An article based on the original blog post below was published in Development and Change (April, 2025). The full text is available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/BNXIFSC4C24TMJNWATPH?target=10.1111/dech.12874 2. Download pdf of original blog version of essay immediately below, or scroll down for the text: Why Nobelists Fail[1] When I first encountered the ideas central to the winners of … More Why Nobelists Fail
The debate on financial stewardship of my institution, the New School, has erupted again, thanks to the strike by Part Time Faculty that is taking place there now, and the intransigent reaction of the University leadership. I have once more become involved in bringing greater transparency to the university finances. At short notice and at … More The Crisis in the Universities (redux)
Testing has not been as effective as it could have been in controlling the global pandemic because it has been too inaccessible, too slow to give results, and too expensive. If tests had been universally accessible, quick and cheap, the pandemic could have been controlled more quickly, and disruption to society could have been minimized. … More A Simple Strategy for Cheap, Quick and Relevant Tests to Combat Covid-19
[The post below was from July 2020, and responded to measures taken by the University administration in response to a perceived pandemic related financial crisis. For my more recent writings on University finances in response to the present (December 2022) strike, please see here]. __________________ My academic institution, like many others in the world, … More The Crisis in the Universities: Is there an Alternative? The New School and Beyond.
In this moment of political clarity in the United States, when the burdens faced by people of African descent have been made — once again — shockingly clear, and the inability or unwillingness of the institutions of state and society to reform themselves adequately have been strikingly underlined, there is a need for all “people … More On Performative Academic Anti-Racism
Today, Social Sciences in China Press (http://www.csstoday.com/), an academic news and publishing agency affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (http://casseng.cssn.cn/), published an article in Chinese on the state of the economics discipline, based in part on an interview with me. Below, in English, are the questions that were asked to me by journalist Wang Youran, and my responses in … More On Economics: Interview with Social Sciences in China Press
Text of my responses sent on April 10th (in English) to questions by Telugu Newspaper Eenadu reporter Narasimha Reddy, leading to an interview published on April 16th. Much has changed already in the fast moving world of the Covid-19 crisis, but I put up these questions and responses in case of interest to readers in … More The Covid-19 crisis in India, the US, and the World (English Text of Interview with Telugu newspaper Eenadu)
The graduate students in economics of the New School for Social Research (our ‘Economics Student Union’, the existence of which is a delightful democratic feature of our department) have been organizing a series of discussions on the crisis unleashed by the Coronavirus. I spoke yesterday in the second discussion in the series. I presented an … More Covid-19: Dynamics of the Global Crisis
I hope that you are all well and braving the great confinement, although I fear not. I shall be writing more on that theme very soon. But life must go on: Three years ago I began a dialogue with my colleagues at the New School and beyond on the role of statistical physics in the … More Statistical Physics and the Social Sciences: Take Two
Some further thoughts in the aftermath of publication of my brief review essay on the recent book on the Nobel Prize in Economics by Offer and Söderberg, and in response to reactions from colleagues:
