- “It is an example of the paradox of India’s state capacity that it can execute well-defined tasks like elections, census, disaster relief etc with unparalleled proficiency and do the simplest things like running mid-day meal kitchens in the most appalling manner.”
The always excellent Gulzar Natarajan on the paradox that is Indian bureaucracy. Given the remarkable efficiency with which we run our elections – and read the article to find out just how efficient it really is – why not other stuff in India? I do not have a clue. Will headline converge to core, or will core converge to headline? - “While a Chinese depreciation would be a negative to shock to the world, China’s apparent willingness to use fiscal tools to restart its economy should be helpful to the world, at least directionally.*”
The asterisk is at least as important as the excerpt, because the nature of the fiscal stimulus will matter more than the extent of it in the long run – but an update on what is fast becoming a mini-series – the state of China’s economy. - “A key problem is that there are no interpretations of these concepts that are at once simple, intuitive, correct, and foolproof. Instead, correct use and interpretation of these statistics requires an attention to detail which seems to tax the patience of working scientists. This high cognitive demand has led to an epidemic of shortcut definitions and interpretations that are simply wrong, sometimes disastrously so – and yet these misinterpretations dominate much of the scientific literature.”
I don’t know if I’ve fully understood p-values, and I don’t know if I do a good job of teaching them – to the extent that I understand them myself. And occasionally reading, and re-reading this blog post is therefore a useful thing to do. Assuming it is correct in the first place! - “…boosting an intermediate range of labor-intensive, low-skilled economic activities. Tourism and non-traditional agriculture are the prime examples of such labor-absorbing sectors. Public employment (in construction and service delivery), long scorned by development experts, is another area that may require attention. But government efforts can go much further.”
Buried in this article are a whole range of papers waiting to be written – but that’s for academicians to salivate over. The article is a wonderful summary of what good jobs are, why they are difficult to come by today, and what can be done to make sure that they do come by. - “I suppose it’s worth trying to measure economic growth, but don’t take the findings too seriously.”
Words to live by, and I mean that. Trying to measure economic growth is, ultimately, an un-solvable problem. Conversely, any estimate that we have is always going to be off the mark. Think through the implications (and the implications of the implications!)
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