Here’s a great video of a speech delivered by Lord Nicholas Stern and sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Resources Institute (WRI). Lord Stern, who is the chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, explained how climate risks have changed six years after the publication of the Stern Review report, and what organizations and governments can do to transition to a low-carbon economy future. For more, check out the transcript of the speech and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde’s introductory remarks, and Stern Review .
Tag: Economic Logic and Value
How does a real estate investor in Milwaukee predict true housing market demand and fine-tune better forecasts of potential homeowners and or renters in New York City, 880 miles away? The answer lies in monitoring social interactions – location-specific tweets, pokes, and “likes” – where participants reveal individual and collective location preferences and willingness to pay. In the age of social technologies, the world has been flattening much faster since Twitter hit the corporate bloodstream with its 140-character limit, and Facebook began the long expedition to make the world “more open and connected.”
Most business leaders want to change how work is done — increase productivity, enhance employee engagement, build sustainable businesses and inspire innovation. Moreover, innovations such as shifting from one-to-one communication channels to social channels (one-to-many), creating accessible and searchable information, and enhancing creative forces among employees have been marketed as key drivers and benefits of social technologies.
But vital questions remain: How can organizations capture the value of social technologies, encourage collaboration across functional silos, and improve productivity? How can organizational practices be transformed to fully benefit from social networks on a large-scale basis? And how can social media facilitate or change the way businesses approach sustainability? Full article
A recent report released by the OECD on May 11th 2011 details tax burden on employment paid by employers. The report shows that Germany and France have some of the highest employment tax regimes in OECD region. The country-specific taxing wages provides information on social security contributions levied on employees and their employers and on income tax paid by workers in OECD countries. The report also provides data for different household types and income levels. Other parts of the report include information on international comparisons, tax burden trends 2000-2010, country details in 2010, and methodology and limitations.
According to the second chart (above) from The Economist, in 15 OECD countries, the real incomes for average-wages earners fell between 2009 and 2010.