Julius Silver Professor of Economics in New York University has a survey article on 'Development Economics'. Ray's bookon Development Economics has been used by Dani Rodrik and others in their courses.There is aseminar at Crooked Timber on Dani Rodrik's book "One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalizathttp://faculty.oxy.edu/gsecondi/dev.htmlion, Institutions and Economic Growth".
I vaguely remember that Ray was among a group of three young economists who came back to India in the early 80's to find a suitable job and work on development. Only one of the three is in india now. I think that one of them is in Australia and Ray is in USA.
More links to development economics here
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Meanwhile...
I completed reading "Economics, A Very Short Introduction" by Partha Dasgupta. For an outsider like me trying to get some understanding of economics, this seems to be the best of the popular books that I have read or browsed through so far. Earlier, it seemed to be a subject driven by politics and hegemony, a view supported to some extent by the articles of Mike Reay and Marion Fourcade. This book indicates that basic economics can be used with a view of sharing scarce resources and planning for the future irrespective of ideolgy. I recall David Warsh's comment from
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/07.10.28.html
"Each book targets a different audience. Often there are advertisers lurking in the background. The primer I have enjoyed most, the one I would recommend to a friend who wanted to learn how economists think about the world right now, is one that passed almost completely unnoticed into the stream, perhaps because it is so slight. But then, that is the point of Economics: A Very Short Introduction, by Partha Dasgupta, the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at Cambridge University. He boils down everything that's ordinarily included in a thousand-page introductory text, and more, to 160 graceful but undersized pages."
I feel that elementary books in sciences, at least at the level of understanding current news, should be available in regional languages. I think that this book fits that criterion. I am taking a copy of it to A.P. with the hope that somebody may translate or write articles in Telugu based on this book. If I cannot find anybody, I may attempt to do it myself, even though my Telugu is not that good.
http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/07.10.28.html
"Each book targets a different audience. Often there are advertisers lurking in the background. The primer I have enjoyed most, the one I would recommend to a friend who wanted to learn how economists think about the world right now, is one that passed almost completely unnoticed into the stream, perhaps because it is so slight. But then, that is the point of Economics: A Very Short Introduction, by Partha Dasgupta, the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at Cambridge University. He boils down everything that's ordinarily included in a thousand-page introductory text, and more, to 160 graceful but undersized pages."
I feel that elementary books in sciences, at least at the level of understanding current news, should be available in regional languages. I think that this book fits that criterion. I am taking a copy of it to A.P. with the hope that somebody may translate or write articles in Telugu based on this book. If I cannot find anybody, I may attempt to do it myself, even though my Telugu is not that good.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Going to India
on a long trip. Possibly very few posts in the next months.
Happy holidays and new year to all.
Happy holidays and new year to all.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Lorraine Lee Rose
pictured hereis an Australian bred rose. In the last ten years, I never watered it and sprayed it only once. It seems to flower most of the year.
Two posts on eco-friendly housing
Rahul Banerjee explains his efforts making his house in Indore eco-friendly :
"All the kitchen waste is composted to yield manure. What is more even at the height of summer when the temperature in Indore hits 45 degrees centigrade our house remains cool because of its leafy exterior. We have a natural air-cooling system as the house has been designed with a lot of cross ventilation and all we have to do is hang some khas grass curtains on the windows and wet them through drips and the air blowing in becomes cool. We do not have to run fans let alone air conditioners. Our average daily consumption of electricity is 1.75 units (kwh) only."
The ecofriend blog on Agro-Housing:
"The concept of Agro-Housing is to have housing programs that will allow the formation of a new social and urban order that can be replicated as it represents basic human values lost in the process of modernization and progress. Additional expected benefits from Agro-Housing include the decline in commuting, the decline in further transportation system development, and the replacement of the zoning strategy by more sustainable urban conception. As the world’s population burgeons at startling speeds, it’s a proposal that’s more necessary than simply clever."
"All the kitchen waste is composted to yield manure. What is more even at the height of summer when the temperature in Indore hits 45 degrees centigrade our house remains cool because of its leafy exterior. We have a natural air-cooling system as the house has been designed with a lot of cross ventilation and all we have to do is hang some khas grass curtains on the windows and wet them through drips and the air blowing in becomes cool. We do not have to run fans let alone air conditioners. Our average daily consumption of electricity is 1.75 units (kwh) only."
The ecofriend blog on Agro-Housing:
"The concept of Agro-Housing is to have housing programs that will allow the formation of a new social and urban order that can be replicated as it represents basic human values lost in the process of modernization and progress. Additional expected benefits from Agro-Housing include the decline in commuting, the decline in further transportation system development, and the replacement of the zoning strategy by more sustainable urban conception. As the world’s population burgeons at startling speeds, it’s a proposal that’s more necessary than simply clever."
Friday, November 02, 2007
NYTimes on Babajob
Anand Giridhardaswrites about Babajob(via Angry Bear):
"The best-known networking sites in the industry connect computer-savvy elites to one another. Babajob, by contrast, connects India’s elites to the poor at their doorsteps, people who need jobs but lack the connections to find them. Job seekers advertise skills, employers advertise jobs and matches are made through social networks.
