Chhota Pegs

These are quick comments on some of the books currently in my life. As you will see, my reading is a bit haphazard (I was going to say "eclectic," but who am I kidding). Not necessarily the "latest stuff," and almost surely no economics. There is also the problem that I forget very easily what I've just read. I don't forget what's in  the book if I am reminded of it; I just can't remember which books. And that, my dear technophobes, anti-digital elitists and assorted manuscript-wielding Luddites --- that is where electronic reading comes in. For most reading devices also leave an ant-trail of books you've read.   As I write that I realize I'm being slightly hypocritical. As much as I love the real thing --- pages that you can touch, turn, scuff, and smell, I also love the enormous convenience of getting onto a plane with a hundred books and all of this year's New Yorkers. So it's not just the reading log, my frie...

In 1985, after three years of teaching and research in the United States, Jackie and I decided to move back to India and try our hand at living there. Jackie (a.k.a. Devaki Bhaya ), a plant molecular biologist, was the prime architect of this move. I had wonderful colleagues at Stanford, and I was more selfish about my research, so I wasn't as convinced. Nor was my then-employer. ("You can't do this to us...we haven't had the chance to deny you tenure yet!"). But I'm glad Jackie pushed us to move. From being one more boring economic theorist I was transformed into ... well, another boring economic theorist. No, I de-xaggerate: I did get far more interested in real issues, and understood that it's hard to do good economics. But that's another story . I joined as an Associate Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in New Delhi. The ISI, but not to be confused with its homologue in a neighboring country ! At that time the ISI didn't offer a...

As I explained at in a previous post, the Bhagwati-Sen skirmish is really about two views of economic development. I was wrong, of course. In my beloved India, where all is maya , it is really about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and the arrayed forces of Good and Evil they represent: in this case the Congress and the BJP.  Respectively ? I didn't say that. You can flip the order if you want. And as Parakeet Ghost  shows in the following guest article, it probably doesn't matter, except for a kerfuffle here and there.   India’s Reagan Revolution: A Primer by Parakeet Ghost -1- Debraj posted last month about Star Wars  ---  the great debate between Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati on the future course of India’s economic policy. The Indian media is very excited about this. They see it as an intellectual prequel to next year’s national elections. In this post, I thought I’d fill you in on the political side of things. The battle is between the...

As a development economist, I read (or am occasionally forced to read) about experiments, especially the field and quasi-field experiments that are carried out in developing countries to test this, that or the other hypothesis. The idea is to randomize the subjects into two groups. In one group you do something to them: give them cash transfers conditional on health checkups, or mosquito nets, or subject them to various ordeals in order to claim a poverty line handout, or provide loans, or information about jobs. This is the treatment group. In the other group you typically do nothing. This is the control group. The idea is that treatment and control groups are statistically similar to start with, so that if there is a differential  change in behavior following the intervention, you must perforce chalk it down to the intervention. It can be exciting stuff: here is how the Economist  reacted , for instance, when Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo 's Poor Economics  c...