Amidst news of the prolonged worldwide recession, new air strikes, secession attempts, and climate change, international trade — which in 2008 went through its largest crisis in history — has been mostly out of the public eye. Yet we’ve been told not to fear: the World Trade Organization, the foremost global body for promoting multilateral trade, remains watchful, and is optimistic that efforts for liberalization will bear fruit in the near future.

Through the years, Bernard Madoff, the convicted ponzi schemer who defrauded his investors, “generously” donated millions of dollars to charity — cancer research, hospitals, theaters, schools, and more. At least one of these charitable organizations invested with Mr. Madoff, where the invested funds disappeared.

That’s the conclusion of a new NBER paper by Andy Young, Matthew Higgins, Don Lacombe, and Briana Sell, “The Direct and Indirect Effects of Small Business Administration Lending on Growth: Evidence from U.S. County-Level Data” (ungated version here). “We find evidence that a county’s SBA lending per capita is associated with direct negative effects on its income growth. We also find evidence of indirect negative effects on the growth rates of neighboring counties.

A new report on career earnings by college major is making the rounds. Engineering majors make the most, with economics the highest of the social sciences, and even ahead of business.

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University organized an event yesterday at the 40th anniversary of FA Hayek winning the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (the economics “Nobel Prize”).