For example, if Rajeev and Sanjay are friends, and Sanjay needs a chauffeur, he can view Rajeev’s page, travel to the page of Rajeev’s chauffeur and see which of the chauffeur’s friends are looking for similar work.
Mr. Blagsvedt, now 31, joined Microsoft in Redmond in 1999. Three years ago he was sent to India to help build the local office of Microsoft Research, the company’s in-house policy research arm. The new team worked on many of the same complex problems as their peers in Redmond, but the employees here led very different lives outside the office than their counterparts in Redmond. They had servants and laborers. They read constant newspaper tales of undernourishment and illiteracy.
The company’s Indian employees were not seeing poverty for the first time, but they were now equipped with first-rate computing skills, and many felt newly empowered to help their society.
At the same time, Microsoft was plagued by widespread software piracy, which limited its revenue in India. Among other things, the company looked at low-income consumers as a vast and unexploited commercial opportunity, so it encouraged its engineers’ philanthropic urges.
Poverty became a major focus in Mr. Blagsvedt’s research office. Anthropologists and sociologists were hired to explain things like the effect of the caste system on rural computer usage. In the course of that work, Mr. Blagsvedt stumbled upon an insight by a Duke University economist, Anirudh Krishna.
Mr. Krishna found that many poor Indians in dead-end jobs remain in poverty not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to find them. Any Bangalorean could confirm the observation: the city teems with laborers desperate for work, and yet wealthy software tycoons complain endlessly about a shortage of maids and cooks.
Mr. Blagsvedt’s epiphany? “We need village LinkedIn!” he recalled saying, alluding to the professional networking site.
He quit Microsoft and, with his stepfather, Ira Weise, and a former Microsoft colleague built a social-networking site to connect Bangalore’s yuppies with its laborers. (The site, which Mr. Blagsvedt started this summer and runs out of his home, focuses on Bangalore now, but he plans to spread it to other Indian cities and maybe globally.)
Building a site meant to reach laborers earning $2 to $3 a day presented special challenges. The workers would be unfamiliar with computers. The wealthy potential employers would be reluctant to let random applicants tend their gardens or their newborns. To deal with the connectivity problem, Babajob pays anyone, from charities to Internet cafe owners, who finds job seekers and registers them online. (Babajob earns its keep from employers’ advertisements, diverting a portion of that to those who register job seekers.) And instead of creating an anonymous job bazaar, Babajob replicates online the process by which Indians hire in real life: through chains of personal connections.
....
Mr. Krishna, the Duke economist, called it a “very significant innovation,” but he cautioned that the very poor might not belong to the social networks that would bring them to Babajob, even on the periphery."
More information here.
"The best-known networking sites in the industry connect computer-savvy elites to one another. Babajob, by contrast, connects India’s elites to the poor at their doorsteps, people who need jobs but lack the connections to find them. Job seekers advertise skills, employers advertise jobs and matches are made through social networks.
For example, if Rajeev and Sanjay are friends, and Sanjay needs a chauffeur, he can view Rajeev’s page, travel to the page of Rajeev’s chauffeur and see which of the chauffeur’s friends are looking for similar work.
Mr. Blagsvedt, now 31, joined Microsoft in Redmond in 1999. Three years ago he was sent to India to help build the local office of Microsoft Research, the company’s in-house policy research arm. The new team worked on many of the same complex problems as their peers in Redmond, but the employees here led very different lives outside the office than their counterparts in Redmond. They had servants and laborers. They read constant newspaper tales of undernourishment and illiteracy.
The company’s Indian employees were not seeing poverty for the first time, but they were now equipped with first-rate computing skills, and many felt newly empowered to help their society.
At the same time, Microsoft was plagued by widespread software piracy, which limited its revenue in India. Among other things, the company looked at low-income consumers as a vast and unexploited commercial opportunity, so it encouraged its engineers’ philanthropic urges.
Poverty became a major focus in Mr. Blagsvedt’s research office. Anthropologists and sociologists were hired to explain things like the effect of the caste system on rural computer usage. In the course of that work, Mr. Blagsvedt stumbled upon an insight by a Duke University economist, Anirudh Krishna.
Mr. Krishna found that many poor Indians in dead-end jobs remain in poverty not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to find them. Any Bangalorean could confirm the observation: the city teems with laborers desperate for work, and yet wealthy software tycoons complain endlessly about a shortage of maids and cooks.
Mr. Blagsvedt’s epiphany? “We need village LinkedIn!” he recalled saying, alluding to the professional networking site.
He quit Microsoft and, with his stepfather, Ira Weise, and a former Microsoft colleague built a social-networking site to connect Bangalore’s yuppies with its laborers. (The site, which Mr. Blagsvedt started this summer and runs out of his home, focuses on Bangalore now, but he plans to spread it to other Indian cities and maybe globally.)
Building a site meant to reach laborers earning $2 to $3 a day presented special challenges. The workers would be unfamiliar with computers. The wealthy potential employers would be reluctant to let random applicants tend their gardens or their newborns. To deal with the connectivity problem, Babajob pays anyone, from charities to Internet cafe owners, who finds job seekers and registers them online. (Babajob earns its keep from employers’ advertisements, diverting a portion of that to those who register job seekers.) And instead of creating an anonymous job bazaar, Babajob replicates online the process by which Indians hire in real life: through chains of personal connections.
