If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking …

“If poverty were simply an economic problem, we would be closer to a solution by now. But underdevelopment is a web of economic, political, institutional, ethnic, and class-related connections with persistent historical roots.” That’s Bob Solow, eminent neo-classical economists, winner of the Bank of Sweden’s Economic Sciences Prize in the Memory of Alfred Nobel (1987). Clearly, he understands the distinction between economic growth and economic development as he is the celebrated author of what is called the Solow-Swan economic growth model. That model, developed in the 1950s, was supplanted by …

One of my gurus at UC Berkeley was Pranab Bardhan, professor of economics. “He has done theoretical and field studies research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on international trade. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology. He was Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economics for 1985-2003. He was the co-chair of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance. for 1996-2007.”
Everything I know about international …

Fires, floods, earthquakes, riots. What’s not to like about southern California?

Germans!

Source.

Really productive ideas, like internal combustion and the assembly line, are hard to find… But the techno-hype that surrounds us has some real costs. It causes businesses to waste money; it causes politicians to seek high-tech fixes (give every child a laptop!) when they should be getting back to the basics (teach every child to read). The slightly depressing truth is that technology has been letting us down lately. Let’s face up to that truth, and get on with our lives.
That is Paul Krugman writing in Dec 1996.

There is no easy way for me to go about discussing a subject that I think requires some degree of hard thinking. It is always so when what one is dealing with matters that lie at the foundation of one’s entire mental edifice. Replacing the entire foundation, or even parts of it, is not a task which can be undertaken over the course of an afternoon. In most cases, I don’t think foundations can be reworked; it is best to tear down the whole structure and build upon a new …

As if the OLPC was not Rube Goldbergian enough! What will they try next, I wonder. Try this definition of a Rube Goldberg device from the Wikipedia and tell me that it does not fit the OLPC to a t.

This blog is undergoing change. Not just in the looks but new editorial policies will be followed. New improved looks (50% increase in the number of columns, in case you have not noticed), tags, login for commenting, and whatnots.
Form changes will be matched with content changes. Let me know how you like the new looks and also what you would like to see by way of content.

Durga Puja Greetings
For Bengalis, this is the biggest festival of the year. Today, the last day of the five-day event, is called “Bijoya Dashimi.” Mother Durga, who had come with her children (Saraswati, Lakshmi, Ganesh, and Kartik) to visit her parents, departs today. For five days her idols had been worshiped and today the idols will be given back to the earth from which they were made.

Mr Adam Smith
It is not just an article of faith among economists (such as yours truly) that markets allocate resources most efficiently under a set of set of assumptions; it has been mathematically proved by theoreticians and empirically demonstrated in thousands of well-documented instances. However, that does not make the proposition that markets work better than other mechanisms – such as command and control – any more intuitive or easy for people to appreciate. It is easy to misunderstand, misinterpret, and often misrepresent.

I am often asked by people if they can re-publish my blog posts. Most of what you read on this blog is original in the sense that I write the stuff and therefore by common convention, automatically the copyright to the material belongs to me. I have the freedom to assign rights to my work to others of course. There is an extremely flexible mechanism which has been developed for this purpose and I think it is worthwhile for us to become familiar with it — or if you already …

Philosophically, I belong to the Advaita Vedanta school of thought (and many other schools as well). Check out the Non-Duality Cartoons site. (hat tip: Amar K).

Perhaps you have read it before on this blog. Now “The Age of Profound Ignorance” is available to a wider readership on LiveMint.com. (If the previous link does not work, please use this one.)

Does anyone, other than the recipients and the Nobel Prize committee, take the Peace Prize seriously any more?

UC Berkeley on YouTube. My alma mater.
Now you can virtually attend many of the lectures and events at UC Berkeley. I will miss Berkeley a little less because of this.
Here’s a video on “Energy Self-sufficiency in the 21st Century.” A bunch of Nobel Prize winning guys discussing that issue.

I have been reading about the Rs 1 Lakh (about US$2,500) car that Tata Motors is planning on selling soon.
It scares me witless. These days, oil is selling for around US$85 a barrel. India imports most of its fossil fuel requirements. It is a poor country and cannot afford high priced oil — and oil is going to become increasingly costly because demand will continue to rise and supply will continue to fall. That is Econ101. India is also a very small country relative to its population. With 17 …

“To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets. Thus goes a well-worn Zen Buddhist saying. Our perceptions of the external world are filtered through our internal desires and motivations. This process is not linear; a powerful feedback mechanism is involved. How we apprehend the world out there depends on what our internal model of the external world is; and our internal model gets modified with fresh inputs from our filtered apprehension of the world. Regardless of which came first – whether we start off with an internal …

The other day I received a forwarded email informing me that in Mumbai there is a traffic law which requires that a taxi driver has to comply with a request — no, not request but rather a demand — for service. Here’s what the email said:
Do you know, Rickshaw & Taxi Drivers do not have a right to say NO. So remember that each time the rickshaw/taxi driver tells you a NO, take down his vehicle registration number, note the time date and place, please click on the following link …