foreign investors pivot business and funding to other African countries, jeopardizing Nigeria’s role as the unofficial tech hub of Africa. In a recent example, Twitter chose Ghana for its regional headquarters even though Ghana has a much smaller population and economy than Nigeria but was perceived to have an attractive environment for external investors. Many startup business models also require an active social media presence, which may make it more difficult for Nigerian technology entrepreneurs to attract investors.
Small- and medium-sized Nigerian businesses have been particularly affected, as they rely on Twitter to raise awareness of their brands and for customer service and other engagement. According to Telecompaper, Nigeria’s e-commerce sector has lost over 2 billion naira ($4.86 million) daily since the ban, as businesses have had to severely cut their operations or stop them completely, otherwise risking potential fines and arrest. These losses put added pressure on an already volatile Nigerian economy, as unemployment rates reach 35 percent—among the world’s highest—particularly affecting its youth.
These events add to a concerning global trend of tightening information access and freedom of expression as countries like Ethiopia and Uganda create barriers through internet shutdowns ahead of presidential elections or internal conflict, and other countries like India, Vietnam, and Thailand recruit “cyber crime volunteers” and censor social media in an attempt to deal with vague issues like “fake news.” Nigeria’s Twitter ban, while hurting its citizens and alienating its allies, can embolden other nations to take similar authoritarian steps to discourage civic dissent and restrict essential components of a democratic society.

Note on methodology: This study utilizes a collection of over 2.6 million tweets that contain the mention of “Nigeria” generated from June 4th to June 11th 2021, and were archived using the open-source program called Twarc. Each tweet contains more than 150 different data variables but for the analysis shown here, we focus on the time when the tweets was created, location of the user, the full text of the tweet or retweet, and who originally generated the tweet. Hashtag and emoji usage were extracted from the full text of the tweet, the emojis were converted from Unicode to their written-out names and the hashtags were formatted to account for inconsistencies in spelling and capitalization. A greater discussion on the methodology and drawbacks of Twitter data can be found in the blog “How misinformation spreads on Twitter.”

Why crypto matters

HEFFNER: I’m Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind, I’m delighted to welcome today’s guest, Professor Eswar Prasad. He is the professor of trade policy at Cornell University and author of the upcoming book “The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance.” Thank you so much for joining me today, Professor.

PRASAD: It’s my pleasure, Alexander. Thank you so much for having me.

HEFFNER: An op-ed that you wrote in the New York Times on the future of crypto, cryptocurrency, what we know informally or formally as Bitcoin, Ether, it, it really resonated with me and in kind of bringing to bear the realities of this moment, which is that for many years we’ve now had an online storage facility for normal currency as it were, right, dollars or pounds, and now we are storing a currency that itself is a technology. When, when you think of where we are right now, just to begin with, does it surprise you, did you always think we would be at a place where a digital currency was worth $30,000 dollars in effect, and that this is at the time we’re recording this, this may change that at least in its infancy, it would be worth more than a dollar or a traditional currency?

PRASAD: So the fact that a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin has a price of about $33,000 dollars when it’s just a piece of computer code, is certainly a shock Alexander. But what is not a shock, is the fact that we are here, because of what Bitcoin started was an important technological revolution that was likely to happen at some point, in terms of making digital payments a lot easier. Now, of course, in the U.S. we have been moving towards digital payments, but in other countries, this move has been happening even faster, where people are essentially giving up cash and moving towards digital forms of payment. But what Bitcoin promises was something more than just digital payment. Right now, if you want to undertake a digital payment, you have to go through a bank or use some financial institution, maybe a credit card, a debit card, a swipe of your phone, a swipe of your credit card. What Bitcoin promised was something radical and fundamentally different from existing digital payments. That is promised a medium of exchange, that is an ability to conduct transactions, without involving any trusted third party, such as the Central Bank, which provides money for all the commercial banks. So that was the big promise of Bitcoin that it would allow us to conduct transactions much more easily, much more cheaply without involving the government or any financial institution. It turns out Bitcoin didn’t work very well in terms of delivering that promise. But instead Bitcoin is now being held as a store of value, that is, people are holding on to it as an asset. And of course, largely a speculative acid because Bitcoin doesn’t seem to have any intrinsic use. It’s not working very well as a medium of exchange. So somewhat paradoxically and to my surprise, and to the surprise of most of the economists that are watching this phenomenon, even though Bitcoin failed in its stated objective now people are holding onto it because they believe it’s value can go only one way, which is up.

