Economist, Nov 17, 2018 (II)

choi

(1) Academic research | Looking to Beat the World. Tsinghua University my soon surpass America's institutions in sicen and technologu subjects. In China, its rapid rise is not unique.
("Money is the lever. [China's] universities * * * give their academic an incentive to do so. A study by three Chinese researchers, published last year, noted that payments for getting a paper published had risen steadily from the %25 that was offered nearly 30 years ago by Nanjing University, the first university to give such rewards. Now such bonuses range up to $165,000 -- 20 times the annual salary of an average academic -- for a paper in nature, depending on the institution")

Note: the chart:

"Paper tigers
Number of papers in the top 1% most highly cited ones in math and computing
By universities, papers published 2013-16

1 Tsinghua University (China) 42
2=  Harbin Institute of Technology [哈尔滨工业大学] (China) 38
2=  Stanford University (US) 38
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) 35
5 Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) 32
6 University of California, Berkley (US_ 30
7=  National University of Singapore (Singapore) 29
7=  University of Electronic Science and Technology of China 0电子科技大学 (1856- ; public; based in Chengdu)] (China) 29
9=  City University of Hong Kong 28
9=  Huazhong University of science and Technology (China) 28
9=  University of Texas, Austin (US) 28
12 South East University (China) [东南大学 (1902- ; public; based in Nanjing)] 27
13=  University of California, Los Angeles (US) 24
13=  Princeton University (US) 24
13=  Zhejiang University (US) 24

Source: 'Bigger Than You Thought; China's contribution to scientific publications,' by Q Xie and R Freeman, NBER, 2018

choi

(2) The economics of chocolate | Sweet Dreams; Cocoa processing is not a golden ticket for west Africa.

Quote:

"IN 1876 TETTEH QUARSHIE, a blacksmith, smuggled the first cocoa beans in Ghana* * * His trees, planted in the hills outside Accra, are a tourist attraction. But did cocoa make him rich?  'No,' said a guide. 'He harvested for the first time, and then he died.' * * * Ghana and Ivory Coast [Ghana as its eastern neighbor] produce about 60% of the world's cocoa cocoa beans production: Ivory Coast>Ghana>Indonesia>Nigeria>Cameron (which is Nigeria's eastern neighbor], followed by 5 countries in Americas]. Yet they mostly sell unprocessed beans. Their cocoa-exporting earning are equivalent to less than a tenth of world chocolate sales/ [In other worlds, ,10% of chocolate price is for raw material -- better than Chinese, whose take from an iPhone price has been 5%].  Power lies with a small group of trading forms and chocolate-makers in rich countries.

"About 21% of the world's cocoa is ground in Africa, up from 15% a decade ago. Ivory Coats grinds nearly a third of its beans and rivals the Netherlands as the world leder by volume. * * * Most of the processing in the region is done by the same multinationals that were already grinding cocoa in Europe or elsewhere.

"Gone are the days when George Cadbury build model villages for his British workers. A modern cocoa factory is a labyrinth of juddering metal, supervised from behind computer screens.  The entire Ghanaian processing industry employs just a few thousand people. The capital investment required to create one job grinding cocoa in Ivory Coast could create over 300 jobs processing cashew nuts, said the World Bank in 2012.

Note:
(a) Humans Indulged a Taste for Chocolate a Millennium Earlier Than Realized. Nature, 563: 158 (Nov 1, 2018)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07226-y
("Until now, the oldest archaeological evidence for cacao (Theobroma cacao L) dated to 3,900 years ago and came from a Central American site, although genomic analysis suggested that the tree’s place of origin lay further south, along the Amazon River.  Michael Blake at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleagues analysed residues on bottles and other items from the Santa Ana-La Florida archaeological site in the South American nation of Ecuador. These residues contained cacao DNA, grains of cacao starch and theobromine, a stimulant found in cacao beans.  Results from this analysis indicate that the site’s people, who were part of the Mayo-Chinchipe culture, consumed cacao 5,300 years ago")

The above cited Zarrillo S et al, The Use and Domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2:1879–1888 (2018).
(b) George Cadbury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cadbury
("Bournville after the nearby river ['The Bourn'] and French word for 'town' ")
(c)  judder (vi): "chiefly British : to vibrate with intensity" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/judder
(d) cashew (native to northeastern Brazil; production: India= Ivory Coast. Vietnam. Brazil)  en.wikipedia.org for cashew.

choi

(3) Technology and schools | Teacher's Little Helper. In poor countries teachers are often ignorant or absent. Technology can mitigate some of the damage this does to children's prospects.
("Paying teachers more is not likely to improve the situation. As research by Justin Sandefur of the Centre for Global Development shows, poor-country teachers tend to be remarkably well-paid, by local standards (see chart on next page)" )

Note: the chart:

"The moneyed classes
Primary-school teacher salaries as a multiple of GDP per person
Selected countries, latest available

CAR [Central African Republic] ~7 [times as the GDP per person]
Ethiopia ~6.8
Kenya ~5.25
South Africa 5
Nigeria ~4.9
India* 4
Tanzania ~3.75
Germany ~1.5
Britain ~1.25
United States ~0.95

Source: Centre for Global Development                * Rural Andhra Pradesh