World Perspectives

Getting Competitive; Big to Rescue India

Getting Competitive President Joe Biden rationalized the withdrawal from Afghanistan yesterday by first saying it was “no longer in our national interest,” and then adding that we need to “shore up the nation’s competitiveness to meet the challenges of China and Russia.” Both may be true but the plan to achieve competitiveness needs to be better than the plan to leave Afghanistan. His proposals for universal pre-school and free community college acknowledges a workforce lacking necessary skillsets but is as generic as saying we need to get out of Afghanistan. Studies indicate that the workforce needs to be able to operate in a digital environment, be adaptive to new occupations, methods, and systems, and add v...

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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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