HEFFNER: Do other currencies currently possess, other cryptocurrencies, fulfill the object, in the way that you say, you know, ultimately Bitcoin does not fulfill that object, the objective, but there are many cryptocurrencies that have emerged, and it seems like a new one has emerged every day. So are there ones that are actually fulfilling the promise that you describe?

PRASAD: So that’s an excellent point. Then it comes to the heart of what Bitcoin has set off. So if you think about why Bitcoin doesn’t work very well as a medium of exchange, it turns out that the process by which transactions are validated, because there is no trusted third party involved involves a lot of computation power. And this is very inefficient. It’s bad for the environment, but it’s also very cumbersome and slow. It takes about 10 minutes for a transaction using Bitcoin to be validated. And the cost of one Bitcoin transaction over the past year has averaged about $20 dollars. So obviously you can’t go out and buy a cup of coffee using that because the transaction costs would be much greater. Another thing that Bitcoin promised was digital anonymity. That is to say you and I could conduct transactions putting only our digital identities visible to the rest of the world. So in these dimensions, Bitcoin has not worked very well. And the additional issue is that the value of Bitcoin is very volatile. As you pointed out, the price of Bitcoin changes minute to minute, and by a large amount. It’s as though you could take a Bitcoin into a restaurant in one day, be able to afford just a cup of coffee and another day of full lavish meal. So what Bitcoin has kind of set off is a wave of cryptocurrencies that try to fix each of these flaws. There are some cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Zcash that provide greater anonymity but are much more cumbersome to use. There are things called stablecoins that have come up right now that try to provide more stable value. And how do they do that? Essentially they do that by holding stores of existing Fiat currencies issued by central banks. So for instance, there is one stablecoin called Tether, and each unit of Tether is fully backed by holdings of U.S. dollars. So the price of one unit of Tether has stayed relatively stable at about $1 dollar. So what we are seeing is this wave of cryptocurrencies that are really trying to address some legitimate needs in terms of better digital payments, both within countries and across countries. The technology is maturing, but it’s not quite there yet.

HEFFNER: Knowing that crypto is not just sort of a curiosity, but it can have a real-world effect on the market and jobs and people’s livelihoods, should we now think of it in that light? You know, that, that it is not necessarily the asset that it presents itself at the value that it is at any given day, but its fluctuations can have a significant impact on the market as a whole and the economy as a whole?

PRASAD: Yeah. The numbers are astounding, Alexander. Just about three months ago the total market value of all cryptocurrencies put together was a little over two and a half trillion dollars, that’s trillion with a T. Right now that number stands at about $1.4 trillion dollars. So more than $1 trillion dollars worth of value has been wiped out. And you might think, this has very serious risks, and maybe the government should do something about it because certainly having $1 trillion dollars vanish from financial markets in a relatively short period should give rise to all sorts of concerns. One concern is certainly that the speculative bubble, which is what these cryptocurrencies have turned into, could end up hurting retail investors. So as we saw in the GameStop phenomenon that was egged on by the Robinhood platform. The real risk is that retail investors might be coming much later to the party. These are people who have much less ability to maneuver around financially. They may put their life savings in this and realize that ultimately when the market crashes, that their savings have been completely depleted. So from an investor protection point of view, certainly there might be a role for the government, but one could take the alternative perspective. So long as the government and the Federal Reserve, or the central banks warn investors of the risks, then investors are on their own taking these risks, because we know that Bitcoin has no fundamental value and its value from an economist point of view should be pretty close to zero because it’s not delivering any real service. So then if investors go out and decide to invest, then it’s their problem. Another issue is whether there could be financial institutions that are exposed to cryptocurrencies and the risks they entail. After all, we had a major financial crisis just about 12 years ago as a result of various financial innovations. But most commercial and investment banks have been relatively cautious this time.

