Marc Levinson

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. "The Box" tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.

One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Non fiction Books of 2011. From modest beginnings as a tea shop in New York, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company became the largest retailer in the world. It was a juggernaut, the first retailer to sell $1 billion in goods, the owner of nearly sixteen thousand stores and dozens of factories and warehouses. But its explosive growth made it a mortal threat to hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop grocery stores. Main Street fought back tooth and nail, enlisting the state and federal governments to stop price discounting, tax chain stores, and require manufacturers to sell to mom and pop at the same prices granted to giant retailers. In a remarkable court case, the federal government pressed criminal charges against the Great A&P for selling food too cheaply—and won. The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America is the story of a stunningly successful company that forever changed how Americans shop and what Americans eat. It is a brilliant business history, the story of how George and John Hartford took over their father’s business and reshaped it again and again, turning it into a vertically integrated behemoth that paved the way for every big-box retailer to come. George demanded a rock-solid balance sheet; John was the marketer-entrepreneur who led A&P through seven decades of rapid changes. Together, they built the modern consumer economy by turning the archaic retail industry into a highly efficient system for distributing food at low cost.

Aimed at a broad audience of business people, investment professionals, students, and general readers, this text provides an overview of the world's financial markets. Coverage includes (for example) currency, bond, securities, equity, futures, and derivatives markets. Syndicated loans and insurance products are not discussed. The volume lacks bibliographical references. Levinson is a former finance and economics editor of The Economist. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

From the acclaimed author of The Box , a new history of globalization that shows us how to navigate its futureGlobalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise was neither inevitable nor planned. It is also one of the most contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less expensive, it has also sent massive flows of money across borders and shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box offers a fresh and lively history of globalization, showing how it has evolved over two centuries in response to changes in demographics, technology, and consumer tastes.Marc Levinson, the acclaimed author of The Box , tells the story of globalization through the people who eliminated barriers and pursued new ways of doing business. He shows how the nature of globalization changed dramatically in the 1980s with the creation of long-distance value chains. This new type of economic relationship shifted manufacturing to Asia, destroying millions of jobs and devastating industrial centers in North America, Europe, and Japan. Levinson describes how improvements in transportation, communications, and computing made international value chains possible, but how globalization was taken too far because of large government subsidies and the systematic misjudgment of risk by businesses. As companies began to account properly for the risks of globalization, cross-border investment fell sharply and foreign trade lagged long before Donald Trump became president and the coronavirus disrupted business around the world.In Outside the Box , Levinson explains that globalization is entering a new era in which moving stuff will matter much less than moving services, information, and ideas.

The decades after World War II were a golden age across much of the world. It was a time of economic miracles, an era when steady jobs were easy to find and families could see their living standards improving year after year. And then, around 1973, the good times vanished. The world economy slumped badly, then settled into the slow, erratic growth that had been the norm before the war. The result was an era of anxiety, uncertainty, and political extremism that we are still grappling with today.In An Extraordinary Time , acclaimed economic historian Marc Levinson describes how the end of the postwar boom reverberated throughout the global economy, bringing energy shortages, financial crises, soaring unemployment, and a gnawing sense of insecurity. Politicians, suddenly unable to deliver the prosperity of years past, railed haplessly against currency speculators, oil sheikhs, and other forces they could not control. From Sweden to Southern California, citizens grew suspicious of their newly ineffective governments and rebelled against the high taxes needed to support social welfare programs enacted when coffers were flush.Almost everywhere, the pendulum swung to the right, bringing politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to power. But their promise that deregulation, privatization, lower tax rates, and smaller government would restore economic security and robust growth proved unfounded. Although the guiding hand of the state could no longer deliver the steady economic performance the public had come to expect, free-market policies were equally unable to do so. The golden age would not come back again.A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time forces us to come to terms with how little control we actually have over the economy.

