Tag Archives: Australia

Blockchain Based Equity Settlement in Australia

In the FT, Jamie Smyth reports that the Australian Securities Exchange plans to introduce a blockchain based equity clearing and settlement system.

ASX will operate the system on a secure private network with known participants. The participants must comply with regulation, according to the ASX, which said its system had nothing to do with blockchain technology deployed by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

Historical Living Standards in International Comparison

On VoxEU, Peter Lindert summarizes his recent work on long-term international comparisons of living standards. Lindert compares nominal incomes per capita, deflated by historical prices (for staple goods). He makes five points:

The real income gap between Northwest Europe and the major Asian countries was greater since the 1500s than even Maddison had estimated.

Contrary to all previous estimates, Mughal India around 1600 was already far behind both Japan and Northwest Europe.

Within Europe, the new estimation procedure shows little bias in Maddison’s estimates.

Average incomes in North America were already higher than in Britain or France in the late 17th century, long before Maddison’s c.1900 catching up date for the US versus Britain. A similar ‘frontier advantage’ has now emerged from estimates for Australia in 1870.

Adding what is known about the ability to buy luxuries and capital goods raises the income of Western Europe relative to all other regions, except possibly resource-rich North America.

Myopia in East Asia

The Economist reports about a rising share of teenagers in East Asia that suffer from myopia.

The biggest factor in short-sightedness is a lack of time spent outdoors. Exposure to daylight helps the retina to release a chemical that slows down an increase in the eye’s axial length …

Once they start school, Chinese children spend about an hour a day outside, compared with three or four hours for Australian ones.