How Mobile Phones Make Economies Grow Faster

Mobile phones—especially 3G ones—make economies grow faster

By Jackie Snow

A bank employee selling accounts on the street uses a mobile phone to check an identity document, outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Getty Images / Per-Anders Pettersson

 

Studies have shown again and again that mobile-phone networks help economies grow. And it’s not just because people need to be employed to build the networks and sell the phones. By increasing the flow of information, mobile phones improve productivity and efficiency, and open up new markets and new kinds of business all across the economy.

Now there is evidence that improving mobile internet access helps economies too. A recent study examined the effect of faster 3G wireless data connections replacing slower 2G ones. The study by the GSM Association mobile trade group, Deloitte and Cisco, looked at 96 developed and developing markets from 2008 to 2011. When a market experienced a 10% shift from 2G to 3G, GDP per capita growth increased by an average of 0.15 percentage points. A separate look into 14 countries between 2005 to 2010 found that a doubling of mobile data use led to an increase of 0.5 percentage points in per capita growth. (It’s always challenging to isolate causal relationships between such factors, and the study’s sponsors have an obvious interest in promoting any evidence of a societal payoff from expensive wireless network upgrades.)

The range is wide. Countries with a higher level of data usage per 3G connection, like Russia, South Korea and the UK, have seen an increase in their GDP per capita growth by at least one percentage point. India, which is at the other end of the scale, showed no growth attributed to 3G adoption, since the country only started to roll out 3G in 2011 after years of bureaucratic stalling.

There are one billion global mobile 3G subscribers, making up 18% of all mobile users, an increase of more than one-third on 2011.

“The fact that increasing high-speed mobile broadband data usage leads to greater average per capita income underscores the need for increased investment in wireless networks as well as for government policies to foster that investment, including the allocation of additional spectrum,” said Dr. Robert Pepper, vice president of global technology policy at Cisco.

Why Are Hotels So Expensive?

They can cost five, 10, 50 times as much as an apartment in the same city. How come?

By Matthew Yglesias
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What goes into pricing hotel rooms?
Photo by Derek Jensen/Wikimedia Commons.

Slate asked our readers to assign us stories, and more than 1,000 of you wanted me to explain why hotels are so expensive. As a reader noted, “The cheapest hotel room in my city’s downtown is $90/night, while apartments run about $700-1000/month—closer to $30/night,” a huge difference.

There’s not a single reason why hotel rooms are so much more expensive on a per night basis than ordinary housing. But one place to start is taxes. Local tax codes tend to treat homeowners relatively favorably. There are some ideological and substantive reasons for this, and also crass politics. Homeowners, as a class, are more likely to be stable long-term members of their community who vote in city council elections. A hotel guest is just the reverse—a transient who can’t vote. So in addition to the underlying commercial real estate taxes that are probably higher than what’s levied on residences, hotel guests need to pay sales taxes and special excise taxes.

In New York City, for example, a hotel room is subject to 8.875 percent worth of state and local sales taxes, plus a Hotel Occupancy Tax that runs to 5.875 percent plus an extra $3.50 in most cases.

The Global Business Travel Association rates New York’s as the most burdensome hotel tax situation in the country, but one interesting finding of theirs is that there’s actually relatively little variation. My assignment seems to have come from a reader in St. Louis. In that city, you’ll pay 8.491 percent state and city sales taxes and 7.25 percent in earmarked hotel taxes. And commercial real estate in general pays a 32 percent tax rate, far higher than the 19 percent levied on residential property.

Another reason for the high cost of hotels is their location. Mainstream hotels offer premium locations in central business districts or near key attractions, and they tend to invest in what you’d ordinarily consider an unreasonably high level of service. The typical hotel guest doesn’t have a maid cleaning his bedroom at home on a daily basis, or the services of a downstairs concierge. But these are typical add-ons at a standard hotel.

