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From the Latest Economist
By Chris | December 2, 2007
Two things caught my attention. On oil subsidies in developing countries:
In India, as in many countries, the government dares not allow the rising price of crude to be felt in the common man’s pockets. Only a third of the 48 developing countries studied in an IMF review let the market set fuel prices. The governments of Yemen and Indonesia, for example, spent more holding down the price of fuel than they spent on health and education combined. Attempts to raise energy prices—as in Yemen in 2005, Nigeria in 2000 or Indonesia in 1998—have a sorry record of prompting riots and revolutions.
And, on American’s opinion of NAFTA:
I haven’t done an extensive literature review on NAFTA but based on Wikipedia and this journal article the consensus among economists seems to be that: “…both the U.S. and Mexico benefit from NAFTA, with much larger relative benefits for Mexico. NAFTA also has had little effect on the U.S. labor market.”