News and notes from around the interweb:
- Star Alliance member Aegean now allows points transfers for a fixed 15 euro fee regardless of how many miles you transfer up to 50,000.
- But how do you swipe it? (HT: Doctor of Credit)
- Adopt a child from abroad? Get questioned by police when you fly.
- U.K.’s Secret Brexit Studies Reveal That Airbus Makes Planes
- The government’s own accountability office the TSA doesn’t do a good job of putting its resources where the threats are.
- The positive role of connecting cities by air in international economic development new paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (HT: Tyler Cowen)
We study the impact of international long-distance flights on the global spatial allocation of economic activity.
To identify causal effects, we exploit variation due to regulatory and technological constraints which give rise to a discontinuity in connectedness between cities at a distance of 6,000 miles.
We show that improving an airport’s position in the network of air links has a positive effect on local economic activity, as captured by satellite-measured night lights. We find that air links increase business links, showing that the movement of people fosters the movement of capital. In particular, this is driven mostly by capital flowing from high-income to middle-income (but not low-income) countries.
Taken together, our results suggest that increasing interconnectedness induces links between businesses and generates economic activity at the local level, but also gives rise to increased spatial inequality locally, and potentially globally.
- The UK will change the color of its passport after Brexit. Even though the EU doesn’t mandate the color of passports. Oops.
The UK passport is an expression of our independence and sovereignty – symbolising our citizenship of a proud, great nation. That's why we have announced that the iconic #bluepassport will return after we leave the European Union in 2019. https://t.co/pgQvrBIna5
— Theresa May (@theresa_may) December 22, 2017
I would have expected exactly that.
UK taking a page from republicans and trump deplorables of making a big deal out of nothing.
If it t sure works for imbeciles here why would it not work for imbeciles across the pond?
I don’t see where anyone states that the EU requires a certain color passport. It just seems more of a statement of sovereignty. Maybe I missed something.
@DaninMCI – point is they could change the color of their passport if they wished while remaining in the EU, the EU takes away no sovereignty with respect to the color of their passport, so how can changing the color express the newfound sovereignty of departing from the EU? (and by the way any transition period gives up even more sovereigny, subjecting them to EU rules without any say in those rules)
@Gary Leff: Under researched. This is a return to the pre-EU membership (i.e. independent) color. The fact that it is blue is not the important thing.
Tyler Cowen gave a pointer to this article earlier this year. Most interesting takeaway was that Kinshasa, the third largest city in Africa, has over 12 million people, but only 11 international flights per day.
https://capx.co/africa-is-urbanising-without-globalising/