Noah Smith had a rather exasperated blogpost (or newsletter post) out recently about Jason Hickel. Hickel, an anthropologist by training, has two major theses about the world: He believes that global poverty reduction is a myth, andHe believes that degrowth is the best solution to environmental problems.Both theses are wrong. And not just wrong in the “Ackshually, sir, … Continue reading “Ooh those tricky poverty lines”
Ali, an FYMSc student at GIPE reached out with a couple of questions about poverty line estimates – their nature, are they adjusted for inflation, etc. That was in response to my post about the tricky nature of poverty lines. Ali’s comment is towards the bottom of that post. Here’s my list of things to … Continue reading “What Should You Read to Get a Better Sense of Poverty Line Estimates?”
I would much rather that you only read his post, because it is a wonderful, wonderful piece. But if you insist on a key extract, this would be it for me: …we development economists should keep in mind that sustained economic growth is empirically necessary and empirically sufficient for reducing poverty (at any poverty line) … Continue reading “Lant Pritchett Advises Us To Zoom Out”
Ajay Shah, Renuka Sane and Ananya Goyal have a very interesting blogpost out, the title of which is “What year in the history of an advanced economy is like India today?” India has been stepping out from poverty into middle income. It is estimated that the proportion of persons below the PPP$1.90 poverty line has … Continue reading “What Year in History? A Fun Way to Understand Development in India”
One of the most useful models to know when you are thinking about the long term growth prospect of any nation is the Solow model. Or as Marginal Revolution University refers to it in what I think is the best video available about the topic online: The Super Simple Solow Model. Anybody can (and everybody … Continue reading “The Solow Model in Action”
Anybody who has been subjected to an introductory econ class by me has inevitably been through this: I’ve been talking about Gapminder in my classes for over a decade now, and have written about it on these pages a number of times. I’m still to come even remotely close to being bored: it is simply … Continue reading “Growth. Just, only, simply Growth.”
Noah Smith has a typically excellent explainer on the role of industrialization in Poland and Malaysia, itself only a single post in a long running series on the same theme. As one might expect if one is a fan of How Asia Works by Joe Studwell, the post begins by talking about industrial policy in … Continue reading “Hedging, FDI, Poland and Malaysia”
What if we asked Navin’s question to ChatGPT? This post is as much an attempt to think more about Navin’s question as it is an attempt to show you, concretely, how you might want to use ChatGPT. Complements over substitutes, always remember. By which I mean that you should use ChatGPT as a tool (complement) … Continue reading “ChatGPT on Why It Is Bad to be Rich”
Yesterday’s post was about taxation (or the lack of it) in the United States of America. Today’s post is about the composition of tax revenues in India (along with some questions to which I would love some answers). So the Hindu came up with a very interesting analysis on the composition of India’s taxation revenues … Continue reading “Meanwhile, In India…”
The Article I’ve just about gotten around to catching up on a lot of reading, and I finally got a chance to read this Scroll article: “A few days later, Radha walked into a sprawling, glistening factory in Sriperumbudur, on the outskirts of Chennai. It had rows and rows of workers, most of them young … Continue reading “An Article, A Chart, A Blogpost, A Book and Some Thoughts”
EconForEverybody 