Raleigh: the next big startup hub?

According to Inc. magazine, the answer is yes.  The article brings up the three research universities, space availability, and a strong entrepreneurial network as factors that will make Raleigh the next Austin or Portland.  NC State and the Poole College of Management play a crucial role through Centennial Campus and HQ Raleigh.  Who knows, maybe Amazon or Apple will decide to locate here as well?

Update on washing machine tariffs

Six months ago I posted on the likely effects of tariffs on washing machines.  As any NC State MBA student would know, a tariff on washing machines would lead to (1) higher prices, (2) fewer purchases (demand curves slope downwards), (3) more domestic production, (4) fewer imports, and (5) increased government revenue.

WP columnist Catherine Rampell provides an update in a recent column.  The not-so-surprising news is that after a 20% tariff, washing machine prices increased 17% in May.  There is more domestic production, but some of it will be coming from new factories that Samsung and LG plan to open in the US.

The news on the job front is less clear.  Other things equal, Whirlpool would expand production in response to higher prices.  But the washing machine tariff is not an isolated event.  Tariffs on steel have increased production costs of washing machines, dampening the increase in domestic production (and jobs).  Also, European countries are preparing their own tariffs in reaction to the aluminum and steel tariffs and U.S. washing machines are on their hit-list.

Rampell cites estimates that US consumers will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in higher prices for each domestic washing machine job saved by the tariff.  Most of this money will not filter its way to the employees, who are going through their own spin cycle.

Who has the upper hand in China-US tariff war?

Headline in yesterday's WSJ "White House Sees Edge in China Talks."  Ok, what's the secret sauce for the USA?  Is it the availability of close substitutes for Chinese imports or superior negotiating savvy?

No, it is nothing that subtle.  Instead the White House argument boils down to this: the US exports relatively little ($129.9b) to the US whereas Chinese exports to the US are HHUUGGEE ($505.5b)!  So US tariffs can inflict more damage on the Chinese than Chinese tariffs can inflict on the US.

Problem with this line of reasoning: the costs of a tariff war fall much more heavily on US consumers of imported goods than on US exporters impacted by Chinese tariffs.  With a 25% tariff, not only does the price of imports go up by that amount but domestic producers raise their prices by the same amount.

Bottom line: the pain of a tariff war with China will be asymmetric, with US consumers bearing most of the damage in terms of higher prices and less variety.

Job openings exceed number of unemployed

Earlier this month the Labor Department reported that there are more open positions than there are unemployed workers.  There were 6.7m openings at the end of April, well above the 6.3m unemployed.  This is the first time this has happened since the data series on job openings launched in 2000.

Although this is encouraging news for individuals looking for work, keep in mind that many employers prefer to poach talent away from someone else.  The unemployed have to compete against people who already have jobs for open positions.  Also there are many people involuntarily working part-time who are trying to gain full-time positions.  Takeaway: employers still have a large pool of position-seekers from which to draw, but the pool has gotten smaller relative to the number of open posts.

Companies with open positions will now consider changing the skill and experience requirements and increasing wages.  Consider the following example from WSJ:

To attract workers, the Saladworks restaurant chain has raised its starting wages about 5%. It also has relaxed standards on tattoos and piercings, allowed employees to wear jeans and bandannas, and gotten more flexible about schedules.

How much do new employees value corporate social responsibility?

Many firms tout their devotion to the triple bottom line and corporate social responsibility (CSR).  Why do they do it?  One answer, according to University of Chicago economist John List in an interview on Freakonomics, is that it helps attract and retain workers.

List made his reputation doing field experiments in economics.  He is so devoted to this approach that he has set up his own data collection firm HHL Solutions to do experiments on labor market issues.  HHL posted help-wanted ads on Craigslist in 12 cities.  The ads varied in terms of the hourly wage ($11 to $15) and whether they mentioned HHL's commitment to corporate social responsibility.  Not surprisingly the application volume was 33% higher at $15 per hour than it was at $11.  Surprisingly (at least to me), the application volume also was 33% higher when the ads mentioned CSR.

The next surprise: the people who responded to the ads mentioning CSR were more 10 to 25 percent more productive and more accurate in their data entry tasks.

So let's see -- lower your hourly wage costs AND get more output.  Sounds like at least one part of the triple bottom line is dong just fine in firms dedicated to CSR.

Sacramento Chick-fil-A starts paying $18/hour

Today's WP reports that a Chick-fil-A franchise in Sacramento will bump up its starting hourly wage from $12-13 to $17-18.  The current minimum wage in California is $11, so this decision is clearly being made with the franchise's self interest in mind.  Quote from the owner Eric Mason:

As the owner, I'm looking at it big-picture and long-term.  What that does for the business is provide consistency, someone that has relationships with our guests, and it's going to be building a long-term culture.  

The business case for the raise is based on the franchise's ability to attract and retain qualified workers.  Mason certainly will have less difficulty filling open positions for the next few years.