Hotel customers tolerate these marked-up amenities because they generally aren’t very interested in driving a hard bargain. The business traveler is likely to feel that he “needs” appropriately located accommodations and isn’t going to be interested in exhaustive research about the costs and benefits of staying someplace cheaper and more remote. What’s more, he’s generally not paying out of pocket. A responsible employee will of course try to be reasonably frugal, but even so frugality is benchmarked to local costs. That encourages a market that’s biased toward higher price points. The existence of premium business travelers who can fully pass costs on to clients (think fancy lawyers and consultants) further pushes the market up. What’s more, even when people do pay for their own work travel, the cost is tax deductible. If a journalist travels for a freelance assignment or speaking engagement, it makes sense to take extra consumption in the form of staying in a nicer hotel with pre-tax dollars than to spend after-tax dollars at home.

Tourists may be more frugal. But even so, for many vacationers (especially in America) time is in shorter supply than money, so it makes sense to invest extra money in ensuring that the time is well spent.

Last but by no means least, hotels can market unsold inventory without cutting the price of every room. Say I have 85 out of 100 rooms booked at $100 a night. Cutting the price of every room by $5 will cost me $425 and then I have to hope that I get at least five extra bookings for my trouble. It makes more sense to take my 15 spare rooms and directly market them to price-sensitive customers by using a specialized reseller like Hotwire. Hotwire sells bargain hotel rooms, but “opaquely”: You only get to know the hotel’s neighborhood and star rating, not its name, when you book. That annoyance screens for price-sensitive customers and offers a better strategy than broad discounts. Alternatively, unsold inventory can be offered as free upgrades to members of your hotel’s loyalty program. In effect you’re giving a targeted discount to a high-volume customer—smarter, again, than flat rate cuts.

In the ordinary housing market, everyone is in effect a high-volume customer booking long-term leases. And the vast majority of customers are knowledgeable about the city, moderately patient, and thus in a position to drive a reasonably hard bargain. Consequently, the apartment market targets a broader spectrum of customers. Very expensive luxury units are available, but so are cheap ones (except in cities where zoning is blocking new construction).

One fascinating recent development is the rise of companies such as Airbnb that essentially turn spare apartments or rooms into hotel beds. This offers new opportunities for price-sensitive travelers and undermines hotels. Airbnb doesn’t eliminate the market dynamics that tend to push hotel prices up, but it does at least create countervailing pressure. One possibility is that hotels will get cheaper in response. Another is that the share of the market held by formal hotels will simply shrink somewhat. In that scenario, traditional urban hotels would come to specialize even more narrowly in business travelers and high-end tourists, and average prices would go even higher.

To Visit Mizoram Tiger Reserve, Book Your Tickets To UP

By Rahul Karmakar

Guwahati, Nov 28 : A reserve in Mizoram for tigers of Bangladesh has strategically shifted north to be serviced by Delhi government buses and by air from Lucknow. Sounds confusing?

Not if you go by some travel websites. Dampa Tiger Reserve is in Mizoram’s Mamit district.

This 550 sq km low-density tiger habitat 127 km west of state capital Aizawl has a 62 km core area kissing the Bangladesh border.

It was established in 1985 for trespassing tigers – residents of adjoining Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh foraying occasionally into India for prey.

Some tigers have begun to stay back. In 2010, Dampa had an estimated five tigers. Earlier this year, DNA analysis of faeces pointed to the presence of three tigers.

“This is because forests in Bangladesh have undergone degradation while the prey base in Dampa has increased due to better conservation,” Mizoram’s chief wildlife warden Laltlanhlua said.

But while the tigers have taken a liking to Dampa, websites mapping protected areas for wildlife packages have virtually taken the tiger reserve out of Mizoram.

One such site, www.wildlifetrips.in, has positioned Dampa only 4km from nearest railway station Dudhwa in UP.

The ‘place’ is easily accessible from nearest airport Lucknow and enjoys regular public and private sector buses from New Delhi.

Dampa also offers accommodation in huts of Tharu — a north Indian tribe living near jungles — people, according to the site and others.

US Rejects New China Map That Includes Arunachal Pradesh

The United States said it does not endorse the new "controversial" Chinese map on its passport, which depicts certain disputes territories as its own, causing a major diplomatic row in the region including with India.