Certainly some of them have dipped their toes in the water. A few of them are making crypto-related products available to their investors to meet demand, but by and large the exposure of other parts of the financial system to the crypto market has been relatively limited. But there are still concerns on different fronts, not just financial stability, but if you have anonymous cryptocurrencies available, you know, it makes ransomware attacks a lot easier because of the anonymity of crypto coins we might have these cryptocurrencies, especially if the technology matures and makes them cheaper to use being even more widely used for money laundering, terrorism, financing, and other elicit activities. So those are the sorts of concerns about illicit activities, both within and across borders that I think is getting governments very concerned about cryptocurrencies.

HEFFNER: Right. So you have the threat of a bubble and its impact on other facets of the economy and really uncharted territory and not really understanding the extent of you know, exposure. You have the secretive exchanges that, you know, can be used for malevolent or downright illegal purposes as you just described. But at the end of the day, ultimately what makes sense most about crypto, in my estimation and you get at this in your op-ed, and I imagine you focus on it in the book, is the idea that crypto just makes sense for a globalized world. It, you know, it makes sense that the extent to which you don’t have barriers and interest rates that are governing peoples’ lives, but you have some kind of equity of exchange and of commerce. And, and that’s what like philosophically resonates or registers for me. In actuality, the idea that crypto is, as we say, at the moment, we’re recording this some $33,000 dollars relative to a dollar and a hard day’s work, which you, you know, be paid in a dollar or Euro or yen or whatever. That doesn’t really add up, that doesn’t really make sense. But the idea that we shouldn’t have a society in which currencies our boundaries to our equity and to existing in a world where, you know, we can equitably and transparently engage in commerce across border. That that makes sense. That idea of Bitcoin or crypto makes sense, to me.

PRASAD: That’s true. The notion of leveling the playing field so that the major financial institutions are no longer dictating economic destinies and where the masses have easy access to digital payment systems that don’t require them to set up expensive bank accounts where they need to maintain large balances. That is certainly an important issue. In fact, even predating Bitcoin, there is the use of mobile technologies around the world. Even in middle income countries or low-income countries such as Kenya, mobile technologies have played a very important role in giving people access, literally at their fingertips, to easy digital payments, which is good for customers, which is good for businesses that don’t need to access, don’t need to handle cash. So these are all very positive developments, and there is a real need to have cheaper and easier payments accessible to everybody, not just domestically.

You mentioned the international aspect, that is really huge. There are many economic migrants from say, Mexico from India who are working in the U.S. who send money back to their home countries, and they have to pay very large transaction fees on those on those amounts they send back to their home countries. It takes a lot of time for those payments to clear. It’s difficult to track those payments. So certainly the ability to use cryptocurrencies across national borders can generate much more efficient payments and get around all these impediments to payment, so it should be a very good thing. The problem is how one manages the fact that you have conduits for much easier, cheaper, and quicker payments and prevent them from being misused for elicit and illegitimate purposes. So that’s the balance that I think we are contending with right now.

HEFFNER: In a sense, you’re saying that that the problem does exist or the notion of not erasing currency exchange but having some more transparent and open system that that really is a need in a globalized society. And that our current system is antiquated, obsolete and betting against the masses and controlled by a few people. But you’re saying crypto is not the solution. It’s not the solution to that problem. At least in the way that it’s currently devised. And I just ask on top of that question, when we hear about Chinese miners of crypto and the threat of the integrity of crypto on that basis, and the availability of crypto, some of these currencies could be infinity. Some of them have a max of a certain number of coins in distribution, but, but ultimately the question about hegemony, financial hegemony, dominance is very much related to Bitcoin. And some folks’ skepticism that Bitcoin is being used or deployed as a Trojan horse to advance the Chinese currency specifically.

PRASAD: So there is a lot rolled into the points you made, Alexander. One of the issues to begin with on Bitcoin is why people think it is going to have any value. And it seems to be largely driven by the fact that that is hardwired into the Bitcoin algorithm, a specific cap. There can only be 21 million Bitcoins mined at the end of the process. We know it is uncertain. So far about 18 and a half million Bitcoins have been created. And this seems to alluring to investors, in motion that just like gold, that is this very scarce thing. And unlike central bank money, which, you know, the Fed can go out and print that. Well, the fact that this thing is scarce is maybe what gives it value. Of course, to economists, this sounds very strange, the scarcity certainly helps, but just the fact that something is scarce cannot possibly create value, especially when that object, digital or otherwise has no intrinsic use at all. But you’re certainly right that right now, what Bitcoin has created in terms of its legacy, whatever happens to Bitcoin itself, is a move towards digitalization of payments. And there is a very interesting phenomenon that we are beginning to see right now, which is central banks beginning to issue digital versions of their own currencies. So in fact, the Chinese central bank has started experimenting with the digital version of the Chinese currency, the renminbi. And it’s likely that sometime in the next three to five years, they will roll that out nationwide. So why are they doing that? They’re doing that because in China, digital payments are right now the norm, but there are two digital payments providers, Alipay and WeChat pay, which are doing a fantastic job of providing very cheap and reliable payments, but the government doesn’t want the central bank money to become irrelevant. So they’re essentially digitizing the central bank money, so that renminbi still remain relevant to the economy. In the U.S. there is some talk of moving towards a digital dollar. It could be again to provide better payments, but also to give people much easier access to a digital payment system without having a bank account. So we are seeing some big transformations in the nature of money coming thanks to Bitcoin.

HEFFNER: Yeah. I mean, isn’t it true that we’ve, we’ve effectively had the digital dollar since we’ve been able to manage our finances online? I mean, it almost feels as though we do have that, even though we don’t, if you know what I mean,

PRASAD: That’s right. The reality is that payments are becoming increasingly digital. I mean these days most of us conduct transactions using a debit or credit card, or more often with just a swipe of a phone connected to Apple Pay, or perhaps you and I might split a dinner check using Venmo. So that is certainly becoming the norm. And that raises the question in the middle of all of this, what role does official central bank money still have? Do we even need it anymore? And if you look at the long arc of history, this is quite a fascinating development because, you know, two or three centuries ago before central banks were created, you had various kinds of private currencies circulating and competing with one another based on how much faith people had in whoever was issuing them. And then you had a period of competition between private currencies and our government money. And then the emergence of central banks basically wiped away private currencies. So only official currencies issued by central banks really have been dominant in virtually every country for the last few decades. But now we are once again seeing private currencies competing with government currency. And again, as an economist, I think competition is good, so long as it is managed. And what central banks are dealing with right now is how to make sure that their money still remains relevant and of practical value in the economy.

HEFFNER: I see what you’re saying, but when we know that we can store our hard dollars as in effect digital currency, it doesn’t, it kind of make the point moot. I mean, with respect to the question of a digital dollar or, you know, a digital Euro. I just, to me, it’s kind of hard to fathom it. But I do understand the point you’re making about competition. I just think effectively we already have that. I, you know.

