你面包上的小孔正在告诉你一些事情
英国超市里的切片白面包几乎都用"Chorleywood工艺"制作，这个1961年发明的技术用强力机械搅拌替代长时间发酵，让低蛋白的英国本土小麦也能做出蓬松白面包，彻底改变了英国的农业和面粉贸易格局。 美国工艺做的面包孔洞更圆，英国工艺的孔洞更长椭圆，这是肉眼可见的区别。这门技术后来成为英国出口产业， spread to countries like India and Singapore。 
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收藏这不只是关于捷豹路虎（或大众）的事
经济学家Ed Conway在专栏里提出一个问题：为什么我们总是等到供应链崩溃后才能理解它的脆弱性，而不是提前预见？他以2011年日本海啸为例——那场地震让一家日本工厂停产，美国车企就不得不全面停工。 他认为多数经济学家已经放弃研究现代供应链的复杂性，因为太复杂了，难以建模。文章是为他的新书Trade World做铺垫，核心观点明确但信息增量有限。
The 30k-mile fish finger
The story of a packet of fish fingers begins where you’d probably expect it to begin: on a boat many miles off the Scottish coast, with fishermen pulling up a trawling net containing a load of white f...
The Radio, the Submarine and the Tariffs
This is one of a series of posts providing a little background to my forthcoming book, Trade World. If it whets your appetite, please do pre-order a copy. And if you do so between now and Sept 2 you c...
At least one very good reason to pre-order Trade World
In the event that you’re short of time, here’s the most important bit: if you pre-order Trade World between now and Sept 2 and then email preorder@edmundconway.com with a screengrab of the pre-order… ...
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There has, over the past few weeks, been a rather - how to put this? - lively conversation in the press about the sartorial choices of our new Prime Minister. In brief, Andy Burnham has departed from ...
玻璃饥荒：一战供应链危机给今天的启示
一战期间英国因过度依赖德国光学玻璃而陷入"玻璃饥荒"，被迫与敌国交易。文章通过历史数据揭示：长期产业政策失误（如玻璃税）导致技术优势丧失，但战时快速重建本土产能证明了产业回流的可能性。 作者将这一百年教训映射到当代对关键矿产和半导体设备的供应链依赖问题上。 
The Most Important Trainer You've Never Heard Of
Ask a trainer aficionado - a “sneakerbuff” as they’re sometimes called - to name the most important shoes in history and the chances are they will alight on a few familiar options. There’s the Convers...
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The Apple-Banana Paradox
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The Missing Pipe
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Why I've been a bit quiet recently...
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Postscript to a postscript
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The End of Salt?
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What can we learn from the latest Rare Earths crisis?
I’ve just recorded a screen for Sky News about rare earth metals and I figured it might be worth a quick download. This is an interesting story, both because there is a decided gap between the various...
Tinned Soup and Tariffs
Is there anything more American than a tin of Campbell’s Soup? The condensed soup immortalised by Andy Warhol is still a staple of American supermarkets even today. Indeed, the Campbell’s Company (fou...
A dying industry dies a bit more
Once upon a time, there were few industrial sites quite as, well, industrial as the chemicals plant on the banks of the River Tees. There on the north bank at Billingham was the Haber-Bosch fertiliser...