The health of the U.S. manufacturing sector has long been of great concern to Congress. The decline in manufacturing employment since the start of the 21st century has stimulated particular congressional interest. The Obama Administration has undertaken a variety of related initiatives, and Members have introduced hundreds of bills intended to support domestic manufacturing activity in various ways. The proponents of such measures frequently contend that the United States is by various measures falling behind other countries in manufacturing, and they argue that this relative decline can be mitigated or reversed by government policy.This report is designed to inform the debate over the health of U.S. manufacturing through a series of charts and tables that depict the position of the United States relative to other countries according to various metrics. Understanding which trends in manufacturing reflect factors that may be unique to the United States and which are related to broader changes in technology or consumer preferences may be helpful in formulating policies intended to aid firms or workers engaged in manufacturing activity. This report does not describe or discuss specific policy options.The main findings are the • China displaced the United States as the largest manufacturing country in 2010, as the United States’ share of global manufacturing activity declined from 30% in 2002 to 17.4% in 2012.• Manufacturing output has grown more rapidly in the United States over the past decade than in most European countries and Japan, although it has lagged China, Korea, and other countries in Asia.• Employment in manufacturing has fallen in most major manufacturing countries over the past two decades. The United States saw a disproportionately large drop between 2000 and 2010, but its decline in manufacturing employment since 1990 is in line with the changes in several European countries and Japan.• U.S. manufacturers spend far more on research and development (R&D) than those in any other country, but manufacturers’ R&D spending is rising more rapidly in China, Korea, and Taiwan.• A large share of manufacturing R&D in the United States takes place in high- technology sectors, particularly pharmaceutical and electronic instrument manufacturing, whereas in other countries a far greater proportion of manufacturers’ R&D outlays occur in medium-technology sectors such as motor vehicle and machinery manufacturing.

Evaluates previous United States economic policy, suggests a new approach, and discusss unemployment, inflation, and protectionism

The health of the U.S. manufacturing sector is of intense interest to Congress. Numerous bills aimed at promoting manufacturing have been introduced in Congress, often with the stated goal of creating jobs. Implicit in many of these bills is the assumption that the manufacturing sector is uniquely able to provide well-paid employment for workers who have not pursued advanced education.U.S. manufacturing output has risen significantly over the past two years as the economy has recovered from recession. This upswing in manufacturing activity, however, has resulted in negligible employment growth. Although a variety of forces seem likely to support further growth in domestic manufacturing output over the next few years, including higher labor costs in the emerging economies of Asia, higher international freight transportation costs, and increased concern about disruptions to transoceanic supply chains, evidence suggests that such a resurgence would lead to relatively small job gains within the manufacturing sector. For more on supply- chain risk, see CRS Report R40167, Globalized Supply Chains and U.S. Policy, by Dick K. Nanto, and CRS Report R41831, The Motor Vehicle Supply Effects of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami, by Bill Canis.The past few years have seen important changes in the nature of manufacturing work. A steadily smaller proportion of manufacturing workers is involved in physical production processes, while larger shares are engaged in managerial and professional work. These changes are reflected in increasing skill requirements for manufacturing workers and severely diminished opportunities for workers without education beyond high school. Even if increased manufacturing output leads to additional employment in the manufacturing sector, it is likely to generate little of the routine production work historically performed by workers with low education levels.As manufacturing processes have changed, factories with large numbers of workers have become much less common than they once were. This suggests that promotion of manufacturing as a tool to stimulate local economies is likely to meet with limited success; even if newly established factories prosper, few are likely to require large amounts of labor.

The health of the U.S. manufacturing sector has been a long-standing concern of Congress. Although Congress has established a wide variety of tax preferences, direct subsidies, import restraints, and other federal programs with the goal of retaining or recapturing manufacturing jobs, only a small proportion of U.S. workers is now employed in factories. Meanwhile, U.S. factories have stepped up production of goods that require high technological sophistication but relatively little direct labor. Labor productivity in manufacturing, as measured by government data, has grown rapidly, suggesting that the manufacturing sector as a whole remains healthy.Recent data, however, challenge the belief that the manufacturing sector, taken as a whole, will continue to flourish. Unlike previous expansions, the two most recent cyclical upturns in the U.S. economy have generated few jobs in manufacturing. Moreover, statistics suggest that domestic value represents a diminishing share of the value of U.S. factory output. One interpretation of these data is that manufacturing is “hollowing out” as companies undertake a larger proportion of their high-value work abroad. These developments raise the question of whether the United States will continue to generate highly skilled, high-wage jobs related to advanced manufacturing.The evidence concerning “hollowing out” is ambiguous, as conceptual issues and statistical deficiencies make it difficult to determine whether the recent decline in manufacturing value added, relative to shipments, is a short-term phenomenon or a long-term trend. Despite improvements in recent years, U.S. statistical agencies still tend to treat manufacturing and services as unrelated economic activities, and it is not clear that existing data series on domestic economic activity, trade, and freight transportation adequately capture changes in the nature of manufacturing, the sources of employment, and the creation of value.Nonetheless, evidence suggests strongly that physical production activities account for a diminishing share of the final value of manufactured products, with service-related inputs such as research, product development, and marketing becoming more important. Further, the production of many goods is dispersed across multiple locations along global supply chains, making it difficult to determine where value is added. Such shifts pose a challenge to efforts to capture economic value by promoting goods production in the United States.In the context of national security, the fact that U.S. manufacturers of vital products are critically dependent upon inputs from abroad is frequently a subject of concern. International comparisons indicate that the United States is in no way unique in its dependence on foreign inputs to manufacturing. Although the output of U.S. factories contains a large proportion of foreign value added, many other countries appear to be even more dependent upon foreign value added than is the United States, at least with respect to goods traded in international markets.