"No, it is not an endorsement. Our position, as you know on the South China Sea continues to be that these issues need to be negotiated among the stakeholders, among ASEAN and China, and you know a picture on a passport doesn't change that," US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, told reporters at her daily news conference.

The new Chinese passport maps show Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin in Jammu and Kashmir -- the regions of Indo-China border dispute as a part of China. Also, the maps stake claim to several disputed border areas with Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia. The Diaoyu or Senkaku islands, which have been the reason of dispute between Japan and China were also marked as Chinese territory in the maps.

Responding to questions on this issue, Nuland said her understanding is that there are certain basic international standards that have to be met in a passport. "You know stray maps that they include aren't part of it," she said.

"As a technical legal matter, that map doesn't have any bearing on whether the passport is valid for US visa issuance or for entry into the United States...," she said.

"I'm not sure whether we've had a chance to have that discussion with the Chinese, frankly, the first time this issue came to the attention of some of us was over the weekend when the passports started being rejected in various countries," she said.

"So presumably from the perspective that it is considered provocative by some of those countries, we'll have a conversation about it, but in terms of the technical issue of whether the passport is...," she said.

"I would expect that we'll probably have a conversation about the fact that this is considered difficult by some of the countries," Nuland said.

Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya To Get Separate High Courts By December

Agartala, Nov 27 : Three northeastern states -- Tripura, Manipur and Meghalaya -- would get their own full-fledged high courts by next month as the required formalities are almost complete, an official here said Monday.

"The Supreme Court is expected to take a final decision about the chief justices of the proposed high courts within this week. After the appointment of the chief justices, there would be no major hurdles in setting up the high courts," Datamohan Jamatia, secretary, Tripura law department, told IANS.

He said: "The Tripura government already has all the necessary infrastructure to set up a separate high court in Agartala."

"We expect the new high court to be set up by December or January. Now it is up to the apex court and the union law and justice ministry to issue the necessary notification for the purposes," the official added.

Another senior official said Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, in a recent letter to the union ministry of law and justice, has requested the appointment of at least five judges in the new high courts so that divisional benches can function besides single benches.

The obligatory amendment of the North-Eastern Areas (Re-organisation) Act, 1971 -- the North-Eastern Areas (Re-organisation) and Other Related Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2012 -- was passed by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha in May, paving the way for the creation of separate high courts in the three states.

Then President Pratibha Patil had given her assent in June to the amendment bill, making it an act.

"Setting up separate high courts would help speedy disposal of cases, save litigants' time and money, and fulfill a long-standing demand of these three states.

Administrative and developmental works have sometimes been held back due to timely non-disposal of pending cases," Jamatia said.Currently, the six northeastern states of Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have benches of the Guwahati High Court.
Sikkim has a separate high court.

Under the North-Eastern Areas (Re-organisation) Act, 1971, Tripura, Manipur and Meghalaya became full-fledged states on Jan 21, 1972.

"In Tripura alone over 52,000 cases had been pending in different lower courts and 5,000 cases are awaiting disposal in the Agartala bench of the Guwahati High Court," the official said, adding that the necessary infrastructure was ready in all three states for the full-fledged high courts.

Lok Sabha member from Tripura Khagen Das, who had moved a private member's bill earlier for amending the necessary act to set up the high courts, said: "The 30 year-long-struggle for a separate high court in Tripura has finally yielded expected results."

"Following a series of mass movements, the Tripura assembly had first passed a unanimous motion requesting the central government to set up a separate high court in 1987," Das told IANS.

What was then called Assam High Court was constituted April 5, 1948, and initially had its sittings in Shillong, now the Meghalaya capital. It shifted to Guwahati Aug 14, 1948. Meghalaya become a full-fledged state Jan 21, 1972, along with Tripura and Manipur.

The court then came to be known as the High Court of Assam and Nagaland on the constitution of the state of Nagaland Dec 1, 1963.