PRASAD: To a large extent we do you’re right. If you think about the functions of money, we have prices when we go to a store denominated in dollars. So that’s the unit of account function, which will certainly remain. Then there is some medium of exchange function, which is the use of the dollar in transactions and barrier, right? That many of these transactions are already in dollars, even though our bank accounts may still be denominated in dollars and, and sorry, the transactions may be purely digital without involving central bank money. And then there is a store of value of functional, the sense that assets that are denominated in dollars are still going to have value. So we might actually see a separation of these different forms of money. So we might continue to have prices denominated in dollars. The dollar might still be very important as a store of value, but as the medium of exchange official currencies might become much less important than they are right now in giving, largely, displacing existing currencies. And this is actually happening in some countries in Sweden, for instance, the use of cash has almost completely disappeared. And in Sweden, you know, the digital payment systems like Swish work perfectly well, but even there, the Swedish central bank Riksbank, is issuing the digital version of its currency or experimenting with a digital version of its currency, E-krona. Why? Because they want to keep central bank money relevant in case there are some problems with the private payment system, so that you still have a digital central bank payment system that can function at a time of financial worries about the private payment system. So it could end up becoming a backstop rather than anything fundamentally important in the economy.

HEFFNER: In the Swedish example, one print dollar is no more valuable than one digital dollar, right?

PRASAD: That’s correct. The value of the two is exactly the same. But the print version of the currency might cease to exist and it might all become digital, but during the transition period, the two will have exactly the same value.

HEFFNER: And your op-ed seems to suggest that the storage of real dollars or the storage of money through a central bank system, like the way you might store your money online with a U.S. bank, that that is still far and away safer than storing cryptocurrency?

PRASAD: That is certainly, if we now are in a position where the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Central Bank which I would refer to as the Fed could offer each of us an account. But so that we have an account with a Fed, unlike a bank account, it would have no fees, we could just you know, connect it to an app on a mobile phone and then we would start using central bank money just digitally, rather than in the form of dollar bills. But that has certain risks. I mean, it sounds very convenient to use, but what if all of us decided that we’d rather move our money to those central bank accounts and take our money out of the commercial bank accounts, that would be a bit of a problem because commercial banks are still very important in the economy in terms of creating credit, that allows us to buy automobiles, houses, that allows firms to invest. And you don’t want the central bank to be in charge of allocating credit and the economy.

The other concern, which I think we need to think very seriously about is if all payment methods were only in terms of digital forms either to say Visa or MasterCard other forms of cards, or central bank digital money. There are concerns about whether we would have any privacy and confidentiality left in our transactions. And maybe some might say that the horse has already left the barn and we have no privacy anymore, but I wonder if we really want to live in a world where anytime I buy you a cup of coffee, either the financial institution or the government is going to know about it.
HEFFNER: In an age of ransomware though, you’re, you’re saying pretty definitively that you are more protected with your dollars stored in a traditional bank than you are with your crypto on one of these various platforms?

PRASAD: That’s correct.

HEFFNER: Are major U.S. banks, basically less hackable than crypto platforms?

PRASAD: There are other protections as well that make it more likely that if you lose money that you have in your bank account, the bank is going to make you whole because they are in-turn insured to some extent by the government. The wonderful thing about crypto is that in many cases, such as in the case of Bitcoin, no one is in charge, which means that nobody can prevent you from using it. Nobody can be, you know, censored from using that network. But at the same time, if you lose your password to what is called your digital wallet, there is nobody to go to, you can’t pick up your phone and call your bank and say, can you please reset my password. Your money is gone.

HEFFNER: Who decided that it was going to be capped? You know, you said, basically you can write your own destiny, but in the seconds we have left, who decided that there would be a maximum X number of Bitcoins, for example?

PRASAD: That is the remarkable and wonderful thing about Bitcoin. We do not to this day know who the creator or the creators are. But whoever designed the algorithm has designed it in a really interesting way. A lot of these issues about how Bitcoins are issued, what is the process by which data points entered into circulation? What the cap is on Bitcoins? These were all hardwired into the algorithm. If everybody in the Bitcoin community agreed they could change it. So this is my people power becomes really important. The Bitcoin community now can make decisions, but all of this stuff was designed in a really remarkable be in the technology itself is a marvel. So the last one I believe you with no matter what happens to Bitcoin five, 10 years from now, it’s value may be zero. Its value might be a million dollars. It’s really set off a revolution in money that is going to affect every one of us for a long time.

