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Eurozone inflation has risen to its highest level in almost a decade, increasing pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) to slow the pace of its bond purchases.
The eurozone's Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) jumped to 3 per cent in August from a year earlier as the region's economy rebounded from the pandemic. The increase exceeded the expectations of most economists, compared with the 2.2 per cent in July. The HICP has not risen as fast in the 19-country bloc since November 2011 when the ECB had just raised interest rates, the last time it did so.
Prices in August increased or were flat year on year in every eurozone country. The highest inflation rates of between 4.5 and 5 per cent were in Estonia, Lithuania and Belgium. Only four eurozone countries now have inflation below 2 per cent, down from 16 countries in March.
The price increases were driven by the economic rebound from the impact of the pandemic, higher energy costs, the reversal of last year's German cut in value added tax and supply chain bottlenecks. They also partly reflect last year's delayed start to summer clothing sales in France and Italy, which were on time this year so prices are higher in comparison. In the past year, energy prices rose 15.4 per cent, food, alcohol and tobacco prices climbed 2 per cent and industrial goods prices increased 2.7 per cent. Core inflation, excluding the more volatile energy, food, alcohol and tobacco prices, more than doubled to 1.6 per cent, its highest level since 2012.
Most economists expect inflation to fall again next year, as temporary factors fade. But the recent jump in prices still provides ammunition to more conservative ECB rate-setters. They are expected to push for a slowdown in bond purchases under the bank's €1.85 trillion Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme when they meet next week. “The effects of reopening and supply problems could intensify in the next few months,” said Jack Allen-Reynolds, an economist at Capital Economics. “But we suspect that they will begin to fade next year as global consumption and trade patterns return to something like their pre-pandemic norms, and producers-especially of semiconductors-are able to increase their output.”
Investors seem relatively sanguine about rising inflation which is usually considered bad news for bond prices. Normally, rising inflation will drive up the bond yields, and the rising bond yields will cause the bond prices to fall.
Inflation is rising in many countries as the world economy rebounds from the impact of the pandemic, increasing pressure on central banks to start winding back the monetary stimulus they launched last year. In the US, where inflation is more than 5 per cent, Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell said last week it would start scaling back its asset purchases this year.
[A] Raise interest rates.
[B] Expand the exports.
[C] Stimulate consumption.
[D] Slow down bond purchases.
[A] They were all up compared with last year.
[B] They remained the same as before.
[C] Germany was among the highest.
[D] Four countries had inflation rates below 2%.
[A] increased demand
[B] higher energy costs
[C] supply chain bottlenecks
[D] changes in German tax policy
[A] hesitant
[B] pessimistic
[C] optimistic
[D] indifferent
[A] How America responded to the inflation.
[B] How inflation has affected other countries.
[C] The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[D] The causes of inflation around the world.
The future of urban transport will not be based on a single technology, but on a diverse mixture of transport systems, knitted together by smartphone technology. Collectively, ride-hailing, micromobility and on-demand car rental offer new approaches to transport that provide the convenience of a private car without the need to own one, for a growing fraction of journeys.
The smartphone's ability to connect up these different forms of transport to form an “internet of motion”, means that it, rather than any particular means of transport, is the true heir to the car. That should be welcomed, because the experience of the 20th century suggests that it would be a mistake to replace one transport monoculture with another, as happened with the switch from horses to cars. A transport monoculture is less flexible, and its unintended consequences become more easily locked in and more difficult to address.
As combustion engines are phased out, and cars, trains and other forms of ground transport go electric, direct emissions should not be a problem. Electric transport will only be truly emission-free when it is powered by renewable power from a zero-carbon grid. But transport systems will produce another form of potentially problematic output: data. In particular, they will produce reams of data about who went where, and when, and with whom. They already do. In an infamous (and since deleted) blog post from 2012, entitled Rides of Glory , Uber analysed its riders' behaviour to identify the cities and dates with the highest prevalence of one-night stands, for example.
The companies that operate mobility services are keeping this data to help them predict future demand. Cities want to track the position and usage of shared bicycles so they can compare levels of usage in low-income and high-income neighbourhoods, and so forth. For this reason, dozens of cities around the world have adopted a system called the Mobility Data Specification (MDS). At present, MDS only covers bicycles and e-scooters, though it could be expanded to cover ride-hailing, car-sharing and autonomous taxi services in the future. But mobility-service providers and privacy groups are concerned that MDS lets individuals be easily tracked. They also worry that the foundation that oversees MDS will not store the data securely.
All of this suggests that personal-mobility data is likely to become a flashpoint in the future. This may seem like an esoteric concern, but the same could have been said of worries about carbon dioxide emissions, which are just as invisible, at the dawn of the automotive era. Unlike the people of that time, however, those building and using new mobility services today have the chance to address such concerns before it is too late.
[A] depend solely on the artificial intelligence
[B] reduce people's desire to own private cars
[C] enable more people to own private cars
[D] be dominated by public transport
[A] Ambiguous.
[B] Objective.
[C] Favourable.
[D] Critical.
[A] They still face big risks.
[B] They are as perfect as ever.
[C] They are less popular as imagined.
[D] They are truly emission-free.
[A] data that records people's movements can be misused
[B] technology companies should be prohibited from collecting data
[C] all modern forms of transport are able to track individual movements
[D] ride-hailing has provided great convenience for people's travel
[A] To try to cut emissions before it is too late.
[B] To take timely action to protect personal-mobility data.
[C] To develop greener forms of transport for the future.
[D] To alleviate the public's worries about carbon dioxide emissions.
“HAVE A BREAK” is a slogan associated with a popular chocolate snack, KitKat. But it may be pretty good advice for any manager or worker. The longer the shift, the less effective the employee may become.
