Category: Current Affairs

Yes, the first is about agricultural productivity, that still-neglected issue:

Ajit Singh, a farmer in the poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh, had never seen a computer until four years ago when ITC, the Indian agribusiness-to-hotels conglomerate, installed a PC in his village, Kurthia.

Now the thin 47-year-old farmer visits the ITC station, known as an "e-choupal" after the Hindi term for "gathering place", every day for online access to news-papers, crop prices, weather forecasts and farming techniques. As ITC’s village manager, he passes on what he gleans to fellow farmers.

Knowing the fair market value of crops allows farmers to fetch better prices and circumvent local traders who used to dictate terms. Farmers can also sell wheat and other crops to ITC.

The result has been a big jump in crop productivity. Annual incomes in Kurthia have risen from Rs40,000- Rs50,000 ($1,000-$1,230) before e-choupal to Rs100,000- Rs120,000 now, says Mr Singh.

Here is the link.  Here is the second story, with photos at the link:

Mukesh Ambani, the fifth richest man in the world, is building the most expensive single family residence ever, a $2 billion — yes, BILLION — 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai.

Here is one obituary.  Tilly was a historical sociologist but he had an influence on economic history as well, including the New Institutional Economics:

Dr. Tilly mined immense piles of original documents for raw data and
contemporary accounts – including municipal archives, unpublished
letters and diaries – that he used to develop theories applicable to
many contexts. A particular interest was the development of the nation
state in Europe, which he suggested was partly a military innovation.
In his 1990 book “Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990”
(Blackwell), he argued that the increasingly large costs of gunpowder
and large armies required big, powerful nation states with the power to
tax.

In 1985, he gave early indications of his argument that war
made states in an article that said nation states, with their
monopolies on violence, function like gangsters’ protection rackets. He
said that governments emphasize, create and stimulate external threats,
then ask their citizens to pay for defense.

I think of his mid-career work as being most important, such as his The Formation of National States in Western Europe.  In any case America has lost one of its leading social scientists.  Wikipedia offers good links.  Here is Tilly on how to do social science work, recommended.

Yesterday I went to a party at Robin Hanson’s.  Megan McArdle, Bryan Caplan, Will Wilkinson, Tyler and many others were in attendance, as was my 6-year old. 

"How was the party?," my wife asked the 6-year old.

"It was like this," he answered, "Blah, blah, blog.  My blog, blah, blah, blah.  Blog, blah, blog."

Tyler’s more enthusiastic report is below.

Some of Toyota’s U.S. plans are now more than 20 years old, and a growing number of its workers are paid the top wage of about $25 an hour.  That’s less than Detroit’s veteran union hands make now, but a contract inked last fall will enable U.S. automakers to replace many highly paid employees with cheaper workers.  By 2011, Toyota’s cost advantage over Detroit could disappear.

By late 2009, Toyota’s assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky could have the highest labor costs of any auto factory in the country.  Here is the story.

When I visited Utah, I rented a Hyundai and I have to say it drove very nicely…

Mark Thoma has an An Open Letter to ABC about the Presidential Debate signed by Brad DeLong, Kevin Drum, Henry Farrell, Eric Alterman and many others. 

The debate was
a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans
concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world….
For 53 minutes, we heard no question about public policy from either
moderator. ABC seemed less interested in provoking serious discussion than in
trying to generate cheap shot sound-bites for later rebroadcast. The questions
asked by Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mr. Gibson were a disgrace…

I agree.  The only thing the signatories got wrong was where to send the letter.  The letter should have been addressed to the American public.  After all, this debate, which came in the flurry of all the tabloid journalism of the past several weeks, was the most-watched of the 2008
presidential campaign.  The public got what it wanted.

A wheelchair-bound Chinese torch bearer has rocketed to national fame after fending off protesters in Paris, becoming a symbol of China’s defiance of global demonstrations backing Tibet.

Jin Jing, a 27 year-old amputee and Paralympic fencer has been called the "angel in a wheelchair" and is being celebrated by television chat shows, newspapers and online musical videos after fiercely defending the Olympic torch during the Paris leg of the troubled international relay.