HEFFNER: Eswar, Professor. I want to encourage all of our viewers to check out your upcoming book “The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance.” We have to have you back here on The Open Mind, because I don’t think you are just inspiring revolution in currency and finance. What dictates currency and finance? Borders. What dictates borders? Security? I think ultimately, we may be talking about war and peace, and I think the crux of your answers get at that very point, whether it’s us and China or other countries involved in the preservation of their systems and a lot hangs in the balance, especially if folks are going to move away from their own central banks. So I look forward to you joining us again in the future, Professor Eswar Prasad, Thank you so much for your time today.

PRASAD: Thank you. Alexander, I enjoyed our conversation, and I look forward to talking about geopolitical and other issues at more length on another occasion. Thank you very much.

HEFFNER: Please visit The Open Mind website at Thirteen.org/OpenMind to view this program online or to access over 1,500 other interviews. And do check us out on Twitter and Facebook @OpenMindTV for updates on future programming.

What if teaching mirrored how human brains learn?

“Here we are again.” These are the words of one art teacher in Tennessee that reflect educators’ wariness about the new school year as a recent surge in COVID-19 threatens plans to resume in-person learning. Yet in the face of all this continued uncertainty, heroic educators still ask: How can I support my students? They consider both their students’ socio-emotional skills and “unfinished” academic content.

Educators are right to worry about these issues. A 2020 Pew Research Center survey of over 2,500 parents found that 65 percent of them were at least somewhat concerned about their child generally “falling behind” in school, and the majority of them were concerned about their child’s social relationships (60 percent) and emotional well-being (59 percent). Indeed, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning “might present more risks than in-person instruction” when it comes to mental and emotional health. Academically, widespread reports paint an alarming picture of projected and measured losses in reading and math assessment scores for many students, especially those in underserved communities. This is particularly concerning given recent data revealing that over 1 million students, mostly kindergarteners, did not enroll in school—an alarming trend referred to as the “kindergarten exodus.”
As schools and communities work to better education for the next year, it is vital that they also use the best science of learning to teach children in ways that reflect how the human brain learns.
As the new academic year begins, schools are encouraged to “accelerate learning”—rather than practice deficit-oriented remediation—a charge that will help educators move children forward after a year of tumult by addressing any unfinished content from the previous year within grade-level lessons. As schools and communities work to better education for the next year, it is vital that they also use the best science of learning to teach children in ways that reflect how the human brain learns.
Our education system has always struggled with this task. Educators and scientists alike often fall prey to a problem we call “binning.” We think of socio-emotional skills as independent from academic outcomes. We evaluate student achievement with separate reading and math assessments. In older grades, we assign each subject its own classroom and teacher.
But the science tells us that this is not the way in which human brains learn. Children don’t learn math content only in math class or out-of-school activities pre-labeled “math.” The same holds true for reading. In fact, reading and math skills are built on a similar foundation. Imagine the human brain as a house with a foundation forming a base for learning all kinds of things, like social skills, math, and reading. In the human brain, this foundation is a suite of skills referred to as executive functioning.
A new study investigated whether reading and math skills share the same cognitive base. The researchers measured first graders’ basic reading, math, and executive function skills. The scientists found that children’s outcomes in reading and math were associated with a common set of skills in both subjects, as well as executive function skills. The “house” of reading and math rested on the same psychological foundation.
This and other studies reveal that young children’s learning is not a one-to-one correspondence between a subject bin and required skills. Learning does not work like that. It is more integrated across bins and abilities. Reading is not dependent solely on the ability to identify speech sounds. Math achievement is not dependent solely on the ability to count, and even involves early literacy skills. It is crucial that educators target the foundation, which includes executive function and general knowledge. And we know how to do this through active learning—a holistic, child-centered approach to teaching.
Our team’s report for the Brookings Policy 2020 series offers an evidence-based—but flexible—framework for educators to employ this approach while leveraging their own expertise and knowledge of their students. It outlines both how children learn best and what skills children need to learn in the 21st century, and provides a checklist that educators can use to guide them through the implementation process. Pilot data even show that teachers are happier and enjoy teaching more when using a more holistic, rather than a binned, approach.
As we begin another school year filled with trepidation and hope, let’s reimagine our schools and our classrooms as places where all children can learn through methods that are informed by science, while celebrating our students and teachers.