....
Mr. Krishna, the Duke economist, called it a “very significant innovation,” but he cautioned that the very poor might not belong to the social networks that would bring them to Babajob, even on the periphery."
More information here.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Synthesizing the wisdom of experts
Julie Rehmeyer at Mathtrek talks of the work ofBruce Bueno de Mesquita :
"The New York University political science professor has developed a computerized game theory model that predicts the future of many business and political negotiations and also figures out ways to influence the outcome. Two independent evaluations, one by academics and one by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, have both shown that about 90 percent of his predictions have been accurate. Most recently, he has used his mathematical tools to offer approaches for handling the growing nuclear crisis with Iran.
Bueno de Mesquita provides the computer tools, but he relies on political or business experts to identify specific issues, their possible outcomes, and the key players. He asks experts narrow, carefully delineated questions about which outcome each player would prefer, how important the issue is to each player, and how much influence each player can exert. But he does not ask about the history of the conflict, the cultural norms of the area, or what the experts think will happen.
With careful interviewing, Bueno de Mesquita finds that he can get experts to agree on what information the model needs as input, even when the experts disagree sharply on expected outcomes. Once, after generating a report for the CIA using information from the agency's experts, he had his students assemble the same information from news reports. "Over 90 percent of them came up with the same results as I got [when I was] locked in a lead-lined vault at the CIA headquarters," Bueno de Mesquita says. "It's basic information that experts agree on and that you can even find in The Economist." "
She also refers to Mesquita & Roundell, a company he founded that uses his model to advise businesses and governments and this article , according to which they advised Union Carbide.
"The New York University political science professor has developed a computerized game theory model that predicts the future of many business and political negotiations and also figures out ways to influence the outcome. Two independent evaluations, one by academics and one by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, have both shown that about 90 percent of his predictions have been accurate. Most recently, he has used his mathematical tools to offer approaches for handling the growing nuclear crisis with Iran.
Bueno de Mesquita provides the computer tools, but he relies on political or business experts to identify specific issues, their possible outcomes, and the key players. He asks experts narrow, carefully delineated questions about which outcome each player would prefer, how important the issue is to each player, and how much influence each player can exert. But he does not ask about the history of the conflict, the cultural norms of the area, or what the experts think will happen.
With careful interviewing, Bueno de Mesquita finds that he can get experts to agree on what information the model needs as input, even when the experts disagree sharply on expected outcomes. Once, after generating a report for the CIA using information from the agency's experts, he had his students assemble the same information from news reports. "Over 90 percent of them came up with the same results as I got [when I was] locked in a lead-lined vault at the CIA headquarters," Bueno de Mesquita says. "It's basic information that experts agree on and that you can even find in The Economist." "
She also refers to Mesquita & Roundell, a company he founded that uses his model to advise businesses and governments and this article , according to which they advised Union Carbide.
Vacation links-1
Going on a long trip to India soon and may not have internet access during parts of the trip. Trying to keep track of some articles to be read again.
Alex Gunz on hate (via Abi at Nanopolitan).
Robert Burton on prejudice at salon.com.
Holly Arrow on sharp end of altruism (needs subscrpton). Abstract:Simulations show that war drives the joint evolution of altruism and hostility to outsiders.
Current Biology article "Cooperation peaks at intermediate disurbance".
Vilaynur Ramachandran on 'THE NEUROLOGY OF SELF-AWARENESS' (via 3quarksdaily). There are some predictions and a surprising statement towards the end: "Here again was, evidence that two seemingly contradictory aspects of self — its the individuation and intense privacy vs. its social reciprocity — may complement each other and arise from the same neural mechanism, mirror neurons. Like the two sides of a Mobius strip, they are really the same, even they appear — on local inspection — to be fundamentally different."
Arun Thiruvengadam on Arundhati Roy.
P.S.(7th Nov.) Nice survey but not up-to-date: http://www.powells.com/review/2007_11_01
Wilson and Wilson on the survival of the selfless *with references to Turchin):
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19626281.500-evolution-survival-of-the-selfless.html
Alex Gunz on hate (via Abi at Nanopolitan).
Robert Burton on prejudice at salon.com.
Holly Arrow on sharp end of altruism (needs subscrpton). Abstract:Simulations show that war drives the joint evolution of altruism and hostility to outsiders.
Current Biology article "Cooperation peaks at intermediate disurbance".
Vilaynur Ramachandran on 'THE NEUROLOGY OF SELF-AWARENESS' (via 3quarksdaily). There are some predictions and a surprising statement towards the end: "Here again was, evidence that two seemingly contradictory aspects of self — its the individuation and intense privacy vs. its social reciprocity — may complement each other and arise from the same neural mechanism, mirror neurons. Like the two sides of a Mobius strip, they are really the same, even they appear — on local inspection — to be fundamentally different."
Arun Thiruvengadam on Arundhati Roy.
P.S.(7th Nov.) Nice survey but not up-to-date: http://www.powells.com/review/2007_11_01
Wilson and Wilson on the survival of the selfless *with references to Turchin):
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19626281.500-evolution-survival-of-the-selfless.html
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
M.S. Swaminathan on India's urban-rural divide
From scidev.net:
"The disconnect between farmers and researchers can be overcome by bringing Internet and telecommunications to rural villages, he argues.
Swaminathan's research foundation aims to set up at least one village telecom kiosk for every six villages. Farmers will be able to go to the kiosks for information about livestock management and crop diseases.
One of the keys to this scheme is training villagers to become advocates for ICT in their communities. Many past ICT projects have failed in India, largely because they failed to listen to the villagers themselves. "
The longer source article is in Nature.
"The disconnect between farmers and researchers can be overcome by bringing Internet and telecommunications to rural villages, he argues.
Swaminathan's research foundation aims to set up at least one village telecom kiosk for every six villages. Farmers will be able to go to the kiosks for information about livestock management and crop diseases.
One of the keys to this scheme is training villagers to become advocates for ICT in their communities. Many past ICT projects have failed in India, largely because they failed to listen to the villagers themselves. "
The longer source article is in Nature.
Partha Dasgupta's primer on economics
is drawing some attention. I recall Partha Dasgupta's comments from the foreword "Poverty, Environment and Society: The Role of Natural Capital in Economic Development": "Despite the interdisciplinary nature of my enquiries, the lens through which I have studied the social world has been that of economics. I have assumed a point of view of the circumstances of living that gives prominence to the allocation of scarce resources - among contemporaries and across the generations. One hallmark of the viewpoint is to study human well-being in terms of its commodity determinants and the institutions that shape our lives. Another is to reason quantitatively. Moreover, because it is subject to empirical discipline, the inquiry encourages approximations. Inevitably, the viewpoint is partial. But increasingly I have come to realize that it is possible to look outward from that partial view to catch a glimpse of the larger enterprise called "living".
I do that regularly in the essays that follow and, in the one methodological essay in the present collection, I respond to several prominent critics of contemporary economics by showing that they misunderstand the foundations of my discipline.
While re-reading the essays here, I noticed that I have rarely ever published an article in which the bird I was ultimately able to catch was in fact caught. This is because I have rarely ever known what it was that I was really after. Maybe I knew it subconsciously, but I doubt that. In my case, a discovery has meant a growing realization, not a blinding revelation. Usually, it has taken me several publications, brick by metaphorical brick, before I was able even to understand what the phenomenon I had been working on was, let alone to uncover the pathways that give rise to the phenomenon. I don't know whether this is a common experience among scientists, but I doubt it. I suspect there is nothing common among the processes by which we gain an understanding of the world around us."
I do that regularly in the essays that follow and, in the one methodological essay in the present collection, I respond to several prominent critics of contemporary economics by showing that they misunderstand the foundations of my discipline.
While re-reading the essays here, I noticed that I have rarely ever published an article in which the bird I was ultimately able to catch was in fact caught. This is because I have rarely ever known what it was that I was really after. Maybe I knew it subconsciously, but I doubt that. In my case, a discovery has meant a growing realization, not a blinding revelation. Usually, it has taken me several publications, brick by metaphorical brick, before I was able even to understand what the phenomenon I had been working on was, let alone to uncover the pathways that give rise to the phenomenon. I don't know whether this is a common experience among scientists, but I doubt it. I suspect there is nothing common among the processes by which we gain an understanding of the world around us."
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Links: October, 28
Raj Chetty explains some of his background and motivation in this Rediff interview (via V.K. Chetty):
"In my case, I realised that my long-term objectives lined up better with a PhD than other paths. At a young age my dream was to discover something that would have a great impact on the world and help a lot of people. I think I was very aware of issues such as poverty and lack of growth partly because of my background, having grown up both in India and in the US. I remember, quite vividly, going to the Taj Mahal when I was eight. It was immaculate and beautiful inside. But outside, you see extreme poverty in Agra. Experiences like that sparked my interest in understanding how to improve the economy. "
Two articles on non-Smithsian developments; one by James Fallows and another by David Ludden (via Brad DeLong links).
Discussion on Tyler cowen's article on private contractors; in particular the first comment by Bruce Wilder:
"Tyler Cowan: "the overall problem is not private contracting in itself; ... but rather ... the sins and virtues of . . . governments"
There you have the whole of Tyler's philosophy.
The rest of his op-ed treats us to a tour of a few of his many unfounded prejudices, helpfully re-lit from novel angles to support his thesis.
Ordinarily, Tyler is obsessed with progress. It is actually one of his more endearing traits, and a founding concept of his blog, Marginal Revolution. It kind of disappears in this op/ed, though. A necessity, if you are going to argue that "privatisation" of warfare is not a regression to the brigandage of the 16th century.
Efficiency is another Tyler favorite, which is replaced, here, by an undefined, "flexibility". ". . . the use of contractors is not a free lunch" Tyler helpfully informs us, but he never gets around to mentioning just how much more, American mercenaries cost then the also paid soldiers of a volunteer Army. Of course, very few of our soldiers in Iraq are Republican campaign contributors. But, then, how could they be? General Petraeus costs Uncle Sam less than the lowliest thug employed by Erik Prince, and charged to Uncle Sam through three layers of contractor and subcontractor."
Andrew Leonard reports ecouraging trends from South Korea:
"South Korea, write World Bank researchers Woojin Chung and Monica Das Gupta, is the first Asian country to reverse the discouraging trend of "rising sex ratios at birth" -- by which is meant families taking advantage of new sex-selection technologies (or good old-fashioned female infanticide) to favor boys rather than girls. (Thanks to Ben Muse's Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement blog for the link.)
The trend is all the more noteworthy because until relatively recently, South Korea's authoritarian government did its best to legislate societal adherence to radically Confucian traditional values that emphasized the primacy of the male lineage and the extreme necessity of having sons to care for one's ancestors, both living and dead. In the view of the authors, Korea's example offers promise for other Asian countries, especially India and China, where "son preference" is also rampant and social demographics have become highly skewed."
"In my case, I realised that my long-term objectives lined up better with a PhD than other paths. At a young age my dream was to discover something that would have a great impact on the world and help a lot of people. I think I was very aware of issues such as poverty and lack of growth partly because of my background, having grown up both in India and in the US. I remember, quite vividly, going to the Taj Mahal when I was eight. It was immaculate and beautiful inside. But outside, you see extreme poverty in Agra. Experiences like that sparked my interest in understanding how to improve the economy. "
Two articles on non-Smithsian developments; one by James Fallows and another by David Ludden (via Brad DeLong links).
Discussion on Tyler cowen's article on private contractors; in particular the first comment by Bruce Wilder:
"Tyler Cowan: "the overall problem is not private contracting in itself; ... but rather ... the sins and virtues of . . . governments"
There you have the whole of Tyler's philosophy.
The rest of his op-ed treats us to a tour of a few of his many unfounded prejudices, helpfully re-lit from novel angles to support his thesis.
Ordinarily, Tyler is obsessed with progress. It is actually one of his more endearing traits, and a founding concept of his blog, Marginal Revolution. It kind of disappears in this op/ed, though. A necessity, if you are going to argue that "privatisation" of warfare is not a regression to the brigandage of the 16th century.
Efficiency is another Tyler favorite, which is replaced, here, by an undefined, "flexibility". ". . . the use of contractors is not a free lunch" Tyler helpfully informs us, but he never gets around to mentioning just how much more, American mercenaries cost then the also paid soldiers of a volunteer Army. Of course, very few of our soldiers in Iraq are Republican campaign contributors. But, then, how could they be? General Petraeus costs Uncle Sam less than the lowliest thug employed by Erik Prince, and charged to Uncle Sam through three layers of contractor and subcontractor."
Andrew Leonard reports ecouraging trends from South Korea:
"South Korea, write World Bank researchers Woojin Chung and Monica Das Gupta, is the first Asian country to reverse the discouraging trend of "rising sex ratios at birth" -- by which is meant families taking advantage of new sex-selection technologies (or good old-fashioned female infanticide) to favor boys rather than girls. (Thanks to Ben Muse's Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement blog for the link.)
The trend is all the more noteworthy because until relatively recently, South Korea's authoritarian government did its best to legislate societal adherence to radically Confucian traditional values that emphasized the primacy of the male lineage and the extreme necessity of having sons to care for one's ancestors, both living and dead. In the view of the authors, Korea's example offers promise for other Asian countries, especially India and China, where "son preference" is also rampant and social demographics have become highly skewed."
Friday, October 26, 2007
Mike Reay on the uses of economics
Mike Reay's "ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERT AUTHORITY IN AMERICAN ECONOMICS" based on his interviews with American economists was linked before. He continues the study in "The Uses of Economics". It seems throw some light on the influence of American economists. Here is a fairly long quote from the introduction of the paper:
" Such notions of ideology and hegemony fit into a wide range of work on the symbolic authority of scientific knowledge, its tendency to be viewed as ‘objective’ and incontrovertible, and its complicity in ‘co-constructing’ naturalized social and political institutions (e.g. Habermas 1970, Shapin & Shaffer 1985, Latour 1987, Haraway 1991, Gergen 1994, Jasanoff 2004). However, these ideas of the influence of economics are also somewhat in tension with work on the large-scale shift and perhaps even decline in the authority of science in Western nations since the 1960s. Some researchers in this field suggest that universalizing scientific ideologies are breaking down because their very dominance has revealed their internal inconsistencies and limitations (e.g. Lyotard 1984(1979), Beck 1992), while others explore the commercialization of academia and of expertise formerly monopolized by national governments that might conceivably lead to an external pluralism problematizing claims to universal truth (e.g. Leydesdorff & Etkowitz 1996, Slaughter & Leslie 1997, Nowotny et al 2001, Krimsky 2003). Either way, science is thought to no longer easily serve precisely the kind of global legitimizing,
coordinating, and naturalizing functions that observers such as Bourdieu and Callon
ascribe to economics.
The influence of American economics thus poses something of a sociological puzzle. If it really involves hegemonic technocratic domination, how can this be reconciled with notions of the apparent transformation of scientific legitimation? And if it does not involve such domination, what was in fact going on with its global spread
alongside neoliberal political regimes? The following discussion attempts to resolve this puzzle by looking more closely at how neoclassical economics was actually used in the United States towards the end of the Twentieth Century. It does this by considering a range of work on the activities of professional economists – often by economists themselves – and on knowledge-based authority and the practical utilization of science. It also uses an original set of face-to-face interviews with professional economists working in a variety of different academic and non-academic jobs at century’s end.
