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Should I run RPKI-RTR in the cloud?

It’s fine to do this for experiments, but for BGP route filtering?



  • <a href="https://blog.apnic.net/category/tech-matters/">Tech matters</a>

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Measuring the IPv6 network periphery

Guest Post: IPv6 network periphery is a new term to describe newly measured intricacies of IPv6 CPE and routers at the edge.



  • <a href="https://blog.apnic.net/category/tech-matters/">Tech matters</a>

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Common setups to secure your networks from home

Need help with setting up your network to allow your remote employees to access internal business services securely?



  • <a href="https://blog.apnic.net/category/tech-matters/">Tech matters</a>

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Germany: Supermarkets and Hospitals Hire More Security Guards

Amid the current public health crisis, hospitals and grocery stores have a growing demand for more security personnel. The guards will help to limit access to buildings -- and stop possible fights over goods.




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Corona: Germany Weighing Strict Curfews If Rules Violated over Weekend

The head of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery has warned that people’s behavior this weekend will be pivotal in determining whether strict shelter-in-place curfews are imposed in Germany to control the spread of the coronavirus.




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Corona: "Saturday Is a Crucial Day" - Interview with Chancellor Merkel's Chief of Staff

Helge Braun, 47, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, speaks with DER SPIEGEL about the rapidly rising number of coronavirus infections and about whether more stringent measures will have to be implemented.




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Germany: Angela Merkel Governs From Home After Negative Test

The German chancellor is staying home after being exposed to a doctor who tested positive for the coronavirus. A first test came back negative, but Merkel will keep governing remotely for the time being. What does Germany's line of succession look like, and who would jump in if Merkel gets sick?




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The Corona Crisis In Retirement Homes: A Threat for Seniors and Caregivers Alike

The gravest threat posed by the coronavirus is that high-risk groups like the elderly and other high-risk groups will get infected by it. The pressure on staffs at nursing homes is growing. Some patient advocates are calling for emergency contingency plans. Are the facilities safe enough for the people living in them?




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Scientific Experts Release Proposals for Loosening the Lockdown

The Leopoldina National Academy, Germany’s academy of sciences, recommends that schools be reopened soon. Businesses and public authorities are also expected to be reopened gradually. Travel should also be permitted under certain conditions, according to the report, which DER SPIEGEL obtained in advance of publication.




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Corona Crisis: We Should Be Adopting Stricter Measures, Not Loosening the Lockdown

People are growing increasingly impatient over the coronavirus lockdown, and politicians are now debating whether to loosen measures. From a scientific point of view this is a disaster. Measures should actually be tightened until we know more about the virus.




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Capuchin Monkeys

Capuchins are highly intelligent monkeys that live in the tropical forests of Central and South America. In the wild, they use tools to crack open nuts and crabs and have learned to rub crushed millipedes on their backs as mosquito repellant. Easily trained, they are historically recognizable as the classic organ-grinder's monkey and are today widely used in lab experiments and occasionally as service animals. What sorts of tasks are monkey helpers trained to perform to assist the disabled?




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Global Behaviors and Perceptions at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic -- by Thiemo R. Fetzer, Marc Witte, Lukas Hensel, Jon Jachimowicz, Johannes Haushofer, Andriy Ivchenko, Stefano Caria, Elena Reutskaja, Christopher P. Roth, Stefano Fiorin, Margarita G

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens’ and governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reacted strongly to the crisis: they report engaging in social distancing and hygiene behaviors, and believe that strong policy measures, such as shop closures and curfews, are necessary. They also believe that their government and their country’s citizens are not doing enough and underestimate the degree to which others in their country support strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. The perception of a weak government and public response is associated with higher levels of worries and depression. Using both cross-country panel data and an event-study, we additionally show that strong government reactions correct misperceptions, and reduce worries and depression. Our findings highlight that policy-makers not only need to consider how their decisions affect the spread of COVID-19, but also how such choices influence the mental health of their population.




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Inequality and the Safety Net Throughout the Income Distribution, 1929-1940 -- by James J. Feigenbaum, Price V. Fishback, Keoka Grayson

We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.




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Interest Rate Uncertainty as a Policy Tool -- by Fabio Ghironi, G. Kemal Ozhan

We study a novel policy tool—interest rate uncertainty—that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external accounts between short-term securities and foreign direct investment (FDI). We identify the trade-offs faced in navigating between external balance and price stability. The interest rate uncertainty policy discourages short-term inflows mainly through portfolio risk and precautionary saving channels. A markup channel generates net FDI inflows under imperfect exchange rate pass-through. We further investigate new channels under different assumptions about the irreversibility of FDI, the currency of export invoicing, risk aversion of outside agents, and effective lower bound in the rest of the world. Under every scenario, uncertainty policy is inflationary.




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I dressed and went for a walk -- determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.

Raymond Carver, writer, poet




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Groups seek $200B for education in coronavirus bill

A group of 90 education and other groups wrote a letter to US lawmakers Wednesday asking for $200 billion in federal funding  -More




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Should schools adopt "detracking" math teachers

A number of school districts in the US are "detracking" math teachers, which rotates teachers through classes, allowing them  -More




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China Eases Back Toward Normality Three Months after Outbreak

Twelve weeks after the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in China, leaders in Beijing are gradually reopening the country. But how can they be sure their decision won't backfire?




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New York City: Eight Days in the New Capital of Corona

Not a soul to be seen on Wall Street, cafés closing down in Brooklyn and a field hospital in Central Park: New York City is in the grips of coronavirus. Notes from a week that changed the city.




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The COVID-19 Battle: A Look at the Treatments Currently Being Used against the Coronavirus

In the fight against COVID-19, doctors and health workers are testing drugs and treatments whose efficacy has been proven against other illnesses. We take a look at the most prominent ones and the early findings.




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German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas: I Find It Appropriate that Every Member State First Acted Nationally

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, 53, criticizes the U.S., China and Hungary for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He also promises not to abandon Italy and explains why he doesn't want to say that he's actually in favor of corona bonds.




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Wuhan Awakes: A Visit to Coronavirus Ground Zero

The Chinese metropolis of Wuhan spent weeks in complete lockdown to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Now, it is reopening its shops and restaurants. But the people remain fearful and cautious.




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The Value of Time: Evidence From Auctioned Cab Rides -- by Nicholas Buchholz, Laura Doval, Jakub Kastl, Filip Matějka, Tobias Salz

We estimate valuations of time using detailed consumer choice data from a large European ride hail platform, where drivers bid on trips and consumers choose between a set of potential rides with different prices and waiting times. We estimate consumer demand as a function of prices and waiting times. While demand is responsive to both, price elasticities are on average four times higher than waiting-time elasticities. We show how these estimates can be mapped into values of time that vary by place, person, and time of day. Regarding variation within a day, the value of time during non-work hours is 16% lower than during work hours. Regarding the spatial dimension, our value of time measures are highly correlated both with real estate prices and urban GPS travel flows. A variance decomposition reveals that most of the substantial heterogeneity in the value of time is explained by individual differences as opposed to place or time of day. In contrast with other studies that focus on long run choices we do not find evidence of spatial sorting. We apply our measures to quantify the opportunity cost of traffic congestion in Prague, which we estimate at $483,000 per day.




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Capitals dump Brendan Leipsic for trashing women and teammates in leaked private chat

Brendan Leipsic talked his way out of a job.




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Yankees president Randy Levine is beating the drum for baseball’s return

Levine is making the rounds to make the case for baseball in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.




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Joe Castiglione, a childhood Yankees fan turned longtime Red Sox broadcaster, talks about the great rivalry that is currently on pause

Joe Castiglione saw his first baseball game in the Bronx.




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Optimal Bailouts and the Doom Loop with a Financial Network -- by Agostino Capponi, Felix C. Corell, Joseph E. Stiglitz

Banks usually hold large amounts of domestic public debt which makes them vulnerable to their own sovereign’s default risk. At the same time, governments often resort to costly public bailouts when their domestic banking sector is in trouble. We investigate how the interbank network structure and the distribution of sovereign debt holdings jointly affect the optimal bailout policy in the presence of this "doom loop". Rescuing banks with high domestic sovereign exposure is optimal if these banks are sufficiently central in the network, even though that requires larger bailout expenditures than rescuing low-exposure banks. Our findings imply that highly central banks can use exposure to their own government as a strategic tool to increase the likelihood of being bailed out. Our model thus illustrates how the "doom loop" exacerbates the "too interconnected to fail" problem in banking.




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Changes in Black-White Inequality: Evidence from the Boll Weevil -- by Karen Clay, Ethan J. Schmick, Werner Troesken

This paper investigates the effect of a large negative agricultural shock, the boll weevil, on black-white inequality in the first half of the twentieth century. To do this we use complete count census data to generate a linked sample of fathers and their sons. We find that the boll weevil induced enormous labor market and social disruption as more than half of black and white fathers moved to other counties following the arrival of the weevil. The shock impacted black and white sons differently. We compare sons whose fathers initially resided in the same county and find that white sons born after the boll weevil had similar wages and schooling outcomes to white sons born prior to its arrival. In contrast, black sons born after the boll weevil had significantly higher wages and years of schooling, narrowing the black-white wage and schooling gaps. This decrease appears to have been driven by relative improvements in early life conditions and access to schooling both for sons of black fathers that migrated out of the South and sons of black fathers that stayed in the South.




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Dropouts Need Not Apply? The Minimum Wage and Skill Upgrading -- by Jeffrey Clemens, Lisa B. Kahn, Jonathan Meer

We explore whether minimum wage increases result in substitution from lower-skilled to slightly higher-skilled labor. Using 2011-2016 American Community Survey data (ACS), we show that workers employed in low-wage occupations are older and more likely to have a high school diploma following recent statutory minimum wage increases. To better understand the role of firms, we examine the Burning Glass vacancy data. We find increases in a high school diploma requirement following minimum wage hikes, consistent with our ACS evidence on stocks of employed workers. We see substantial adjustments to requirements both within and across firms.




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Do Differences in School Quality Generate Heterogeneity in the Causal Returns to Education? -- by Philip DeCicca, Harry Krashinsky

Estimating the returns to education remains an active area of research amongst applied economists. Most studies that estimate the causal return to education exploit changes in schooling and/or labor laws to generate exogenous differences in education. An implicit assumption is that more time in school may translate into greater earnings potential. None of these studies, however, explicitly consider the quality of schooling to which impacted students are exposed. To extend this literature, we examine the interaction between school quality and policy-induced returns to schooling, using temporally-available school quality measures from Card and Krueger (1992). We find that additional compulsory schooling, via either schooling or labor laws, increases earnings only if educational inputs are of sufficiently high quality. In particular, we find a consistent role for teacher quality, as measured by relative teacher pay across states, in generating consistently positive returns to compulsory schooling.




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Incentivizing Behavioral Change: The Role of Time Preferences -- by Shilpa Aggarwal, Rebecca Dizon-Ross, Ariel D. Zucker

How should the design of incentives vary with agent time preferences? We develop two predictions. First, “bundling” the payment function over time – specifically by making the payment for future effort increase in current effort – is more effective if individuals are impatient over effort. Second, increasing the frequency of payment is more effective if individuals are impatient over payment. We test the efficacy of time-bundling and payment frequency, and their interactions with impatience, using a randomized evaluation of an incentive program for exercise among diabetics in India. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, bundling payments over time meaningfully increases effort among the impatient relative to the patient. In contrast, increasing payment frequency has limited efficacy, suggesting limited impatience over payments. On average, incentives increase daily steps by 1,266 (13 minutes of brisk walking) and improve health.




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Geographic Mobility in America: Evidence from Cell Phone Data -- by M. Keith Chen, Devin G. Pope

Traveling beyond the immediate surroundings of one’s residence can lead to greater exposure to new ideas and information, jobs, and greater transmission of disease. In this paper, we document the geographic mobility of individuals in the U.S., and how this mobility varies across U.S. cities, regions, and income classes. Using geolocation data for ~1.7 million smartphone users over a 10-month period, we compute different measures of mobility, including the total distance traveled, the median daily distance traveled, the maximum distance traveled from one’s home, and the number of unique haunts visited. We find large differences across cities and income groups. For example, people in New York travel 38% fewer total kilometers and visit 14% fewer block-sized areas than people in Atlanta. And, individuals in the bottom income quartile travel 12% less overall and visit 13% fewer total locations than the top income quartile.




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Team Players: How Social Skills Improve Group Performance -- by Ben Weidmann, David J. Deming

Most jobs require teamwork. Are some people good team players? In this paper we design and test a new method for identifying individual contributions to group performance. We randomly assign people to multiple teams and predict team performance based on previously assessed individual skills. Some people consistently cause their group to exceed its predicted performance. We call these individuals “team players”. Team players score significantly higher on a well-established measure of social intelligence, but do not differ across a variety of other dimensions, including IQ, personality, education and gender. Social skills – defined as a single latent factor that combines social intelligence scores with the team player effect – improve group performance about as much as IQ. We find suggestive evidence that team players increase effort among teammates.




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Does Economics Make You Sexist? -- by Valentina A. Paredes, M. Daniele Paserman, Francisco Pino

Recent research has highlighted unequal treatment for women in academic economics along several different dimensions, including promotion, hiring, credit for co-authorship, and standards for publication in professional journals. Can the source of these differences lie in biases against women that are pervasive in the discipline, even among students in the earliest stages of their training? In this paper, we provide evidence on the importance of explicit and implicit biases against women among students in economics relative to other fields. We conducted a large scale survey among undergraduate students in Chilean universities, among both entering first-year students and students in years 2 and above. On a wide battery of measures, economics students are more biased than students in other fields. Economics students are somewhat more biased already upon entry, before exposure to any economics classes. The gap is more pronounced among students in years 2 and above, in particular for male students. We also find an increase in bias in a sample of students that we follow longitudinally. Differences in political ideology explain essentially all the gap at entry, but none of the increase in the gap with exposure. Exposure to female students and faculty attenuates some of the bias.




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Chinese Loans Pose Risks to Developing World

China is the largest creditor in the world, funding infrastructure projects in the developing world in exchange for access to raw materials. A new study shows that the risk of a new debt crisis is significant.




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Hong Kong: China Pressures Foreign Companies on Protests

To help end the protests in Hong Kong, the Chinese government is pressuring foreign companies doing business in the country to toe the official position. Any firm that doesn't can expect punishment -- and even ostensibly progressive German conglomerates are playing along. By DER SPIEGEL Staff




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Auto Executive Carlos Ghosn on His Risky Escape from Japan

Former Renault-Nissan chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn fled Japan in a dramatic escape just over a month ago. He is currently the subject of an Interpol search warrant. DER SPIEGEL met him in Beirut for an interview.




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When Larry Fink Met Greta: Investors Join In Calls for Corporate Sustainability

Pressure is growing across the board for large corporations to do more to protect the environment and the climate. Even institutional investors like Blackrock head Larry Fink are joining the chorus of voices calling for change.




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Interview with David Enrich on Trump's Finances: "Deutsche Bank Turned a Blind Eye to All These Red Flags"

Greed, envy, poor leadership and a poisonous internal culture: New York Times journalist David Enrich has written a book about Deutsche Bank that also sheds light on the financial institution's relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.




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Pandemic Response: Volkswagen Moving to Suspend Production Across Europe

Just as Volkswagen was undergoing a radical restructuring to focus on e-mobility and driverless cars, the company has announced it is shutting down factories across Europe due to the coronavirus. There is hope in China, however.




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Corona Virus and the Working World: What Employees in Germany Need To Know About Their Rights

Am I required to work if I can't find alternative childcare with daycare centers now closed? Will I still get my salary? What happens to my health insurance? Answers to the most pressing questions about labor law in times of the coronavirus.




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Half a Million German Companies Have Sent Employees into Short-Time Work

The corona crisis has hit the German economy at full force. Already, 470,000 applications have been filed for a German government subsidy that prevents employees from getting laid off, 20 times more than the previous record during the 2009 financial crisis.




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Germany: Carmakers Prepare To Restart Production

German carmakers are going to have to open up their factories and car dealerships again soon – otherwise they could face a widespread collapse. And that would be disastrous for the German economy.




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Hell’s Backbone Grill is temporarily closed due to coronavirus, but Utah chefs win nod as finalists for national James Beard award




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Two teenagers missing on Utah Lake, search ongoing through the night




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For workers, no sign of ‘what normal is going to look like’




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The ‘Big One’ still likely because Magna quake didn’t relieve much stress on Wasatch fault lines




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Carrie Gold: Online education can be the key to better learning




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New Ogden’s Own Distillery will boost vodka and whiskey production tenfold




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Gordon Monson: Two twin Utes tricked ex-Utah basketball coach Jim Boylen by switching identities. This is their story.