One of my promises to myself at the start of every year has been to write on this blog every single day. For the last four years or so, I’ve managed a 70% hit rate.
That’s not too bad, and if you give me a procrastination handicap (and anybody who knows me will tell you that I deserve a big one), that’s actually pretty good. Or that, at any rate, is the official party line, and we will not be taking further questions.
And the good news for 2024 is that we now have only 11 months to go. One post a day, for every day in January, 2024. Yay!
Well, only kinda sorta, if I want to be all nitpicky. Every Saturday is a Twitter thread, and every Sunday is a video, but what’s your point?
But one additional thing that I hope to do at the end of every month is write a post reflecting on what I learnt for having written these posts. What do I now know that I did not earlier? What new framework have I picked up? What new factoid or data point was particularly interesting? What was surprising, unexpected and outright shocking?
If I can manage to do this twelve times over this year, life will be good. Wish me luck, and here are ten interesting things that I learnt by posting every day in January 2024:
- Economics is about concepts, but also about context. And we don’t do enough when it comes to making students aware of the importance of context.
- The Liar’s Dividend: The benefit received by those spreading fake information as a consequence of the environment in which there is a great deal of fake information and hence it is unclear what is real and what is fake.
- Goodhart’s Overhang: sticking too long to old and familiar goal-metrics when the objective function has changed, and the metrics are no longer relevant.
- Economists remain bad at forecasting (stick around for more pathbreaking analyses in the rest of the year too!)
- The Baloo-Bagheera framework will be hard to top in 2024: “Think of our journey through our lives as walking across a jungle, with friendly guides and mentors around to help you on your travels. And the thing with these friendly guides and mentors is that they come in two avatars. They can either be a Baloo, or a Bagheera
Bagheeras are lithe, agile, driven, focussed and motivated. They have places to reach, things to do, deadlines to meet, and they are Very Driven People
Baloos on the other hand, are lethargic, lazy, passively curious and laidback. They are convinced they’re in the best part of the jungle, and they encourage you to have a look around, a look-see and while you’re at it, maybe also have a meal and a nap?
Bagheeras are all about Getting To The Destination Now, while Baloos are all about Enjoying The Journey, Because Isn’t That The Point?” - Interviews conducted by AI are here.
- Speaking of context in economics, Dr. Vijayendra Rao has a lovely take on reflexivity in economics.
- Industrial policy and China is never a boring story. Ever.
- Nor is India and industrial policy ever a boring story, but for very different reasons.
- 70% of home loans today go to the non-priority sector.
EconForEverybody 