On the re-organisation of the northeastern region by the North-Eastern Area (Re-organisation) Act, 1971, a common high court was established for five northeastern states of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura - and the two erstwhile union territories (now full-fledged states) of Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh - and was named Guwahati High Court.

Myanmar’s Census A Crucial Democracy Test

By Sonu Trivedi

COUNT ALL: The transformation from procedural to substantive democracy has to be inclusive and the census must ensure that majoritarianism does not get in the way of this. The picture is of Muslim Rohingyas at a camp of Border Guards of Bangladesh before their repatriation back to Myanmar. Photo: AP If conducted properly, the 2014 headcount will both help to consolidate the country’s political reforms process, and drive it

Myanmar is getting ready for a population census in 2014, its first in three decades. The headcount is also expected to prepare the ground for the country’s next general election in 2015, which, it is hoped, will usher in a genuine people’s government. The previous military regime did not feel the need for a census. The last census was in 1983, and Myanmarese born after that have never been enumerated. An accurate count of the population would both be a critical part of the government’s political reforms, as well as one of its main drivers.

The census will enable an accurate estimate of key economic indicators such as GDP, per capita income and other socio-economic data of the country for national development, economic planning and balanced assessment. It would be crucial to several key policies relating to education, health care, housing, employment, sanitation, transport and communication, to name just a few. The process also becomes necessary for delimitation of constituencies and ensuring a fair representation of all the ethnic nationalities in the national and regional legislative bodies. The project will start in April 2014, ahead of the next general election. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has agreed to support Myanmar’s proposed 2014 population and housing census.

After 1931, 1983 census

For years, economists and academics studying Myanmar have been forced to use the government's notoriously unreliable data. The 1983 census failed to count people living in areas where insurgencies were raging. Before that, the last credible census was conducted in 1931, during British rule. The country’s first nationwide census took place in 1891, which was five years after the British annexed Upper Burma. The biggest challenge that faces the reforms process is the ethnic issue. The government has signed some 18 ceasefire agreements with various ethnic militias. But the resolution of these would require addressing the underlying political issues.

Already, there are apprehensions that the census exercise could be used to marginalise ethnic nationalities, especially those in conflict with the government.

Issue of Rohingyas

However, the immediate question in any discussion of the Myanmar census is about the Rohingyas. There are approximately one million Rohingya Muslims living in Rakhine State. They are not counted among the 135 “national races” and hence are not citizens. They were excluded from the 1983 census. Their statelessness has resulted in their persecution. Some 200,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar and are now living in Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law has designated citizens into three categories: 1. full citizens, 2. associate citizens, and 3. naturalised citizens. None of the categories applies to the Rohingya who fall in the category of “non-national” or “foreign residents.” But Rohingya groups insist they have lived in Myanmar for generations. In the recent violence in the Rakhine state clash between the Buddhists and the Rohingyas, which also affected other Muslim groups in the state, more than 200 Rohingya were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Persons of Indian origin

The government appointed an investigation commission into the incidents, but it has not been able to finish its task yet though two deadlines have passed. President Thein Sein has pledged to consider new rights for the stateless Rohingya, but the promise falls short of any commitment towards full citizenship rights. The expectation that Aung San Suu Kyi may give strong voice to the problems of the Rohingyas has been belied.

Aside from the Rohingyas, there are about 1,00,000 Chin, who have fled persecution and settled in the areas bordering India’s Mizoram. Several hill tribes live in remote and inaccessible areas and will need to be counted. There are also a large number of native born but non-indigenous people, such as Indians, who are yet not counted and registered. The 1983 census reported approximately 4,28,000 persons of Indian origin (PIO) in Myanmar. It has been estimated (unofficially) that as many as 2.5 million PIOs could be living in Myanmar. Although they have lived in Myanmar for more than four generations, they lack documentation required by the 1982 Burmese citizenship law and are therefore stateless. However, many of them have registered for naturalised citizenship after the government made available this option in the wake of the 2010 elections.

Over and above all this is the challenge of training people to execute the census. If conducted properly, it will help in empowering Myanmar’s ethnic nationalities, provided it is inclusive and conducted according to international standards.