It argues that both ideological/hegemonic and skeptical/pluralist phenomena were being generated by three underlying features of how economics was used. The first of
these features is the existence of three basic effects of economic expertise, paralleling Steven Lukes’ famous three ‘dimensions’ of power; substantive influence on particular decisions, symbolic exclusion of others from decision-making, and background framing of possible courses of action. The second feature is flexibility. This refers to how, as predicted by a range of work on social construction and uncertainty in science, economics could always sustain a range of answers to specific policy questions, such that different groups could use it to support different, often conflicting claims. The third feature is the softness of the influence of economics, that is, the way it tended to fall short of strict
determination of outcomes, and hence left room for other political, cultural, and
interpersonal processes. Taken together these underlying features of knowledge not only help explain the situation of economics in the US, but also suggest ways to improve and combine models of ideology/hegemony and pluralism/contestation in modern science."
" Such notions of ideology and hegemony fit into a wide range of work on the symbolic authority of scientific knowledge, its tendency to be viewed as ‘objective’ and incontrovertible, and its complicity in ‘co-constructing’ naturalized social and political institutions (e.g. Habermas 1970, Shapin & Shaffer 1985, Latour 1987, Haraway 1991, Gergen 1994, Jasanoff 2004). However, these ideas of the influence of economics are also somewhat in tension with work on the large-scale shift and perhaps even decline in the authority of science in Western nations since the 1960s. Some researchers in this field suggest that universalizing scientific ideologies are breaking down because their very dominance has revealed their internal inconsistencies and limitations (e.g. Lyotard 1984(1979), Beck 1992), while others explore the commercialization of academia and of expertise formerly monopolized by national governments that might conceivably lead to an external pluralism problematizing claims to universal truth (e.g. Leydesdorff & Etkowitz 1996, Slaughter & Leslie 1997, Nowotny et al 2001, Krimsky 2003). Either way, science is thought to no longer easily serve precisely the kind of global legitimizing,
coordinating, and naturalizing functions that observers such as Bourdieu and Callon
ascribe to economics.
The influence of American economics thus poses something of a sociological puzzle. If it really involves hegemonic technocratic domination, how can this be reconciled with notions of the apparent transformation of scientific legitimation? And if it does not involve such domination, what was in fact going on with its global spread
alongside neoliberal political regimes? The following discussion attempts to resolve this puzzle by looking more closely at how neoclassical economics was actually used in the United States towards the end of the Twentieth Century. It does this by considering a range of work on the activities of professional economists – often by economists themselves – and on knowledge-based authority and the practical utilization of science. It also uses an original set of face-to-face interviews with professional economists working in a variety of different academic and non-academic jobs at century’s end.
It argues that both ideological/hegemonic and skeptical/pluralist phenomena were being generated by three underlying features of how economics was used. The first of
these features is the existence of three basic effects of economic expertise, paralleling Steven Lukes’ famous three ‘dimensions’ of power; substantive influence on particular decisions, symbolic exclusion of others from decision-making, and background framing of possible courses of action. The second feature is flexibility. This refers to how, as predicted by a range of work on social construction and uncertainty in science, economics could always sustain a range of answers to specific policy questions, such that different groups could use it to support different, often conflicting claims. The third feature is the softness of the influence of economics, that is, the way it tended to fall short of strict
determination of outcomes, and hence left room for other political, cultural, and
interpersonal processes. Taken together these underlying features of knowledge not only help explain the situation of economics in the US, but also suggest ways to improve and combine models of ideology/hegemony and pluralism/contestation in modern science."
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Photos from Andhra Pradesh
Found these nice photographs mostly from Andra Pradesh while following up a racchanada message .
The linked news item in Telugu from AndhraJyoty says that some of the statues of gopis in Velpuru Venkateswara temple (on the road from Tanuku to Attili, West Godavari dt.)were considered obscene and clothed in some sort of undergarments. That seems to be the gist of it but my Telugu is rusty and I may be mistranslating a bit.
Googling 'clothing naked statues' shows that there are many other instances.
The linked news item in Telugu from AndhraJyoty says that some of the statues of gopis in Velpuru Venkateswara temple (on the road from Tanuku to Attili, West Godavari dt.)were considered obscene and clothed in some sort of undergarments. That seems to be the gist of it but my Telugu is rusty and I may be mistranslating a bit.
Googling 'clothing naked statues' shows that there are many other instances.
Some economics links, October 25, 2007
Nouriel Roubini revists his predictions from last year and says:
"As for decoupling of the rest of the world from the US slowdown this author argued as early as August of 2006 - and again throughout the fall of 2006 - that the decoupling view was conditional on the US achieving a soft landing; instead, conditional on a US hard landing twelve separate financial, trade, currency, confidence and other channels would imply that the rest of the world would not decouple from such a US hard landing."
Dani Rodrik on economists with snake oil. From Roubini's post it seems that some main stream economists are not exempt either.
Brad Setser on who is holding up the dollar:
"The funny thing is that the emerging world has been able to muster support for massive, global intervention needed to hold the dollar up –"
James Surowiecki supply side economics via Brad DeLong
"It’s more like saying that the best way to treat sick people is to bleed them to let out the evil spirits."
"As for decoupling of the rest of the world from the US slowdown this author argued as early as August of 2006 - and again throughout the fall of 2006 - that the decoupling view was conditional on the US achieving a soft landing; instead, conditional on a US hard landing twelve separate financial, trade, currency, confidence and other channels would imply that the rest of the world would not decouple from such a US hard landing."
Dani Rodrik on economists with snake oil. From Roubini's post it seems that some main stream economists are not exempt either.
Brad Setser on who is holding up the dollar:
"The funny thing is that the emerging world has been able to muster support for massive, global intervention needed to hold the dollar up –"
James Surowiecki supply side economics via Brad DeLong
"It’s more like saying that the best way to treat sick people is to bleed them to let out the evil spirits."
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
George Monbiot on Matt Ridley
in Business Guardian via Felix Salmon:
"Ridley and I have the same view of human nature: that we are inherently selfish. But the question is whether this nature is subject to the conditions that prevailed during our evolutionary history. I believe they have changed: we can no longer be scrutinised and held to account by a small community. We need governments to fill the regulatory role vacated when our tiny clans dissolved.
I can offer nothing more than speculation, but Ridley has had the opportunity to test his beliefs. He took up his post - which was previously held by his father, Viscount Ridley - in 2004. Under his chairmanship, the Economist notes, Northern Rock "pushed an aggressive business model to the limit, crossing its fingers and hoping that liquidity would always be there". It was allowed to do so because it was insufficiently regulated by the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority. When his libertarian business model failed, Ridley had to go begging to the detested state. If the government and its parasitic bureaucrats had not been able to use taxpayers' money to clear up his mess, thousands of people would have lost their savings. Northern Rock would have collapsed, and the resulting panic might have brought down the rest of the banking system.
...
Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people's resources, they will dump their waste in other people's habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons. Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies that once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract.
The democratic challenge, which becomes ever more complex as the scale of human interactions increases, is to mimic the governance system of the small hominid troop. We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time, we must ensure that the state is also treated like a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good. Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.
I doubt that Ridley would be able to sustain his beliefs in a place where the state has broken down. Unless taxpayers' money and public services are available to repair the destruction it causes, libertarianism destroys people's savings, wrecks their lives and trashes their environment. It is the belief system of the free-rider, who is perpetually subsidised by responsible citizens. As biologists we both know what this means. Self-serving as governments might be, the true social parasites are those who demand their dissolution."
P.S. Matt Ridley is one of my favourite science writers. I liked his "The Red Queen",large parts of "Nature via Nurture" and "The origins of virtue". Allen Orr is critical of parts the later two books as mentioned in one of the early posts.
"Ridley and I have the same view of human nature: that we are inherently selfish. But the question is whether this nature is subject to the conditions that prevailed during our evolutionary history. I believe they have changed: we can no longer be scrutinised and held to account by a small community. We need governments to fill the regulatory role vacated when our tiny clans dissolved.
I can offer nothing more than speculation, but Ridley has had the opportunity to test his beliefs. He took up his post - which was previously held by his father, Viscount Ridley - in 2004. Under his chairmanship, the Economist notes, Northern Rock "pushed an aggressive business model to the limit, crossing its fingers and hoping that liquidity would always be there". It was allowed to do so because it was insufficiently regulated by the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority. When his libertarian business model failed, Ridley had to go begging to the detested state. If the government and its parasitic bureaucrats had not been able to use taxpayers' money to clear up his mess, thousands of people would have lost their savings. Northern Rock would have collapsed, and the resulting panic might have brought down the rest of the banking system.
...
Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people's resources, they will dump their waste in other people's habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons. Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies that once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract.
The democratic challenge, which becomes ever more complex as the scale of human interactions increases, is to mimic the governance system of the small hominid troop. We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time, we must ensure that the state is also treated like a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good. Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.
I doubt that Ridley would be able to sustain his beliefs in a place where the state has broken down. Unless taxpayers' money and public services are available to repair the destruction it causes, libertarianism destroys people's savings, wrecks their lives and trashes their environment. It is the belief system of the free-rider, who is perpetually subsidised by responsible citizens. As biologists we both know what this means. Self-serving as governments might be, the true social parasites are those who demand their dissolution."
P.S. Matt Ridley is one of my favourite science writers. I liked his "The Red Queen",large parts of "Nature via Nurture" and "The origins of virtue". Allen Orr is critical of parts the later two books as mentioned in one of the early posts.
Innovation Race
India lagging behind say some Indian scientists:
"Although India's potential is high, it is not nurturing innovation, Sri Krishna Joshi, scientist emeritus at India's National Physical Laboratory, told delegates at a conference on inventions and innovations in Delhi, India today (15 October).
India's education system "kills any spirit of innovation" by failing to close the gap between industry and academia, said S. Srinavasa Murthy, professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.
He said very few PhD theses in technical institutes are linked to industry and innovations, and the bulk of academics — even at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology — are not industry-savvy because their promotions are only linked to publications in peer-reviewed journals.
A World Bank report released this month (4 October) also warned that, despite an impressive growth rate of eight per cent in gross domestic product since 2004, India's full innovation potential remains unrealised.
