Monday, October 05, 2015

Tyler Cowen conversation with Dani Rodrik

The transcript Tyler Cowen description of the conversation Rodrik's preparation for the interview
There are bita about India in the interview (Dani Rodrik studied with Avinash Dixit at princeton and colloborated with Arvind Subramanian). Wide rangin discussion about theory and covering several countries. Difficult to summarize. Starts with :
"We’re going to start this conversation with some questions about some of your recent papers on this topic of premature deindustrialization. I find this one of the most interesting themes in your work. The notion that a mix of automation and competitive trade with wealthier nations might mean that poorer nations today will not be able to industrialize and follow the path of South Korea or Taiwan or Singapore."`

In answer to “If you could make one change to help produce more Dani Rodriks for all the rest of us, what would that be?”
RODRIK: I wish I had a very quick and good answer to this but it’s not a great answer but it probably would help. I was helped a lot by going into economics after having done political science. I think a lot of what’s wrong in economics is that it’s so much driven by people who first do engineering or math before they go into economics. And so, it’s relatively late that they get immersed into the real world.
I think anything that would get them a little bit more cognizant of the problems of the real world. I would say that there are parts of political science that have become even worse than economics right now. I’m not sure that that would work.
I don’t know. Maybe a gap year, spending a year in a developing country between your first and second year?
P.S. Link to an earlier interview.

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