According to U Khin Yi, Chairperson of the National Population and Development Commission, a successful census will require “broad and effective partnership” involving various government sectors, parliamentarians, civil society, the private sector and international organisations.

In order to ensure that the census is universal and inclusive of all national races, Myanmar may even need to review the 1982 citizenship law to bring it in conformity with international conventions, international custom and principle generally recognised with regard to nationality. In addition, it should be brought in line with the principles embodied in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness of 1961.

Transformation from procedural to substantive democracy has to be inclusive. Conducted in the right spirit, Myanmar’s census would have a big role to play in ensuring that majoritarianism does not get in the way of this.

(Sonu Trivedi teaches Political Science in Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi.)

Two Timber Traders, Driver Abducted in Mizoram

Aizawl, Nov 26 : Two timber traders and their driver were abducted by armed militants from a village bordering Tripura, police said here Monday.

Sapan Kumar Roy (52), his driver Govinda Nath (35) and Sankar Nath (35) were abducted from Rajiv Nagar village at gun-point by five people last night, the police said.

Two of the abductors were dressed in army fatigue and armed with carbines, the police said.

While the BSF officials deployed along the Mizoram - Tripura-Bangladesh border suspected NLFT militants to be behind the kidnapping, state police officials here suspected that the abductors were Borok National Council of Tripura (BNCT) cadre.

The BNCT militants, most of them from the Bru relief camps in North Tripura district, were involved in a recent burglary where Rs 198 lakh was allegedly looted from the office of a Block Development Officer of Zawlnuam village, also bordering Tripura, the police said.

Why Thai Women Cut Off Their Husbands' Penises

An epidemic of penile amputations in Thailand led researchers to inquire into what was going on

By Marc Abrahams

'It became fashionable in the 1970s for the humiliated Thai wife to wait until her husband fell asleep, then sever his penis with a kitchen knife.' Photograph: Alamy

About once per decade, the medical profession takes a careful look back at Thailand's plethora of penile amputations. The first great reckoning appeared in a 1983 issue of the American Journal of Surgery. Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam, by Kasian
Bhanganada and four fellow physicians at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, introduces the subject: "It became fashionable in the decade after 1970 for the humiliated Thai wife to wait until her [philandering] husband fell asleep so that she could quickly sever his penis with a kitchen knife. A traditional Thai home is elevated on pilings and the windows are open to allow for ventilation. The area under the house is the home of the family pigs, chickens, and ducks. Thus, it is quite usual that an amputated penis is tossed out of an open window, where it may be captured by a duck."

The report explains, for readers in other countries: "The Thai saying, 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat,' is therefore a common joke and immediately understood at all levels of society".

The bulk of the paper reports how the doctors and their colleagues learned, over the course of attempting 18 reimplantations, how to improve the necessary surgical techniques. Unambiguous photographs supplement the text.

"Interestingly", the physicians remark at the very end, "none of our patients filed a criminal complaint against their attackers."

An article called Factors Associated with Penile Amputation in Thailand, published in 1998 in the journal NursingConnections, explores the reasons behind that. Gregory Bechtel and Cecilia Tiller, from the Medical College of Georgia (in Atlanta), gathered data from three couples who had been part of the epidemic. The couples, by then divorced, discussed their experience calmly. Bechtel and Tiller report that in each case, three things had happened during the week prior to dismemberment: (1) a financial crisis; (2) "ingestion of drugs or alcohol by the husband immediately prior to the event; and (3) public humiliation of the wife owing to the presence of a second 'wife' or concubine".

In 2008, the Journal of Urology carried a retrospective by Drs Genoa Ferguson and Steven Brandes of the Washington University in St Louis, called The Epidemic of Penile Amputation in Thailand in the 1970s. Ferguson and Brandes conclude that: "Women publicly encouraging and inciting other scorned women to commit this act worsened the epidemic. The vast majority of worldwide reports of penile replantation, to this day, are a result of what became a trendy form of retribution in a country in which fidelity is a strongly appreciated value."

• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize