Yesterday, it felt as if everyone and his mother was emailing me an op-ed in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman titled
What Goes Around …. I am sure that you have read it.

A nice chatty piece as usual from Tom. He argues against putting up protectionist walls with folk wisdom as his major tool. The bit of folk wisdom which goes what goes around, comes around. It boils down to argument by anecdotes, really.

Argument by anecdotes is great expect for the fact that your adversary could …

In the Feb 24th edition of BusinessWeek Online, Russell Roberts comments on the benefits of outsourcing for the American economy. The article simply points out that the benefits of free trade — and the transition of an economy from an agricultural to manufacturing to a post-industrial economy — follow a logicalprogression that leads to a richer economy. Of course, politicians are often inclined to cater to the perceived anxieties of the voters and I am sure that the candidates in the race for the US presidential elections will …

Gary Becker, a Chicago economist, has an opinion piece in the Business Week of Feb 16th titled What India can do to catch up with China.
Unsurprisingly, he makes the point that education is the primary requirement for India to lift itself out of grinding poverty.
To compete effectively in world markets, India needs to expand its secondary school education. It also has to vastly improve its health services. There is abundant evidence that returns on such investments in India’s human capital would be high.
Economists are deservedly known to disagree on …

This weblog entry is in response to the comments on Rajesh Jain’s weblog entry called Agriculture and Development. The first is from Arun Anantharaman who writes:
I think people tend to assume today that the American capitalistic route is the right way to go. I am not so sure. I think we can continue to remain a significantly agricultural country (40% of the population), and I think we should. (Not that we may have a choice on that). That still leaves a mammoth 600 million in manufacturing and …