Will other fast food franchisees follow suit?  The national unemployment rate is below 4 percent, labor force participation has not increased and immigration is being actively discouraged on multiple fronts.  So you might have to pay more the next time you crave some nuggets and waffle fries.  

Hatch on tariffs

From WP's Daily 202 today:

Does Amazon have a sweetheart deal with USPS?

The US Postal Service has lost significant sums of money every year for at least a decade.  President Trump claims that USPS's contract with Amazon has made things worse.  This article in VOX provides some insights to help analyze Trump's claim.  Key takeaways:

1. Shipping and packages is the only major component of USPS's revenue stream that is increasing, growing by $2 b in 2017 over 2016.  
2. First class mail and marketing mail revenue are down by $3 b over the same period.  
3. USPS costs are largely fixed.  Delivery takes place over the same routes every day; the same sorting and shipping operations take place each day as well, subject to some seasonal fluctuations.  
4. Unlike any private company, USPS must pre-fund its pension and retiree health benefits for the next 75 years.  This costs $6b annually and accounts for most of USPS annual losses.  

As long as the Amazon contract covers the variable costs of weekend deliveries, USPS comes out ahead.  Could USPS charge Amazon a higher rate?  That depends on whether Amazon could find close substitutes for package delivery.  I would not underestimate them.  

Economics of tipping

Tips are welcome in many occupations and are absolutely expected by restaurant servers who are paid well below the minimum wage.  Recently some restaurants have eliminated tipping, increased hourly wages and then hiked menu prices to compensate.

How do incentives change in a no-tip restaurant?  Under tipping the wait staff has two incentives: (1) provide good service because many customers have a "pay-for-performance" ethos and (2) upsell the customers because most base their tip on a percentage of the total tab.  In most cases tips are not shared with cooks and dishwashers, leading to less than optimal teamwork.  Finally tips are risky; restaurant traffic goes up and down with the weather and some customers are less than generous.  The result is partial alignment with the incentives of the restaurant owner.

Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, has moved to the no-tip model.  The benefits, he argues in a recent WP op-ed, include more predictable income for wait staff and improved performance management (managers are in a better position to do this than customers).  But the implementation has been far from seamless.  With pay the same on every shift, servers who begged for weekend shifts (with their higher sales volume) now want to work the quieter weekdays.  Some customers balked at the higher menu prices, especially the ones that were less than generous tippers.

FT ranks NC State Online MBA #17 in the world

More great rankings news for NC State's MBA program.  On Monday the new Financial Times global rankings of online MBAs came out and our program placed #17, up one spot from last year.

FT also ranked programs on specific dimensions.  NC State's online MBA placed #1 in the world in two categories: program delivery and online interaction.

NC State MBA ranked in top 10 for ROI

NC State’s full-time MBA program has just been ranked in the top 10 in the country for best ROI by SoFi, a financial services company that makes student loans.  

We came in at #8.  The top school for ROI was Wisconsin.  The other schools include Brigham Young, Florida, Harvard, Houston, Loyola, Pitt, Stanford, and Villanova.  SoFi calculates ROI as the ratio of average starting salary to average debt.  The data come from 60,000 student load financing applications over three years (2015-2017).  

The ranking is already getting play in the leading MBA blog Poets and Quants run by John Byrne who launched the Business Week rankings years ago.  

https://poetsandquants.com/2018/02/05/mba-programs-with-the-best-roi/

We have been saying for years that our MBA program is a great value, so it is rewarding to see some outside confirmation.  Kudos to the faculty and staff who have been so dedicated to the career success of our students and alumni!

NC State MBA faculty research on diversity and innovation

Poole College of Management faculty members Roger Mayer and Richard Warr have published a study in the journal Financial Management that shows that companies can profit from diversity.  Mayer and Warr found that companies with a more diverse workforce (in terms of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation) produce more new products and obtain more patents.  Warr was interviewed recently on WUNC-FM radio about the study.

NC State online MBA rises in US News rankings

NC State's online MBA rose 4 spots to #14 in the US in the latest US News and World Report rankings.  The program ranked very strongly in terms of student engagement and admissions selectivity.  The program has been in the top 20 every time US News has ranked online MBAs.  Our growing enrollment provides further evidence that NC State offers a great online MBA and a fantastic value.

Anatomy of a tariff

Great WP column by George Will today discussing the likely tariff the US will be imposing on washers and dryers.  This is a classic case where the largest domestic producer Whirlpool has bought out its biggest domestic rival (Maytag) but now claims it needs to be protected from Samsung and LG who have produced more innovative machines at lower prices.  Money quote: Whirlpool is "more adept at manipulating Washington than it is at making washing machines."

College degrees needed? Watch what employers do, not what they say

Do you need a college degree to get ahead today?  Two recent headlines caught my eye.  In each case an enterprising reporter or academic does a survey of employers.

Exhibit A: WSJ reports the results of a US Labor Department survey which finds that less than 20% of all jobs require a college degree.  So maybe college is a waste of time??

