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African Dictator Meets the White Man
As a development economist, I read (or am occasionally forced to read) about experiments, especially the field and quasi-field experiments that are carried out in developing countries to test this,...
View ArticleNaMoMania
As I explained at in a previous post, the Bhagwati-Sen skirmish is really about two views of economic development. I was wrong, of course. In my beloved India, where all is maya, it is really about...
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Cryptic Tales from the ISI
In 1985, after three years of teaching and research in the United States, Jackie and I decided to move back to India and try our hand at living there. Jackie (a.k.a. Devaki Bhaya), a plant molecular...
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What I'm Reading
These are quick comments on some of the books currently in my life. As you will see, my reading is a bit haphazard (I was going to say "eclectic," but who am I kidding). Not necessarily the "latest...
View ArticleRole Models and Sexual Violence
An earlier version of this article was first posted by me on Ideas For India, and I have updated the material here with permission.It doesn't stop, and at the rate we're going, it never will.The latest...
View ArticleMonkeying With The Rupee
There's a story --- here's one of several YouTube videos on this delightful subject --- about how to catch a monkey. You use a jar or an empty coconut shell and fill it with peanuts. Monkey approaches,...
View ArticleFree Screech
It is refreshing (though slightly alarming) to see that my occasional and much-beloved correspondent, the voluble Parakeet Ghost, is a free speech fundamentalist. I'm not. But this week my vocal and...
View ArticleTranslating Tagore
I woke up early this morning to be reminded of one of Rabindranath Tagore's most beautiful songs, "মেঘ বলেছে যাব যাব". (Thank you Monobina Gupta.) Here's a link to the song, sung by Indrani Sen....
View ArticleNit-Piketty
A Comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century[For a pdf version with an appendix, click here.]Thomas Piketty’s heart is definitely in the right place. Capital in the Twenty First...
View ArticleRay on Milanovic on Ray on Piketty
Branko Milanovic has commented in some detail on a recent post of mine, about Piketty's Capital in the Twenty First Century. My initial urge was not to reply. But I see that Branko's post is getting a...
View ArticleIt's The Population, Stupid
Here's something that Maitreesh Ghatak (at the LSE) and I wrote together:The Times of India recently reported, not without a certain self-congratulatory air, that: "The latest wealth index by New World...
View ArticleCalcutta Time
It's 4.30 in the morning in Calcutta, and I can't sleep.I can't sleep for a good reason, which is that my few days here are invariably tinged with some jetlag, accentuated by the need to get work done...
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Aickman's Hospice
I am a big fan of creepy stories. No, I’m not into Stephen King or Dean Koontz or their choleric forerunners: Lovecraft and (alas often) Poe among them. I will take M.R. James though, even though he...
View ArticleThe Universal Basic Share
Universal basic income, or UBI for those acronymically minded, is in the news these days, along with other brilliant post-modern inventions such as Brexit or Trump. Unlike these other luminaries,...
View ArticleCertified Random: How To Co-Author If You Must
by Debraj Ray ® Arthur Robson(For the full Monty, click here)Many years ago, when Debraj worked at Boston University and his good friend Arthur visited there, we spent one of our many enjoyable lunches...
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The Pale Blue Dot
On February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 turned around from a distance close to 4 billion miles away (which is 40 times as far as the Sun from Earth), and took a last look at us. You see Earth below, next to...
View ArticleWhere's the Dirt?
From an email conversation on demonetization with a reporter from the Calcutta Telegraph (Devadeep Purohit) December 28. His story ran January 1 here.There are divergent views on when the impact of...
View ArticleKenneth Arrow, 1921-2017
Professor Kenneth Arrow died on February 21, 2017, at the age of 95. He was widely regarded (along with Paul Samuelson, John Hicks and possibly --- depending on tastes --- John Maynard Keynes, Milton...
View ArticleIndia's Lockdown
(with S. Subramanian and Lore Vandewalle, a shorter version of this CEPR publication)On the 24th of March, the Government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days as a preventive measure...
View ArticleThe Micro and the Macro of Covid-19
Or, The Case of the Invisible DenominatorI've been chatting with Jay Bhattacharya, Professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, and co-author of a very thought-provoking piece on mortality rates under...
View ArticleThe Trumpet
I recently had occasion to revisit Edgar Allan Poe's masterpiece, "The Raven." If you have not read The Raven, you must. Maybe it's meant to be a forlorn lament for Poe's Lost Lenore, but I found it...
View ArticleDipak Banerjee
These are transcribed notes for a short talk on Dipak Banerjee.Dipak babu has had a fundamental impact on my life, not just on my professional career, but also on the way I think. Dipak Banerjee, Mihir...
View ArticleThe Drèze DUET: Towards employment as a universal right
Published in Ideas for India, September 11, 2020.Jean Drèze has recently proposed a "Decentralised Urban Employment and Training" Scheme, or DUET for short. In his words, "DUET could act as a step...
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The Improbable Road to Riemann
Fuji-san on the approach to Narita airport; Debraj Ray (2017)On June 25, 2021, the Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology, located in Hyderabad, released the Report of an "Expert Committee,"...
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A Bordeaux Book Review
On Bordeaux: Tales of the Unexpected from the World’s Greatest Wine Region, edited by SUSAN KEEVIL, with an Introduction by JANE ANSON, Académie du Vin Library (Simon McMurtrie), 2020, 287 pp. ISBN...
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