World Perspectives

Missing: Economic Resilience

One reason that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine was a sense of immunity against reprisal due to external dependence on Russia’s energy supplies and food. He was wrong about the reprisal calculation but not about dependence. The OECD’s Composite of leading indicators (CLIs) point to economic growth losing momentum in Europe. Nationalists fault global interdependence and globalists argue that resilience would be worse without interdependence. Robert Armstrong and Ethan Wu at the Financial Times point to deeper structural hurdles in Europe. According to the OECD, Europeans are substantially more dependent on government pension transfers than are Americans. In fact, Pew Research found that most U.S. households have some level of inv...

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From WPI Consulting

Forecasting developments in production agriculture

On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.

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