Exhibit B: Harvard B-school prof Joseph Fuller finds in his survey that employers are requiring college degrees not so much because the current job requires college level skills but because college grads are more adaptable and do not require training.

A college degree continues to be one of the best investments that young people can make, leading to a lifetime learning differential 55-65% above those who stop their schooling at high school.  Are employers so stupid that they would pay that much more for nothing?  Beware the cable channel talking heads proclaiming that college is a waste of time and money.

Great ratings news for NC State's MBA

NC State's Jenkins MBA received more great rankings news from Bloomberg Businessweek and the QS Global MBA rankings.  Bloomberg ranked the full-time program #36 among public universities and #70 overall.  The program ranked #28 overall in the super-critical job placement dimension with 92% placement in 2016 within three months of graduation.  NC State's MBA also did well on the employer survey, placing #54 overall.

NC State's full-time MBA placed in the #111-120 category in the QS Global MBA rankings.  The program placed #58 in the world on the employability dimension, which reflects employer feedback and placement statistics.  Focusing solely on US schools, NC State's MBA came in at #53 overall, #30 on employability and #46 on thought leadership.

Rankings for the part-time and online programs will appear in the spring.

Is net neutrality getting neutered by new technologies?

American Enterprise Institute blogger Mark Jamison has some insights I have not seen elsewhere regarding how new technologies are likely to make existing regulations on net neutrality meaningless.  Examples of how technology is making a difference:
1) 5G networks will be based on network slicing, which means the network will be customized to different types of traffic.
2) Netflix is investing in proprietary networks and is becoming less dependent on public ones.  Other large gobblers of bandwidth are doing the same.
3) Mobile apps are being used more.  Apps are not open but they are targeted to user needs.

A larger lesson -- in markets where technology is changing quickly, regulations have difficulty keeping up.  If they are enforced too strictly, they can actually interfere with progress.

Storm economics

Harvey has finally made his exit from Houston and the Gulf Coast.  In his wake, a number of economic questions come up.  There always is the issue of price gouging after a natural disaster.  Although the practice raises ethical challenges, it also is a natural consequence of a price system that beats the heck out of what Venezuela uses to allocate resources.

Tyler Cowan has a Bloomberg column on economic issues related to storms that is worth a quick read.  A few key takeaways:

• Storms hurt economic growth because they force us to allocate resources away from other goods and toward rebuilding.  They also fracture lives and incomes.  
• Economic research shows that we are resilient; most who lose their jobs and homes do recover.  
• The standard economic approach to federal flood insurance is problematic.  Under the current system, we subsidize risky housing investments near oceans and in flood plains.  Bailouts to those without insurance reduce the odds that people will insure in the future.  

Even if you really believe that consumers are always rational and well informed, no one could have possibly seen 50 inches of rain in a few days as a possibility.  So what do you do with those who lack flood insurance?  Getting the federal government out of the flood insurance business is a question worthy of serious debate.  But for now Ted Cruz is going to be very supportive of a federal bailout.

Supply-side ideas for health care access

This is the 1st week of classes at NC State.  My online MBA class Essential Economics for Managers is studying supply and demand.  A good place to practice this subject is health care.  Most people pay for health services indirectly through employer- or government-provided health insurance.  Health care spending is much greater in the US relative to other countries with a comparable living standard and many blame these payment mechanisms.

Many efforts to bring health spending down focus on the demand side, either through changing the availability of insurance or through managing insurance-backed spending through eligibility rules, co-pays and deductibles.  As Mitch McConnell learned recently, kicking people off of health insurance plans is not a good way to win votes.

Todd Buchholz who worked under President Bush #41 argues in a recent WP op-ed that supply solutions to health care costs are not getting sufficient attention.  He makes four suggestions:
1) Build more medical schools to increase the supply of doctors (increasing enrollment at existing schools would yield the same result)
2) Allow nurse practitioners and physician assistants to open and manage walk-in clinics (some states allow this but most do not)
3) Recognize drug approvals from other advanced countries so that new drugs can enter the market more quickly and cheaply
4) Legal reforms to reduce unnecessary tests and procedures

Some of these issues are more complex than Buchholz allows.  Also he misses other supply-side reforms such as encouraging more immigrant doctors to practice here.  The overarching idea, however, is that by increasing competition and lowering unit costs, health care spending could start going down.

Marijuana access lets Dutch students grades go to pot

Economic research often extends beyond prices and output.  One recent study looks at what happens in a Dutch university town when a law is passed proscribing marijuana access to students who are not residents of the Netherlands.  As reported in WP, the academic performance of the non-Dutch students improved; their odds of passing a course increased by at least 5 percent.  The performance increase was greatest among students who were performing at a lower level.

Marijuana legalization is based on a wide range of value judgments, of which academic performance is but one dimension.  A key implication of this study is that there is likely to be some adverse impact on learning if marijuana becomes more accessible.  Of course, pot advocates might naturally ask if this experiment were repeated except this time telling the Belgian and French students that they cannot buy Heineken!