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Global governance after COVID-19

Background
The Global Economy and Development Program at Brookings conducted a survey on multilateralism in the Spring of 2021 as part of a project on the future of global governance. This report summarizes and analyzes the results. It comes at a time when the new Biden administration has re-committed the United States to multilateral cooperation and multiple initiatives—notably on international taxation, the issuance of $650 billion of new Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), and ramped up efforts to cut emissions to combat climate change—are underway. At the same time, the rivalry between the United States and China is growing, threatening a new form of Cold War, and new technologies are emerging, promising enhanced human welfare while introducing the risk of misuse. The COVID-19 pandemic is still far from under control in most developing countries due to a lag in vaccination rates and the uneven recovery from the pandemic-induced economic recession.

However, multilateralism has been in crisis long before the pandemic. Growing political discontent with globalization has been associated with the failure of the multilateral system to stem the tide of rising inequality, social fragmentation, and job insecurity heightened by technological change. Moreover, calls to reform global governance to better reflect the shift in economic, demographic, and political weight of developing countries have gone largely unheeded. Political rigidities in multilateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, United Nations (U.N.), and World Trade Organization (WTO) have prevented adequate reform.
Disillusionment with the existing multilateral system has prompted various alternative visions, such as replacing multilateral agreements and rules with bilateral deals or groupings of like-minded or geographically proximate countries. We believe that these alternative approaches cannot adequately replace true multilateralism since a world facing inherently global challenges—as evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic—requires globally concerted actions and responses. For the Global South, the consequences of weak multilateralism—on climate change, trade, conflict prevention, and countless other issues—are particularly high.
COVID-19 has laid bare key vulnerabilities of an economic system designed to maximize short-term efficiency at the expense of robustness and resilience. As governments struggled to procure vital medical goods and mount an effective response to COVID-19, international cooperation broke down, sparking export bans and political recriminations. This followed recent trends of nationalist leaders calling for inwardlooking policies. The irony, of course, is that just as the world was turning away from multilateralism, COVID-19 underlined its necessity: given that the virus spreads seamlessly across borders, the threat of further spikes in infections will persist unless countries collaborate on expanding access to vaccines and ending the pandemic. And epidemiologists warn that an even worse pandemic could hit the world at any time, further highlighting the need for global cooperation.

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Looking ahead, new technologies introduce great opportunities but also grave dangers, particularly in domains such as cyberspace, artificial intelligence, or biotechnology, where global rules are urgently needed. There is also the urgent climate change problem, which demands immediate and coordinated global action.
Against this backdrop, the great powers face the risk of moving towards confrontation, as opposed to a multilateral approach, that would fragment the world into rival blocs. A world in which rival great powers, particularly the United States and China, seek to protect their own spheres of influence through its own rules and standards, could strip smaller and poorer countries from having agency or space to maneuver. This would fail to provide the type of solutions needed for today’s global problems. Furthermore, the direction the rivalrous relationship between the U.S. and China takes will have implications for all nations.
As the world begins to pivot from reacting to the pandemic to planning for recovery, many policymakers have embraced the mantra, “build back better.” A multilateral architecture fit for the 21st century ought to prioritize the wellbeing of the worst-off and build a more robust and inclusive global system while respecting the legitimate demands for policy autonomy. It should help prevent beggar-thy-neighbor policies, facilitate the provision of global public goods, and help manage the global commons. And where appropriate, it should draw on the skills and resources of a broad range of actors beyond the nation-state, including cities, scientists, civil society organizations, businesses, and labor, all of whom have important roles in global problem solving.
Download the full report

Global governance after COVID-19: Survey report

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Category: Thought leaders