Economist, Feb 8, 2014 (I)

choi

Assortative mating  | Sex, Brains and Inequality; How sexual equality increases the gap between rich and poor households.
www.economist.com/news/united-st ... olds-sex-brains-and
Quote:

"in reality the highly educated increasingly married each other. In 1960 25% of men with university degrees married women with degrees; in 2005, 48% did.

"the economic incentive to marry your peers has increased. * * * In 1960 a household composed of two people with graduate degrees earned 76% above the average; by 2005, they earned 119% more.

Note:
(a) "assortative mating (the tendency of similar people to marry each other)"
(i) assortative (adj): "being nonrandom mating based on like or unlike characteristics"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assortative
(ii) like (adj): "the same or nearly the same"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/like

(b) assortative mating
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mating
(For example, it is common for individuals of similar body size to mate with one another; In humans, assortative mating occurs along many dimensions, including religious beliefs, physical traits, age, socioeconomic status, intelligence, and political ideology, among others)

choi

The making of Iraq | Man of the Moment; A revisionist history of Iraq’s first modern king.
www.economist.com/news/books-and ... ern-king-man-moment
(book review on Ali A Allawi, Faisal I of Iraq. Yale Univesity Press, Mar 11, 2014)

Note:
(a)
(i) Faisal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal
(an Arabic given name and means The separator between good and Evil)
(ii) Faisal I of Iraq
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
(1885-1933; born in Ta'if (in present-day Saudi Arabia), grew up in Istanbul, in 1916 he visited Damascus twice; King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 1921 to 1933; table:  Religion  Sunni Islam)

Economist later wrote, "When, defiantly, a congress of nationalists declared Syria independent, with Faisal as its king, the French crushed a small, poorly armed Arab force and ejected him from the country. Faisal’s career might have ended then and there. But British officials concocted a role for the Hashemites in two of the new states emerging under Britain’s influence. They chose Faisal to rule Iraq, and his brother Abdullah to rule what became Jordan. * * * But he was not Iraqi"  
For that, read sections 3.2, 3.3 and 4 of this Wiki page.
(iii) Faisal's only son (Ghazi I) was followed by the latter's son Faisal II (1935-1958; reign 1939-1958). Faisal II and his family were murdered in the 1958 coup, by Abd al-Karim Qasim.
Faisal II of Iraqen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_II_of_Iraq
(section 3.2 14 July Revolution)

The resulting republic (1958-1968) had Qasim (1914-1963) as prime minister (1958-1963) until he was overthrown and executed in 1963.

(b) "Faisal entered history with the Arab revolt of 1916, made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. He had been born in western Arabia to the Hashemite family, which claimed descent from the Prophet. The region was then under Ottoman rule, and it was at the Ottoman court in Istanbul that Faisal had his first taste of politics and intrigue."
(i) Arab Revolt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt
(1916-1918
(ii) Hashemite
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemite
(section 1 History)

(c) "Friction became inevitable. Barely a year after his coronation, after a row with the British high commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, Faisal came close to losing his throne. Tensions continued with Cox’s successor, Sir Henry Dobbs, who in a letter to his wife described the king as 'puerile and petulant' and questioned his fitness to rule. A decade later, in 1932, Britain at last gave Iraq its independence. Faisal died, exhausted and in ill health, the next year. * * [Faisal] did his utmost to reach out to the country’s Shia majority, which resented rule by a Sunni Arab elite."

puerile (adj; Latin puer boy, child)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puerile

choi

Internal trade  | It’s a Continent, Actually; China’s external imbalances are as nothing compared with its internal ones.
www.economist.com/news/china/215 ... -continent-actually
("If each of China’s provinces were treated as an independent economy")

My comment:
(a) The bar chart is headlined: "The Wild West[:] Provincial trade balance as % of provincial GDP, 2012[;] Selected municipalities and provinces."
(i) A paragraph of the article states, "The biggest deficit, in absolute terms, in 2012 was recorded by the central province of Henan, out of which China’s civilisation sprang and into which flowed goods and services worth a net 580 billion yuan ($96 billion). In relative terms, however, the widest deficits appear in China’s western provinces. Ningxia’s deficit amounted to almost 40% of its GDP, bigger than the current-account deficit of any actual country. Even wider trade gaps were recorded in Qinghai, Yunnan and Tibet."
(ii) So the "trade" in the bar chart includes both "goods and services."

(b) What is surprising to me is Shanghai's ratio of trade balance to economic output--I deliberately avoid "GDP," whose "domestic" applies to a nation rather than its component, strictly speaking--is behind that of Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu (in that order).
(c) Most amazing to me is China's periphery (including Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang), despite rich mineral resources that are being extracted and transported to the rest of China, is worthless from cost-benefit analysis based purely on economics. In other words, the pheriphery can survive fiscally only with largess of Beijing, which infuses money to the outlying regions, obviously.

(d) The latest data from OECD, by nations (inport and export separately listed):
(i) International TRADE to GDP Ratios; As percentage of GDP, 2010 or latest available year. OECD Factbook 2011-2012: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics.
www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/fact ... factbook-2011-33-en
(ii) The above does not include Taiwan, but does include China (though China is not an OECD member).

Data for Taiwan:
Trade Profile 2011. World Trade Organization
www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/anrep_e/trade_profiles11_e.pdf
("Taipei, Chinese"--listed alphabetically under T-- Trade to GDP ratio (2007-2010)[:] 132.3)

(e)  Two historical graphics (on trade BALANCE to GDP ratio):
(i) Current-account imbalances | Less skewed. Economist, Sepr 28, 2013
www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21586838-less-skewed (1985-2013; China, Germany, Japan, EU and US)

Current account
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_account
has components other than balance of trade, but these other components are usually relatively small compared with balance of trade.
(ii) Trade as a Driver of Prosperity. European Commission, 2010 (Commission staff working doument: SEC(2010) 1269)
trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/november/tradoc_146940.pdf
(Figure 9 Trade balance (goods and services) for the EU, US and China [1999-2009])

(f) I can not find "trade balance to GDP ratio" of the states.