A Thai worker is seen behind large bags with rice prepared for export in Ayutthaya province on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011.SUKREE SUKPLANG
A roundup of the best economic posts on the Web
Global food prices and inflation targeting
A study on VoxEU suggests that food prices are a more important driver of global inflation than the cost of crude oil given their weight in the baskets of many developing economies:
"While much has been made of oil prices as drivers of global inflationary spurts since the 1970s, recent work of ours (Catão and Chang 2010) provides evidence that food price pressures have been no less important. The data in fact suggests that food tends to have stronger predictive power on global inflation cycles than oil.
Feeling the Heat: Comparing Global Inflation
The Wall Street Journal has a nice interactive heat chart and the uneven distribution of consumer prices around the world.
Is a Multinational C.E.O. the Best Jobs Czar?
New York Times Economix with more on the appointment of Jeffrey Immelt to President Barack Obama's jobs council. "...[S]me commentators have questioned whether the leader of General Electric, a company that has sharply reduced its United States payrolls over the years, is the best person to be orchestrating a jobs revival."
How Barack Obama sounds a lot like Herbert Hoover
Economist David Rosenburg of Gluskin Sheff found U.S. President Barack Obama's State of The Union speech remarkably similar to comments made by Depression-era leader Herbert Hoover.