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Coincident index suggests acceleration. Figure 1: Wisconsin Nonfarm Payroll Employment (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure of NFP (pink), Civilian Employment (tan), real wages and salaries, deflated by national chained CPI (sky blue), GDP (red), coincident index (green), all in logs 2021M11=0. Source: BLS, BEA, Philadelphia Fed [1], [2], and author's calculations.

Joe Schulz of WPR: "The economy is the top issue for Wisconsin voters, but most have a negative view": Stephen Brown, who is moving to Oshkosh from Rockford, Illinois, said he doesn't think the economy is as bad as Republicans say, but it's not quite as good as Democrats say either. While the Wisconsin economy […]

Amid a deepening cost of living crisis in Turkey, the ruling party MP, Şebnem Bursalı found herself at the heart of public criticism when she posted a photo of a lobster.

President Erdogan has sought to rally the Turkish people around the republic's centenary. But to realize its domestic and global ambitions, Ankara must tend to its economic crisis and rule-of-law deficiencies.

Decreasing yields are a result of increasingly tough growing conditions, with extremely dry weather in some growing seasons, and over-saturated soils in others, when there is extreme rainfall.

In recent years, global military expenditure has increased again and is now comparable to Cold War levels. Recent data shows global spending at over $1.6 trillion, despite the global economic conditions. It is still a 1.3% increase since 2008 when the financial crisis began, for example.
For some nations, they can increase their spending as they grow economically. For others, there are geopolitical interests at stake.
The highest military spender is the US accounting for 41% of the world's spending, more than the next top 14 countries combined, and more than all its potential enemies, combined. But this represents a slight decline over previous years as other nations, especially China, increases spending and the US begins to very slightly feel budgetary pressures on its military spending.
This update includes updated figures, graphs and charts exploring this further.
Read full article: World Military Spending

"AIER's April Business Conditions Monthly indicators reflect the disparate, and to some extent offsetting economic signals emergent within the US economy today." ~ Peter C. Earle

"In addition to the likelihood of an additional one or more rate hikes before the end of this year, our March 2023 prediction of a US economic recession within the next twelve to eighteen months–by end-of-summer 2024–remains intact." ~ Peter C. Earle

"At present we continue to believe that the US will enter a recession by September 2024, but will adjust our perspectives if and when necessary as new data and facts become available." ~ Peter C. Earle

Earlier this year three Dutch NGOs sued the Netherlands for approving and carrying out the EU-Turkey deal. They argue that the Dutch government should be held responsible for the dire conditions under which asylum seekers have been held under on Greek islands since the deal has been concluded, which have repeatedly been found to violate human rights. In this blog, I sketch the context of litigation surrounding the EU-Turkey deal which has driven the NGOs to sue in the Dutch national legal system and explain the promise and pitfalls of the rise of strategic litigation in the sphere of migration and asylum law.

Tractors driven by angry farmers have inundated Madrid and other cities as part of protests in other countries, including France, the EU's largest agricultural producer, Greece, Germany, Poland and Portugal, against conditions that are eroding their livelihoods. Farmers are suffering to varying degrees from falling prices (the average price of products they receive was 9% […]
La entrada Spanish farmers at the forefront of EU-wide protests se publicó primero en Elcano Royal Institute.

