For governments to effectively resolve economic issues, they need to understand the unemployment situation in their nations and the causes of high unemployment, Nobel laureate in Economics Dale Mortensen said in a speech in Taipei yesterday.
Mortensen said Taiwan was performing fairly well among the four “Asian Tigers,” with unemployment at 4.4 percent and an inflation rate of 1.8 percent, indicating that the country has successful monetary policies.
However, it still needs to be cautious of an impact from a second global recession, as developed countries economies remains distressed, he warned in his speech, titled “The Labor Market Response to the Great Recession.”
Governments have long neglected academics’ calls to pay attention to the widening wealth gap, he said, adding that global economic growth has only benefited the richest 10 percent of the population, and even if their wealth is redistributed to the poor, the poor will only become poorer.
The Occupy Wall Street movement in the US reflects people’s growing resentment of the widening wealth gap, for which both Democrats and Republicans are responsible, he added.
As for youth unemployment in Taiwan, Mortensen said youth unemployment has been a tough problem the world over since the global financial crisis in 2008, further deepening wealth gap.
However, Denmark and Sweden were examples of nations whose financial policies and tax reforms have helped bridge the wealth gap by creating more jobs and stimulating domestic consumption.
During a panel discussion with local economists and corporate leaders in the afternoon, Mortensen said Taiwan’s education system could play a role by help students learn abilities wanted by local companies, which in turn would help the firms expand in China.
His comment came after Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) said Taiwanese companies were facing shortage of people to fill top-ranking positions in their Chinese operations, including the group’s subsidiaries and branches there.
“In this case, the government has the responsibility to educate more students qualified to take high-level positions in China,” Mortensen said.
Tang Ming-je (湯明哲), vice president at National Taiwan University, said Taiwan as a whole was facing a “brain drain” because a growing number of people are choosing to work for foreign companies in China.
The problem might become more serious in the next five to 10 years as globalization expands, Mortensen said, adding the problem was not unique to Taiwan since countries such as the UK suffered from a similar situation years ago.
Industrial upgrades would not only help keep local professions in their home market, but also attract talented foreigners, he said.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS