That may point to the industry's future in America, Britain and other rich countries.
Yet the opposite has happened in America, Britain and other rich countries where inequality has risen over the past 30 years.
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Michael Spence, another Nobel prize-winning economist, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs agrees that technology is hitting jobs in America and other rich countries, but argues that globalisation is the more potent factor.
Last week, Mr Brown said he will, in effect, service 10% of poor countries' loans for them and called on other rich countries to do their share.
It argues that for much of its history America (and to some extent other rich countries) enjoyed the benefits of free land, lots of immigrant labour and powerful new technologies.
According to Screen Digest, a British trade magazine, a major film release in the United States is typically shown on 1, 300 screens, compared with 450 in Germany and even fewer in other rich countries (see chart 2).
One reason is that Afghanistan is many times larger than Bosnia, let alone the other two, and the rich countries have displayed little appetite for the task.
Greater meat consumption by the newly rich in China and other developing countries is also fuelling demand for grain, because livestock consume large quantities of feed.
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Instead of hectoring speculators, perhaps Mr Lieberman should be hounding Mr Ghanem and the leaders of other oil-rich countries to allow foreign oil firms more access.
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And other countries, including several rich ones, should try it.
Consumer loans dominate turf that is shared in other rich countries with overdrafts and credit-card debt.
"Other countries are old and rich, " said Albert Park, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and another survey leader.
In a recent study economists at the OECD found that America does indeed do well on some measures, such as breast-cancer survival rates and cervical-cancer screening, compared with other rich countries.
Other members are being recruited, from both rich and developing countries, before a formal launch early next year.
K. Prahalad and other management gurus trumpet examples like Aravind, but do the rich countries accept that they could learn from India?
Russia, like other oil-rich countries in the Middle East and Latin America, has become increasingly hostile to foreign investment in the oil sector in recent years.
By manipulating their production levels, he and other economists argue, the Saudis have ensured that firms in rich countries have had strong disincentives against holding stocks.
One reason is that pecking orders matter more than in most other rich countries: income distribution is very unequal and the unemployed, disaffected, ill-educated rump is comparatively large.
Researchers at the National Research Council estimated that America's high rates of obesity accounted for between one-fifth and one-third of its lagging life expectancy relative to other rich countries.
ECONOMIST: Obesity may threaten life expectancy. Or maybe not
Both have seen output slump faster than in other rich countries because of the collapse in trade and manufacturing, but neither has the huge private borrowing of the sort that haunts the Anglo-Saxon world.
While the U.S. delegation says it doesn't want to be an obstacle to a new agreement, Washington remains opposed to steps many other countries support, such as mandatory emissions cuts by rich nations and a target for limiting the rise in global temperatures.
Rich countries are often accused of giving with one hand and taking with the other.
And when giving our children the best education possible we know is the ingredient for success in this new information and technology-rich economy, how can we be laying off teachers -- when other countries are hiring teachers in droves?
WHITEHOUSE: Remarks by the President on the American Jobs Act
But at the other end of the trail that starts with financial woes in rich countries are underweight children and anaemic expectant mothers in poor ones.
Even after years of austerity, taxes and government spending still swallow up a bigger share of output in the Nordic region than in most other rich countries.
Judging by the experience of other rich countries that have suffered financial crises spawned by housing busts, such as Sweden and Norway in the early 1990s, weak balance sheets will weigh on consumers' spending for years rather than months.
Developing countries grew partly by trading with each other, but partly also by financing their consumption and investment with rich-country capital.
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