In a new paper, “Quantifying the cost of decision fatigue: suboptimal risk decisions in finance”, Tobias Baer and Simone Schnall examine the credit decisions of loan officers at a leading bank over the course of their working day. The academics write that decision fatigue “typically involves a tendency to revert to the‘default’option, namely whatever choice involves relatively little mental effort”. In other words, as you become tired, you get mentally lazy.
The study looked at proposals to restructure loans, with each credit officer analysing 46 requests per day. The approval rate was around 40%, so the default decision was rejection. Officers tended to start work between 8am and 10am, took lunch between 1pm and 3pm, and tended to leave at 6pm. The researchers found that the approval rate declined significantly between 11am and 2pm, as lunch approached, then picked up again after 3pm before declining in the last two hours of work.
What makes this study ingenious is that the authors were able to see whether or not the loans were subsequently paid back. They found that rejecting a restructuring request made it less likely that the loan would be repaid. So they calculated that decision fatigue, by causing more rejections, actually cost the bank money; around $500,000 over the course of a single month.
Mental activity can result in physical exhaustion, as anyone who has spent a day in successive meetings can attest. In the middle of a business trip, nothing can seem more enticing than the solitary silence of a hotel room, with no clients to amuse in sight. Breaks can also boost creativity. It is easy for the brain to develop tunnel vision when it is working hard. There are times when the mind needs to roam free.
The lesson for managers is that what seems like “slacking” is actually a useful device for maintaining productivity. And the study of loan officers indicates that companies should look for ways to protect workers against decision fatigue.
One approach would be to give employees more breaks, of course. But another might be to monitor decisions at certain times of the day. The bank that was the subject of the study could have ensured that loan decisions made just before lunch, or at the end of the day, were subject to review. Software could be used to “nudge” employees with a message like: “Your decision-making seems to have changed, maybe you want to take a break and reconsider.” A pause should win applause.
[A] decision fatigue can be seen in every industry
[B] academics are more likely to suffer from decision fatigue
[C] tired workers should be prohibited from making decisions
[D] people are less likely to make the best decisions when tired
[A] Its investigation cycle is particularly long.
[B] Its findings are easy to quantify.
[C] Its authors can know the subsequent development of the event.
[D] Its pattern of investigation is unprecedented.
[A] keep working hard
[B] give his brain a break
[C] have a discussion with others
[D] look for help timely
[A] To make sure employees' decisions are made in the morning.
[B] To give employees more material incentives.
[C] To encourage employees to have a chat with colleagues.
[D] To examine the decisions employees make when they are tired.
[A] Why is taking a break actually good for productivity?
[B] Why is it so hard to make a right decision?
[C] How can companies better manage their employees?
[D] What causes employees to feel fatigued?
Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years and lifestyle and behavioural changes will be needed to avoid climate breakdown, according to the leaked draft of a report from the world's leading authority on climate science. Rich people in every country are overwhelmingly more responsible for global heating than the poor, with SUVs and meat-eating particularly blamed.
The leak is from the forthcoming third part of the landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the first part of which was published on Monday, warning of unprecedented changes to the climate, some of them irreversible. The document, called the Sixth Assessment Report , is divided into three parts: the physical science of climate change, the impacts, and ways of reducing human influence on the climate.
Part three is not scheduled to be released before March 2022, but a small group of scientists decided to leak the draft. It was first published by the journalist Juan Bordera in a Spanish online magazine. Bordera said that the leak reflected the concern of some of those involved in drawing up the document that their conclusions could be watered down before publication in 2022. Governments have the right to make changes to the “summary for policymakers” in part three.
The top 10% of emitters globally, who are the wealthiest 10%, contribute between 36% and 45% of emissions, which is 10 times as much as the poorest 10%, the report finds. “The consumption patterns of higher income consumers are associated with large carbon footprints,” the summary says. The report underlines the lifestyle changes that will be necessary, particularly in rich countries and among the wealthy globally. Refraining from over-heating or over-cooling homes, walking and cycling, cutting air travel and using energy-consuming appliances less can all contribute significantly to the reductions in emissions needed.
Eating patterns in many parts of the rich world will also need to change. “A shift to diets with a higher share of plant-based protein in regions with excess consumption of calories and animal-source food can lead to substantial reductions in emissions. Plant-based diets can reduce emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission-intensive western diet. Providing modern energy to all those who lack it (800 million people have no access to electricity) would have a‘negligible’effect on emissions,” the report says.
Cutting emissions in the next decade will be crucial to any hope of holding global heating within 1.5。C of pre-industrial levels, beyond which the impacts of climate breakdown will cause widespread devastation. Taking greater care of forests and land as important carbon sinks would further help to limit temperature rises, but must not be over-relied on. This cannot compensate for slow emissions reduction in other sectors, the report says.
[A] fuel-consuming and polluting non-public transport
[B] unnecessary extravagance and waste in daily life
[C] the widespread popularity of private cars
[D] the fact that people are becoming more wealthy
[A] It is a full report made by the IPCC.
[B] It was supposed to be released on Monday.
[C] It focuses on how to reduce human impact on the climate.
[D] It was written by a small group of Spanish scientists.
[A] avoid their conclusions to be changed
[B] draw more public attention to climate change
[C] call on the rich to reduce their carbon emissions
[D] urge the governments to take climate change seriously
[A] adopt the same lifestyle as the poor
[B] spend more money to fight climate change
[C] help the poor gain access to modern energy
[D] reduce consumption of animal-source food
[A] the process of cutting emissions is slow but imperative
[B] protecting forests and land is hardly helpful
[C] limiting temperature rises is harder than it seems
[D] the trend of rising temperatures is irreversible