Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:
Happy tin anniversary! The OECD is reporting what it describes as the international community’s “unprecedented success” in using transparency standards to fight offshore tax evasion 10 years after the G20 officially declared the end of banking secrecy. How about EUR100 billion in additional tax revenue identified since 2009? Still, there is probably that and many more billions leaking offshore to legal tax havens. – OECD
Norway’s Rystad Energy reports that the United States is only months away from being fully energy independent, which is a monumental shift in global energy realities from the distant 1970s oil crisis prompted by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries’ oil embargo. – Rystad Energy
https://www.rystadenergy.com/newsevents/news/press-releases/US-set-to-be-energy-independent/
If you’re interested in weather economics and climate change opportunities, this International Monetary Fund report will make for interesting fireside reading. As long as you’re not burning any fossil fuel. Or wood. – International Monetary Fund Finance and Development Magazine
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/pdf/fd1219.pdf
Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:
Don’t miss next week’s Business in Vancouver, in which Nelson Bennett takes a close look at the price tag of fighting climate change. In the meantime, Vancouver Island writer Guy Dauncey rebuts stark (“OK Doomer”) assessments by UBC professor William Rees and journalist Andrew Nikiforuk that only a radical economic reformation can save us from what the latter calls the “self-made blitzkrieg” of man-made climate disaster. – the Tyee
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/25/OK-Doomer-Climate-Challenge-Response/
A new Angus Reid poll sheds light on the “precarious” position of Canada’s youngest adults as stable, long-term jobs are increasingly replaced by the gig economy. – Bloomberg
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/40-of-canada-s-millennials-are-part-of-the-gig-economy-study-1.1353301
Hayley Woodin, reporter:
Who isn’t being blamed for interference in elections? After a historic voter turnout at district council elections in Hong Kong – where pro-democracy, anti-establishment candidates won a majority of seats – Beijing went silent. And then, it blamed the United States. – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/world/asia/china-hong-kong-protests-election.html
How does a charity founded by economists effect change? Economic stimulus, Keynesian economics and studying what works. Researchers distributed $10 million to residents in a rural part of Kenya. It also cost nearly $1 million to study the impact of doing so. But the result? A fiscal multiplier of 2.6, and an idea that can potentially be replicated elsewhere. – Vox
Ten years and 50 portfolio companies later, Vancouver-based Version One Ventures is sharing some of the advice it gives the teams it works with. The result is a 49-page startup handbook that covers best practices for building teams, organizations and investor bases. (Version One, by the way, was founded by Boris Wertz, who sold JustBooks to AbeBooks, and AbeBooks to Amazon.) – Version One Ventures