This post was authored by Leonie Rauls (J-PAL) and was originally posted on the J-PAL website.T.K. Kurikawa via Shutterstock.comThe climate crisis is one of the many factors contributing to rising global food insecurity and threatening farmer livelihoods. To complicate matters, farmers are also faced with navigating changes such as innovations in technology, evolving market structures, and new food standards. As such, they may no longer be able to rely on the same tools, knowledge, or experience that previously worked in their contexts. They need updated information that is accurate, tailored, easily accessible, and that aligns with their business priorities. J-PAL's updated Policy Insight reviews strategies to improve information dissemination to help farmers make optimal production decisions and investments to improve their livelihoods.Challenges in reaching farmers with informationFarmers access production information from many different sources, but information has traditionally been shared with farmers through government-led agricultural extension programs. These services, typically organized by agricultural ministries, consist of delivering trainings, field visits, or farmer field schools to large groups of farmers in rural areas with the goal to encourage them to adopt technologies and optimize their production practices. However, many extension systems face challenges with staff capacity and accountability to reach all farmers reliably. In addition, extension programs are designed to make recommendations that maximize yields. They often base their recommendations about which technologies to use on experimental evidence from tests of technologies under relatively controlled environments rather than under a variety of real-world conditions. As such, these recommendations do not often reflect farmers' incentives to maximize profits, as many of the practices designed to increase productivity require upfront costs that are not always recouped when farmers sell their crops at harvest.This mismatch in priorities results in low uptake of recommended technologies and highlights the urgency to better tailor extension services to farmers' actual needs and local conditions, particularly in rapidly changing environments where best practices are evolving.The Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) is a joint research initiative with J-PAL and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office. Since 2009, ATAI-funded research has shown that despite the promise of agricultural technology to boost productivity and transform agricultural livelihoods, adoption of technology remains low. One such barrier farmers face in deciding whether to adopt a new practice or technology is a lack of access to timely and relevant information on how to best utilize and reap the greatest benefit from the technology in question.New insights on how to better tailor and deliver information to help farmers adopt productive technologiesResearchers have tested interventions that help farmers better access information to assess the suitability of new technologies and make optimal farming decisions. In our updated Policy Insight, we reviewed 41 randomized evaluations — eighteen of which were funded by ATAI — that showed that the content, frequency, and channel by which information is disseminated plays an important role in a farmer's decision to adopt a new technology. Providing farmers with information through extension services does help farmers make informed decisions about what technology to adopt, but these services do not always reach all farmers or do not deliver information that has been tailored to local contexts or production requirements. Strategies like harnessing a farmers' local network, incorporating simple tools, and leveraging information and communication technologies (ICTs), can improve the effectiveness of information dissemination.Peer farmers, who serve as role models and can draw on local knowledge to tailor extension messaging, can encourage farmers to adopt new or improved technologies. They are particularly effective when extension agents face low capacity and when trust in recommendations from more formal channels is low.Providing farmers with tools that simplify the use of complex technologies, like pit planting, charts to monitor plant needs through leaf color tracking, or a spoon to measure the optimal fertilizer amount, are another effective strategy to increase the uptake of improved farming practices.Incorporating ICTs, such as SMS, into extension services can help organizations deliver frequent reminders and tailored information to farmers at particular points during production and harvest. Videos are another innovative tool to deliver technical information consistently and in a digestible manner, especially in areas where literacy rates are low.While farmers seem to learn from information and adjust their production decisions accordingly, this does not consistently lead to improvements in their yields or profits. This may be because the information originally shared with them was irrelevant, the technology promoted was ill suited for the farmers targeted, or the recommendations shared prioritized increasing yields over profits. As such, policymakers should do more to ensure that the technologies selected, the information defined, and the delivery mechanisms are relevant and well-aligned with local conditions and farmer priorities.Timely, relevant, and accurate information is keyAs climate change and other factors accelerate the development of innovative technology and practices, it is critical that farmers know what tools are available to them, how to best use them, and what benefits or costs they should expect from adoption. With better access to timely, relevant, and accurate information farmers in low- and middle-income countries will be better equipped to combat rising food insecurity across the globe.Tailoring information to increase technology adoption among farmers was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If ever a country needed an IMF economic program to stabilize its economy, it has to be Recep Erdogan's Turkey. It is that years of Erdogan's erratic economic policy management has considerably undermined both domestic and international economic confidence.
The post It Is Time for the IMF in Turkey appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

In the run up to the Chancellor's spring statement today, much of the debate has focused what support will be made available to those on low income and those struggling most with the rising costs of living. Poverty campaigners have called to uprate benefits in line with inflation and to strengthen existing support. In times … Continued

In recent years, global military expenditure has increased again and is now comparable to Cold War levels. Recent data shows global spending at over $1.7 trillion, despite the global economic conditions. It is still approximately 1% increase since 2008 when the financial crisis began, for example.

Not all nations have felt the impacts of the global financial crisis in the same way. Some have grown economically, including many Asian countries, which has allowed some of them to increase their military spending. There are geopolitical interests at stake for various powers, so economic troubles or not, military spending is seen as important to maintain, or at least to minimize possible reductions.

The highest military spender is the US accounting for 39% of the world's spending, more than the next top 10 countries combined, and more than all its potential enemies, combined. But this represents a slight decline over previous years as other nations, especially China and Russia, increase their spending. At the same time, the US has reduced military spending for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Western Europe's austerity programs affect their military spending budgets.

This update includes new and updated figures, graphs and charts exploring this further.Read full article: World Military Spending