Ariel Rubinstein sat down for a video interview with me last week following a DEC lecture. A professor at Tel Aviv University as well as NYU, Rubinstein is an eminent game theorist and expert on the economic theory behind bargaining.
He spoke about how economic theory has gone through fundamental changes, in no small part due to growing interest in behavioral economics.
Here is a funny take on migrant integration by comic Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American and a founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Have a great weekend!
We had an interesting launch event for this volume on July 10th at the World Bank's Infoshop in Washington DC. There have been a number of media reports (see for example the story on Wall Street Journal by Eric Bellman, a Q&A in Mint by Malia Politzer, and another Q&A by Donna Barne). See also related posts on this blog from my co-editors Ibrahim and Jeff on their interventions during the book launch.
June 1 was Justin’s last day as World Bank Chief Economist and I wanted to share comments from several leading development thinkers and economists (including past Chief Economists) who knew him and appreciated the determination he brought to the position. Justin’s views were not in the mainstream at the World Bank, but through intellectual persistence, structural economics has re-emerged as a topic meriting debate and discussion among top development experts.
Enjoy the video and feel free to share your views about Justin’s legacy
Zero to 66 million views on YouTube in just five days (March 5-March 10). Mostly teenagers and young people. Celebrity tweets from Oprah and others.
The essence of the campaign: A simple video message about a warlord who lives thousands of miles away from most of the video’s viewers, created by Jason Russell, inspired millions to “make Kony famous”, and end the atrocities of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Kony and the LRA are allegedly responsible for large scale killings, and rapes of women and children in Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
There has been some criticism of their efforts: Some victims say it has come too late (Telegraph). Others ask how are we ever going to awaken to our civil responsibility to demand more from our sitting governments if we are lulled into a dependency state for every civil service we should rightly expect from our governments? (CNN). Some African critics of the Kony campaign see a ‘white man’s burden’ for the Facebook Generation (New York Times).
It’s not every day that jumping monkeys and George Clooney are discussed in the context of a framework for development economics. But that’s exactly what happened on March 6 when Justin Yifu Lin presented his book, ‘New Structural Economics: A framework for Rethinking Development Policy’, with Regional Chief Economist for Africa Shanta Devarajan moderating and Harvard Professor Ricardo Hausmann providing a lively counterpoint as discussant. Justin made an impassioned case for how industrial structure is endogenous to endowment structure, arguing that following comparative advantage and involving the state as a facilitator can be the ticket to income growth and poverty reduction. Hausmann argued that comparative advantage is not determined by an economy’s broad endowment of factors, but by what you know how to do. He also argued that imitation (for example, if George Clooney wears a brand of cologne, other men would wear it too) and moving preferentially towards nearby goods (the jumping monkey analogy) are powerful drivers of innovation and success in industry. Watch the video to get the full narrative or download the Powerpoints here.
Structural transformation is a key determinant of productivity growth and explains two-thirds of the difference between superior East Asian growth and more muted Latin American growth in the past two decades.
Given the multi-speed paths that regions and countries take as they transform, with some succeeding spectacularly and some struggling to compete, it may be time to consider new industrial and labor policies to ensure that a huge swath of the lower middle class in the developing world doesn’t get left behind in the race to compete in today’s unforgiving global marketplace.
As a brief follow-up to Shanta's post on the economic policy workshop in South Sudan, here is the World Bank's recent poverty profile for the soon-to-be-country. I've worked closely with the Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation, which collected the data underlying the poverty profile.
Food price spikes happen when stocks are low and when unpredictable events occur. That was the main message of Professor Brian Wright at his Development Economics Lecture at the World Bank on March 11.
Wright, who is Professor & Chair Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, has long followed the markets for storable commodities. He is also an expert in invention incentives, intellectual property rights, the economics of agricultural research and development, and the economics of conservation and innovation of genetic resources.
Today’s food and fuel concerns do not constitute the ‘perfect storm’, Wright said. However, he warned that if several important crop-producing countries have a bad season in the coming year, and if the demand for biofuels rises faster than the rate of production of major grains, we could be in real trouble.
What’s the best fix for this situation? Wright argues it’s keeping food supplies cheap and investing in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), since it will be super-seeds, drought resilient crops, and innovations to boost yields that will turn things around. He also emphasized that, during a crisis, it’s essential to put minimum food needs above animal feed and fuel uses.
Watch the video interview with Wright below.
As I had mentioned in my blog on December 7, we at the Bank are working on a proposal to create an open knowledge platform on migration and global development. The proposed knowledge platform will:
We asked Professor Jagdish Bhagwati for his thoughts on the knowledge platform. He likes it! He kindly agreed to record a video presentation for us (you can view it here).
Thank you Professor Bhagwati!
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Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley presented at the World Bank last week on his new book, ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: A China-India Comparative Economic Assessment.’
Examining the Indian and Chinese economies, Bardhan set about debunking commonly held views on the economic drivers in the two countries and also their relationship with the rest of the World. He offered unconventional insights, but also a cautionary note on future prospects.
“Engagement with civil society has stepped up in so many ways—in terms of quality and also in terms of quantity. This engagement is critical because we have different roles that we can play. I think that there is a realization between civil society and the World Bank that we have a single mission and we need to forge ahead towards that mission.”
Compelling issues of the day drew the highest volume of civil society organizations to register for this year than ever before for Spring Meetings, though volcanic ash caused some panels to be cancelled, according to Edith Grace Ssempala, a World Bank senior advisor. Talks ranged from the ongoing effects of the financial crisis to the Bank’s energy strategy and new Access to Information policy.
What Jedi Grand Master Yoda might teach us about broadband*
A friend told me a while ago that a key reason why videocassette players and recorders (VCPs and VCRs) became a household phenomenon in the U.S. was the popularity of the Star Wars movie franchise. The first movie had its theatrical release in 1977. At that time, less than 1 percent of TV owning households in the U.S. had VCRs. By 1985, however, soon after Star Wars was released in VHS format, that number had risen to over 20 percent.