Protesters denouncing Chinese policy in Tibet threw themselves at Jin. Most were wrestled away by police but at least one reached her wheelchair and tried to wrench the torch away. Jin clung tenaciously to what has become a controversial icon of the Beijing Olympic Games until her attacker was pulled off.  Her look of fierce determination as she shielded the torch, captured in snapshots of the scene, has now spread throughout China, inflaming simmering public anger at the protests. "I thought we had lost in France, but seeing the young disabled torch bearer Jin Jing’s radiant smile of conviction, I know in France we did not lose, we won!" said one of tens of thousands of Internet postings about the incident.

Here is the story.  Here are further ramifications and don’t worry they’ll be happy to give up their coal factories too.

A loyal MR reader sent me the following from Reuters:

Bombings and strife
apart, Iraq is proving an oasis for investors battered by global financial turmoil, Citi argued in a research note on Thursday.

The cost of insuring country-region Iraq’s
bonds against default has fallen so sharply that they now costs less to insure
than Venezuelan debt, said Citi economist David Lubin.  "Judging from
the performance of spreads in the market for sovereign credit risk, one could
argue that Iraq has become something of a safe haven in recent months," he said.

Oil-exporter Iraq has
benefited from an improvement in its foreign-exchange reserves. Iraqi five-year
credit default swaps — instruments which protect against debt default —
tightened to 520 basis points from around 635 bps at the start of the year. Similar
instruments for Venezuela,
whose President Hugo Chavez is leading a wave of takeovers to wrest companies
from private and foreign ownership, are currently trading at 611 bps. Like
their developed counterparts, emerging markets have been hit by a deepening in
risk aversion in the wake of the credit crunch sparked by U.S. subprime
mortgage defaults.

Lubin said chances of a further decline in Iraq risk premium were strong given
the country’s fiscal discipline but warned that the central government could
face challenges from the rising influence of provincial rulers.

As I interpret the email from my source, he is not personally so bullish on Iraqi reconstruction; rather some people are rushing out of other assets and preferring Iraq for its (relative) safety.  So you needn’t read this in an optimistic light.  Alternatively, you might view this as a bet on the U.S. Presidential race and the rising prospects of the Republicans.

I posted this on northern Virginia Craigslist and haven’t heard a peep:

I am looking to learn how to use Second Life.  I would like a series of lessons from a tutor with extensive experience in Second Life.  I don’t need anything very complicated, just an introduction to the basics. Please email me your rates.

Why is this market failing me?  And what should I do next?

Here.  And here’s a new blog on the liquidity freeze in auction-rate securities.  And here is Matt Yglesias on the free trade agreement with Colombia.

As finance minister, Mr Cowen was responsible for a startling 13 per cent rise in government spending last year, which turned a budget surplus of 2.9 per cent of gross domestic product in 2006 into a forecast deficit of 1.2 per cent this year.

“It was an election year, but if you increase spending that much, you will make some mistakes,” says Alan Barrett, senior economist at Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute.

“I do not think anyone would say from the state of public services that it was worth it.”

Cowen is now confirmed as Irish prime minister, here is one story.

Germany’s celebrity polar bear Knut has triggered a new controversy
by fishing out 10 live carp from his moat and killing them in front of
visitors.  Critics say Berlin Zoo should not have put live fish inside Knut’s enclosure…The Frankfurter Allgemeine news website reports that Knut "senselessly
murdered the carp", fishing them out, playing with them and then
leaving the remains.

And it seems that the Green Party has complained.  Um….HE’S A POLAR BEAR!

Addendum: The story is here.  You can survey the German-language press here.  The FAZ article is here.  While I can imagine valid criticisms of zoos, this is not one of them.  It also should be noted that Knut’s normal diet does not consist of tofu.

As Price of Lead Soars, British Churches Find Holes in Roof

It is described as the most serious assault on British churches since the Reformation; the roofs of course are made partly of lead.  And here are stories from the U.S.  In some cases entire neighborhoods are being rendered uninhabitable by the boom in commodities prices and the induced theft.