Legislation to reauthorize federal surface transportation programs is under consideration in both houses of Congress.1 The previous transportation authorization, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA, P.L. 109-59), enacted in 2005, expired on September 30, 2009. Since that time, surface transportation programs and activities have been operated under a series of extensions. The most recent of these, P.L. 112-30, expires on March 31, 2012.The main obstacle to enactment of a new multi-year bill during the past two years has been the disparity between projected spending and the much lower projections of the revenue flows to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). Taxes on gasoline and diesel provide approximately 90% of the revenues for the HTF, which historically has funded the entire highway program and roughly 80% of the mass transit program. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that the unexpended balance of the highway account of the HTF will reach zero during FY2013 and that the balance in the Mass Transit Account will reach zero in FY2014.Surface transportation reauthorization is one of the more legislatively complex issues before the Congress, because it addresses matters under the jurisdictions of many committees. Portions of the pending reauthorization bills, under various bill numbers, were marked up in seven different committees before consolidation under a single bill number in each house.The Senate reauthorization bill, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (S. 1813; MAP-21), would authorize surface transportation programs for two years, through FY2013. Fully funding the bill would require roughly $10 billion in revenues or offsets beyond anticipated HTF revenues.2 The House bill, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act (H.R. 7) links the usual surface transportation reauthorization components with provisions designed to increase oil and gas production, the revenues from which would be provided for highway infrastructure. H.R. 7, counting the already appropriated FY2012, is a five-year bill providing for a total authorization of roughly $260 billion.3 The bills differ significantly in programmatic content and treatment of the HTF. Both are free of program earmarking.

The golden age of the world economy does not come back. The good times are over and no government can turn it backbFor decades after World War II, the whole world was golden. This was indeed an era of economic miracles, in which it was easy to find a stable job and to feel the betterment of each year. But the peak of 1973 has ended. The world economy took a slow and fickle growth, a standard before the war, after a severe slump. The result is an era of uncertainty, uncertainty, and political extremism that is still trying to solve.In this book, a well-known economic historian Mark Levinson says that the end of the postwar economic boom is the result of energy shortages, financial crises, Record how it has echoed throughout the global economy, causing a sense of encroachment. Politicians who suddenly failed to bring about prosperity in the past have sold foreign speculators, Arab oil-producing nations, and other powers that they can not do at their disposal. From Sweden to the south of California, citizens were suspicious of the ineffective new government and resisted the high taxes needed to support the social welfare programs established when money was spilled in the safe.Nearly all countries Additional leaning to the right led politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to take power. But their commitment to deregulation, privatization, tax cuts, and smaller governments to restore economic stability and healthy growth proved groundless. Government leadership was no longer able to produce consistent levels of economic performance expected by the public, and so were free market policies. This book, which is a comprehensive review of the world history of the last 60 years, is forced to accept that we have little power to govern the economy.

This digital document is an article from Issues in Science and Technology, published by National Academy of Sciences on September 22, 2010. The length of the article is 4563 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.Citation Details Is the smart grid really a smart idea? A smart electrical system can bring social benefits, but smaller customers may pay too high a price. A more modest plan, guided by government policy, would be better.(SMART GRID) Marc Levinson Issues in Science and Technology (Magazine/Journal) September 22, 2010 National Academy of Sciences 27 1 39(10)Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning