- Jean Baneth: I used to know both Bhagwati and Sen quite well and I like them. I think it was Jagdish whom I heard refer to narcissistic reflection: Economists have theories and preferences, see lots of data, and these, for them, reflect their pet theories. You are interested in "human development" and think Kerala has good policies, your theories are comforted by high literacy, low infant mortality, high life expectancy there. (Forget that Kerala was already outstanding in those respects a century ago). You are economic liberal and interested in growth, like Modi, and find confirmation that his policies are good (forget about recent dramatic improvements in Bihar...). Anyway, comparing Gujarat to all-India is like saying the Governor of Texas is obviously better than Obama because in the past five years Texas grew faster than the US.
Sardul Singh Minhas What is a better gauge of Mr. Modi's performance on the development front, if we can't rely on Prof. Panagarya's metrics?
Nikhil Desai Sardul Singh Minhas: Developmentalism, like nationalism, is yesterday's ideology. Gujaratis were never attached much to either. Indicators are cheap economists' routines for strip dancing - catering to the demand for titillation and leading to bar fights.
Of course, girls who do lap dancing are also narcissistic. Understandably.
Just that Arvind will have to pay me to watch him. (BTW, Jagdish Bhagwati has a sharp tongue and pen, and would've called Arvind one of those folks who becomes pre-maturely prominent).
Let's, on the other hand, count Mr Modi's encounters, and ask who killed Haren Pandya.
Sardul Singh Minhas No, Nikhil, I disagree. Metrics of economic development are real and important. They can't and shouldn't be ridiculed away. Why would you mock the accomplishments of a scholar like Prof. Panagariyn, who holds an earned Ph.D. From Princeton, holds a professorship at Columbia, was the Chief Economist at Asian Development Bank, and so on. It is very hard to pin you down on anything. Some folk have earned the right to be taken seriously. You can't laugh them off.
Nikhil Desai Sardul Singh Minhas: Decades ago, Simon Kuznets coined the term Modern Economic Eoch. He was of course an economist but wove a rich history of politics, technology, demography, knowledge to arrive at " structural transformations" of Modern Economic Growth - a sustained, long-term trend in increasing human productivity and well-being.
What happened 1970s on is a bastardized pop econ "indicators of development". The World Bank publishes those every two years (WDI), and UNDP also publishes about the same (HDR and HDI).
Those numbers are important to some people; as for their "real" character, I don't know. I might choose to look at child labor, street people, trade in human organs, bribe rates for different crimes, reliability of power and water supply or ambulance and policy services.
I have known enough credentialed scholars. Some are even close friends of mine. But not all of their work is good. In fact, if I say a good word about anybody's work, his/her first reaction is to call me up and ask if I was joking.
To me, Panagariya's opinion piece is a hack job. But you remember I also said the same of Raghuram Rajan committee.
Statistics and their interpretation are demanding jobs. People have shouting matches about them all the time. I don't think you should be surprised that I find their political use disgusting.
Panagariya was probably made the Chief Economist at ADB because, among other things, he can cater to the demand for political statistics.
To make a change in infant or maternal mortality takes a lot more than a regime change.
Nikhil Desai Sardul Singh Minhas: Take a look at http://www.eia.gov/.../carbon/pdf/2012_co2analysis.pdf.
What would you say if some people claim that US energy-related CO2 emissions since 2008 are creditable to Barack Obama policies (especially considering that the policies he championed, and even included in his very first budget exercise in January 2009 so as to show how carbon permits could be auctioned and the revenues used to balance the budget, failed)?
The temptation to use a "report card" should be left in school, except for proper auditors. Otherwise they become rhetorical tools.
Panagariya's "Gujarat Story" and Sen's "Kerala Story" are not that different. Persuasive tales for those ready to believe.
Academic economics became a cult from 1960s on. PhDs are commodities, reminding me of Pierro Sraffa's elegant book "Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities". By and large, the bubble sustained so long as college and graduate enrollments grew and the demand for "policy analysts" also grew, in response to greater public policy reliance on convenient economics and convenient economists.
Both these markets are getting saturated, or growing rather slowly.
Whoever said "correlations do not imply causality" didn't realize that instead of actual events, you can always generate indices and indicators.
Economics in public policy schools is a mixed basket - sometimes realistic, and sometimes fraudulent.
Nikhil Desai I will spare you the technical details - some I don't understand - but an abstract from a recent American Economic Review paper is telling:
"A growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes. Little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts."
The paper is about analyzing and distinguishing different influences. My point is simply that some "development indicators" are historically linked (childhood to adult to late age) and the mechanisms of interactions are poorly understood.
My short slogan is, "Process matters as much as substance". I might even say if one doesn't understand the process, talking about substance is superfluous. As true in air pollution and climate, or macro monetary or fiscal policies, or technological change and adaptation.
Heckman, James, Rodrigo Pinto, and Peter Savelyev. 2013. "Understanding the Mechanisms through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes." , AER 103(6): 2052-86.
I am usually the first to know my ignorance; works better than others showing me up (which too happens, of course).
I think someone has got the numbers on NaMo marketing expenses. A US PR firm, I believe.
Panagariya does have a value - keeping people from following Sen too much.
On the other hand, also see Sen on women in India - says, "In many ways India can be seen as a collection of distinct countries with diverse records, experiences, and problems." But still goes on to divide India between the north and west, on the one hand, and east and south, on the other. Female infanticide may have historical roots in agricultural practices, in turn affecting the value of female labor. THere's another paper on that subject for Europe in 1400-1700, I think. Sen, however, scores some convenient points without saying much new.
http://www.nybooks.com/.../oct/10/indias-women-mixed-truth/
Nikhil Desai I posted this on my timeline, but may be useful here too.
Sen-Dreze v. Bhagwati-Panagariya explained.
"There is much about this shadow-boxing that makes one wonder if Bhagwati, moving like many intellectual elites between the bubble of universities and think tanks and the private hothouse of professional rivalry, has lost touch with how the other half—or the 99 percent—lives."
Economists and their discontents.
http://www.nybooks.com/.../2013/nov/21/which-india-matters/
www.nybooks.com
In 1961, soon after arriving in Japan as the American ambassador, Edwin O. Reischauer held a public conversation with the Japanese economist Nakayama Ichiro.1 Their differences of perception illuminate many dilemmas of a developing nation like India today. The American diplomat, a particularly sangu...
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