Is the Devil in the Details? Estimating Global Poverty
October 3, 2015
See the new blog entry on the “devil in the details” when estimating global poverty on the webpage of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, by Rahul Lahoti and I.
Global Development Goals: If at All, Why, When and How?
September 28, 2015
Now that the dust has just begun to settle after the self- and mutual congratulations of last week’s launch of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) era, it is time to ask: what now? In a paper we release today (click here to download a pdf version) Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven and I raise some basic conceptual questions … More Global Development Goals: If at All, Why, When and How?
In the Shadow of Lampedusa
September 21, 2015
The migrants come and come. They come in their boatloads. They are smuggled in cars and lorries. They come on foot. Sometimes, when they can pass the gauntlet of document checkers, they arrive by air. They come from near and far, from war zones that are unimaginably difficult, where they once led comfortable lives, and … More In the Shadow of Lampedusa
The Abolition of India’s Planning Commission
September 16, 2015
On April 27th, 2015, I participated in a very interesting panel discussion at the University of Toronto on the abolition of India’s once important Planning Commission by the Government of India and its replacement by a new institution called the Niti Aayog — an act that some have welcomed as necessary in order to establish a new policy … More The Abolition of India’s Planning Commission
Global Goals: For What?
August 30, 2015
[with Ingrid Kvangraven (ingridhk@gmail.com); The New School for Social Research, New York: published in a slightly different version today on the FT online] Should we really have new global development goals? The push for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — meant to guide the process of global development from 2015 to 2030 and expected to be adopted … More Global Goals: For What?
Greece and the Eurozone: The Real Stakes
July 16, 2015
The events of this week approach the level of the world historical. As so often, the weak link in any claim to systemic rationality proves to be in one or another periphery, in this case Greece. The crisis makes bare the underlying logic propelling certain actors or institutions, their attitudes as well as their internal … More Greece and the Eurozone: The Real Stakes
Greece: a possible tactic for reintroduction of the drachma
July 12, 2015
In the event that exit from the Eurozone should be necessary following a Greek default, it will be difficult and time consuming to reinstate the drachma because of the technical requirements of doing so. Yanis Varoufakis points out that: “To exit, we would have to create a new currency from scratch. In occupied Iraq, the … More Greece: a possible tactic for reintroduction of the drachma
Greece: Exit, Voice and Loyalty
July 7, 2015
A friend commenting on my earlier efforts to understand the strategic reasoning that might lie behind the decisions of the Greek government in the days prior to Sunday’s referendum asked me whether one might think instead in terms of Albert Hirschman’s triad of exit, voice and loyalty. This is indeed another way of thinking about … More Greece: Exit, Voice and Loyalty
The No and the Germans
July 5, 2015
It now seems clear the Greek referendum has returned a resounding No. This places the Germans and the other creditor countries in the Eurozone in a stark position. They can insist on the narrative that the Greeks have said no to Europe and the Euro, but this will be denied vociferously and plausibly by the … More The No and the Germans
Tsipras’s non-traditional playbook: the default and the referendum
July 5, 2015
In an earlier comment I referred to the Greek default to the IMF as suggesting that the actions being taken in the crisis were far off the ‘equilibrium path’ in the sense that it was not obvious that they were part of a set of ‘best responses’ in game theoretic terms, given their presumed objectives. … More Tsipras’s non-traditional playbook: the default and the referendum
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