Of the top 50 applicants for patents in India between 1995 and 2005, 44 were foreign firms, while only six were Indian. "
"Although India's potential is high, it is not nurturing innovation, Sri Krishna Joshi, scientist emeritus at India's National Physical Laboratory, told delegates at a conference on inventions and innovations in Delhi, India today (15 October).
India's education system "kills any spirit of innovation" by failing to close the gap between industry and academia, said S. Srinavasa Murthy, professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.
He said very few PhD theses in technical institutes are linked to industry and innovations, and the bulk of academics — even at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology — are not industry-savvy because their promotions are only linked to publications in peer-reviewed journals.
A World Bank report released this month (4 October) also warned that, despite an impressive growth rate of eight per cent in gross domestic product since 2004, India's full innovation potential remains unrealised.
Of the top 50 applicants for patents in India between 1995 and 2005, 44 were foreign firms, while only six were Indian. "
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Sanskrit Knowledge Systems
on the Eve of Colonialism is a relatively new site that I have come across in a Telugu discussion group 'racchabanda'. It looks interesting and will make available digital copies many manuscripts. However,the few available science related articles by the team members that I browsed through do not look particularly impressive.
P.S.(25th October)There is some interesting discussion in'racchabanda'http://groups.yahoo.com/group/racchabanda/messages?o=1
See inparicular the messages 18603-05 by Hanuma Kodvalla.
P.S.(25th October)There is some interesting discussion in'racchabanda'http://groups.yahoo.com/group/racchabanda/messages?o=1
See inparicular the messages 18603-05 by Hanuma Kodvalla.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
A message about rural women from karmayog.com
Rural women have to fetch wood for cooking from a long distance away. They suffer bruises during collection; headache / backache / neckache during the walk back; and respiratory diseases from smoky kitchens - apart from depleting trees and ground cover more rapidly than it can self-generate.
Integrated Research and action for Development (IRADe), Delhi, has been working on this issue and has succeeded in getting the Planning Commission to incorporate this issue in the 11th Plan but both need realistic ideas on how to reduce these problems.
e.g. Should every village have a planters' cooperative which grows such trees within 1 km; Or should subsidised LPG / kerosene be provided; OR are alternate energy sources e.g. biogas, solar cookers, etc. feasible?
Please email your suggestions for this and any other rural problem.
Happy Dussehra!
Vinay
www.karmayog.org -- helping to conquer the evil spirits within and without
Integrated Research and action for Development (IRADe), Delhi, has been working on this issue and has succeeded in getting the Planning Commission to incorporate this issue in the 11th Plan but both need realistic ideas on how to reduce these problems.
e.g. Should every village have a planters' cooperative which grows such trees within 1 km; Or should subsidised LPG / kerosene be provided; OR are alternate energy sources e.g. biogas, solar cookers, etc. feasible?
Please email your suggestions for this and any other rural problem.
Happy Dussehra!
Vinay
www.karmayog.org -- helping to conquer the evil spirits within and without
Saturday, October 20, 2007
World Bank on Agriculture
From WSJ blog:
"After decades of preaching the benefits of urbanizing and industrializing as the best path to development, the World Bank is going back to the roots — agriculture.
“We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board,” said World Bank President Robert Zoellick as the bank released its annual World Development Report. The bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, are holding their joint annual meeting this week.
While 75% of the world’s poor live in rural areas, only 4% of official development assistance goes to agriculture, the bank said. Growth in agriculture is about four times more effective in reducing poverty than growth in other sectors, the report concludes. To turn agriculture into an engine of growth, efforts must be made to increase productivity, and to connect farmers to global markets, the report said."
P.S. (21/10/07)World Bank Report here.
"After decades of preaching the benefits of urbanizing and industrializing as the best path to development, the World Bank is going back to the roots — agriculture.
“We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board,” said World Bank President Robert Zoellick as the bank released its annual World Development Report. The bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, are holding their joint annual meeting this week.
While 75% of the world’s poor live in rural areas, only 4% of official development assistance goes to agriculture, the bank said. Growth in agriculture is about four times more effective in reducing poverty than growth in other sectors, the report concludes. To turn agriculture into an engine of growth, efforts must be made to increase productivity, and to connect farmers to global markets, the report said."
P.S. (21/10/07)World Bank Report here.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Confirmation for Dunbar's theory of gossip?
Robin Dunbar's theory of language and gossip developed in here and in his books "Grooming, Gossip and evolution of language" and "The Human Story" (See also the Wikipedia article on Dunbar's number)seems to get some more confirmation in recent research according to "Facts Prove No Match for Gossip, It Seems":
"The donor was told that the source of the gossip didn’t have any extra information beyond what the donor could already see for himself. Yet the gossip, whether positive or negative, still had a big influence on the donors’ decisions, and it didn’t even matter if the source of the gossip had a good reputation himself. On average, cooperation increased by about 20 percent if the gossip was good, and fell by 20 percent if the gossip was negative." (via 3quarksdaily)
"The donor was told that the source of the gossip didn’t have any extra information beyond what the donor could already see for himself. Yet the gossip, whether positive or negative, still had a big influence on the donors’ decisions, and it didn’t even matter if the source of the gossip had a good reputation himself. On average, cooperation increased by about 20 percent if the gossip was good, and fell by 20 percent if the gossip was negative." (via 3quarksdaily)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)