Davos Newbies

French business hits out at farm lobby.

Breaking business’s traditional silence on agricultural matters, Laurence Parisot, the new head of Medef, France’s powerful employers’ federation, last week launched a debate in which business leaders expressed their fears about an impasse in the negotiations.

In a meeting with farmers’ representatives, Thierry Breton, finance minister, and Christine Lagarde, trade minister, Ms Parisot said the talks were “vital for growth and employment in France and Europe”. The debate was a clear effort to draw attention to the needs of business in the face of a powerful farming lobby.

Ms Parisot’s concerns are repeated by some of France’s most respected industrialists. Guy Dollé, head of the world’s second largest steel group, Arcelor, criticises the level of support for an industry that in France employs fewer than 4 per cent of the population. “Is it realistic to have so much of the European budget devoted to agriculture? It is not and the position of my country is not very modern,” he said

I was quick to purchase Tim Harford’s Undercover Economist when it was published the other week. His small column in the Financial Times, Dear Economist, is witty, wears its knowledge lightly and reveals important aspects of economic thinking.

Sadly, the new book has little of the wit and originality of the column. The Undercover Economist is an easy-to-read overview of some of the main themes of modern economic thinking: marginal cost, comparative advantage, asymmetric information, the benefits of free trade. If you have ever studied economics, I suspect there will be little new in the book. If you haven’t studied economics, but keep up with key writers like Brad DeLong, Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman, you’ll still find little new.

My guess is the publishers, Oxford University Press in the US, Little Brown in the UK, are hoping to repeat the success of Freakonomics. I didn’t much like that book either, but it certainly introduced me to a host of new ideas and research.