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: The Economist
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Immigration and America’s high-tech industry: The jobs machine

ON APRIL 19th Jack Markell, the governor of Delaware, is due to visit a new factory being built in his state by Bloom Energy, a start-up based in Silicon Valley. Bloom makes clean power-generation systems using a novel fuel-cell technology. It is investing over $40m in its facility in Newark and plans to hire hundreds of people.

Schumpeter: The new New World

THE history of Latin American emigration is best told over lunch. Taco and tostada stalls have spread across the United States because 12m Mexicans have settled there. In Madrid, steaks sizzle on parrillas tended by Argentines who fled the economic crisis of the early 2000s.

Wood: The fuel of the future

WHICH source of renewable energy is most important to the European Union? Solar power, perhaps? (Europe has three-quarters of the world’s total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic energy.) Or wind? (Germany trebled its wind-power capacity in the past decade.) The answer is neither.

Personality testing at work: Emotional breakdown

SPOTTING a good manager is hard. Some firms think psychometric tests help. An industry has appeared to supply them. No one knows how big it is, but the vendors of such tests estimate it to be worth between $2 billion and $4 billion a year, says Nik Kinley, a co-author of “Talent Intelligence”, a forthcoming book.Headhunters such as Heidrick & Struggles and Egon Zehnder are trying to get a foothold in the market. Another, Korn/Ferry, paid $80m for PDI Ninth House, a specialist vendor, in December. IBM and Oracle, two software giants, have bought firms with a talent-measurement arm.

Big data and hiring: Robot recruiters

THE problem with human-resource managers is that they are human. They have biases; they make mistakes. But with better tools, they can make better hiring decisions, say advocates of “big data”. Software that crunches piles of information can spot things that may not be apparent to the naked eye.

Health care in America: Medicine at the mall

PAST the lipsticks and lotions in a Walgreens shop in Orlando is what looks like a doctor’s office. It does not operate like one. Patients can check waiting times online before coming to the store. In a private room, they see a nurse for a diagnosis. At kiosks, they use touch screens to pull up prescriptions and pay for them.

Oil in Russia: Picnic time for teddy bears

Pass the honey, Igor “WE LOVE our teddy bear. We will clean it and take care of it.” This is how Igor Sechin, Russia’s energy tsar, described his attachment to Rosneft, the country’s largest state oil company, of which he is also the chief executive. The occasion was a pow-wow with investors in London six months ago.

Business in Japan: Appraising Abenomics

Unleash those animal spirits IN A typical year Natume, a car showroom for the well-heeled in Tokyo, sells 300 Bentleys, Ferraris and other posh rides. “This year we expect to sell 400-450,” beams Kenichi Oguma, the manager.

Corporate scandals in Japan: Horiemon returns

WHEN Takafumi Horie was released from prison on March 27th, he hit Facebook, expanding his network from some 1,700 contacts to 3,300 a week later. The former boss of Livedoor, an internet firm, was convicted of fraud and jailed in 2011. But prison did not stop the entrepreneur, nicknamed Horiemon for his resemblance to a popular cartoon cat, from gathering almost 1m Twitter followers. He lost weight behind bars, but not his knack for publicity.Now Japan is waiting to see what he will do next.

Protectionism in China: Red Apple

IN THE past few weeks, China’s state-controlled media have given Apple a bruising. Last month CCTV, the national broadcaster, pilloried the firm for its warranty-repair policies, which are not always the same in China as in other countries. Then the People’s Daily, a party organ, denounced it for its arrogance.

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