Results for “sri lanka” 64 found
What have I been thinking about lately?
Robin Hanson asked me this question at lunch last week, and due to the general raucousness of the occasion I didn’t get a chance to answer. So here is my list of recent questions:
1. How much did the British colonial welfare state for Ceylon in the 1930s help that country and its later social indicators?
1b. How much did it matter that Ceylon was a Crown colony and not part of the Raj?
2. Why has Thailand done considerably better than the other major Buddhist economies?
3. Why are there so few liberal or even technocratic voices in Sri Lanka politics?
3b. How is this consistent with Sri Lanka doing so well on so many social indicators?
4. Why does Qatar seem (at least to me) so much more aesthetic than Dubai?
5. What is the correct Straussian reading of all those 2017 Saudi (and other) demands made on Qatar?
6. To what extent will the developments of the next twenty years favor nations with a lot of scale?
7. Ecuador seems to be moving backwards on the political front, including violence, corruption, and electoral problems. In the smallest number of dimensions possible, why exactly is this happening?
8. What is the equilibrium, given our current trajectory on drug policy and the rising number of drug-related and also opioid deaths?
9. When generative AI models become better and smarter, how many more people will be interested in incorporating them into their workflows? Or will most of this happen through a complete turnover of companies and institutions, happening much more slowly over time?
10. Music delivery and distribution mechanisms have changed so many times? But what exactly will or could succeed music streaming? When it comes to the economics of music, have we reached “the end of history”?
11. What exactly does one learn that is special when traveling to places that are not at all on the cutting edge?
12. Which exactly are the political economy principles governing the allocation of green energy projects in the IRA?
There are more.
Saturday assorted links
1. How the theater needs to be reformed.
3. Tim Harford on the successes of Freiburg (FT).
4. Dwarkesh Patel interviews Dario Amodei of Anthropic. Video and transcript, Amodie is good at thinking like an economist.
5. Odd Lots interviews Paul Krugman, including on aliens, science fiction, and AI (Bloomberg).
6. Economic crisis in Sri Lanka altered the taste of tea.
7. Different ways that regulation could boost AI risk. And “Text with Jesus.”
One simple reason why travel is important
Travel makes you a better reader, especially for history, geography, (factual) economics, and political science.
I have been reading two good books about Sri Lanka, namely K.M. de Silva’s Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE and also his A History of Sri Lanka. Both would be very difficult to follow if I didn’t already have a decent sense of the place names, how the country “fits together,” and many other features of life here. If I read about a 12th century Buddhist kingdom, in fact I absorb and retain much more of that knowledge if I have visited the ruins of said kingdom. It is more intellectually and emotionally salient to me, whether or not that process is rational.
In part you visit places simply to make your later reading about them more productive.
And there is nowhere in the world that is not a place.
Addendum: This effect is not a small one. If a said civilization has vanished, or is almost entirely gone, that is also an enormous blow to our reading. It is so much easier to keep track of “the Florentines” than “the Assyrians.” There is also a question of optimal timing — don’t read about a place too early! Yet some early reading is necessary, so that you may develop the curiosity to want to go there.
Tuesday assorted links
2. Proof of personhood, by Vitalik.
3. Larry Katz is running unopposed to be the next president of AEA. I am a big fan of Larry’s work and from hearsay (I don’t know him) he has very sound judgment. But isn’t it time someone raised their hand and said this system of running only a single candidate is ridiculous? That said, I do suspect true democracy (what would the primaries look like?) would bring a worse outcome, at least in the short and medium term.
4. Sri Lankan economist Amal Sanderatne has passed away.
5. Gwern on internet search tips.
6. NYT on Avi Loeb.
7. Cultural and cinematic references in the Barbie movie, shows the film was not just a random sputtering.
Sunday assorted links
1. Economic development as reflected in the emotions expressed in paintings, as measured by AI.
2. The only thing keeping South Africa from collapse is its private sector (Bloomberg).
4. Good Anna Gát review of Oppenheimer. And good Henry Oliver review.
5. Sri Lanka update.
6. How well do some commonly-recognized happiness strategies work? Recommended, both the thread and the paper.
Monday assorted links
1. Bhutanese leaving for Australia.
2. Uri Geller update, and Uri Geller as hoarder (NYT).
3. AI translates Akkadian tablets. And the latest capabilities of GPT-4.
4. Guam (NYT, a very good piece).
My Conversation with Simon Johnson
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode description:
What’s more intense than leading the IMF during a financial crisis? For Simon Johnson, it was co-authoring a book with fellow economist (and past guest) Daron Acemoglu. Written in six months, their book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, argues that widespread prosperity is not the natural consequence of technological progress, but instead only happens when there is a conscious effort to bend the direction and gains from technological advances away from the elite.
Tyler and Simon discuss the ideas in the book and on Simon’s earlier work on finance and banking, including at what size a US bank is small enough to fail, the future of deposit insurance, when we’ll see a central bank digital currency, his top proposal for reforming the IMF, how quickly the Industrial Revolution led to widespread prosperity, whether AI will boost wages, how he changed his mind on the Middle Ages, the key difference in outlook between him and Daron, how he thinks institutions affect growth, how to fix northern England’s economic climate, whether the UK should join NAFTA, improving science policy, the Simon Johnson production function, whether MBAs are overrated, the importance of communication, and more.
And here is one excerpt:
COWEN: If institutions are the key to economic growth, as many people have argued — Daron and yourself to varying degrees — why, then, is prospective economic growth so hard to predict?
In 1960, few people thought South Korea would be the big winner. It looked like their institutions were not that good. It was a common view: oh, Philippines, Sri Lanka — then Ceylon — would do quite well. They had English language to some extent. They seemed to have okay education. And those two nations have more or less flopped. South Korea took off. It’s now, per capita income roughly equal to France or Japan. Doesn’t that mean it’s not about institutions? Because institutions are pretty sticky.
JOHNSON: Yes, I think of institutions as being part of the hysteresis effect, if you can get it in a positive way, that if you grow and you strengthen institutions, which South Korea has done, it makes it much harder to relapse. There are plenty of countries that had spurts of growth without strong institutions and found it hard to sustain that.
You make a very good point about the early 1960s, Tyler. There wasn’t that much discussion that I’ve seen about institutions per se, but education — yes, absolutely. Culture — people made the same comparisons. They said, “Confucian culture is no good or won’t lead to growth. That’s a problem, for example, for South Korea.” That turned out to be wrong.
I think institutions are sticky. I think history matters a lot for them. They’re not predestination, though. You could absolutely carve your own way, but the carve-your-own way is harder when you start with institutions that are more problematic, less democratic, more autocratic control, less protection of property rights.
All of these things can go massively wrong, but building better institutions and making them sustainable, like Eastern Europe — the parts of the former Soviet Empire that managed to escape the Soviet influence after 1989, 1991 — I think those countries have worked long and hard, with very mixed results in some places, to build better institutions. And the EU has helped them in that regard, unquestionably.
I enjoyed this session with Simon.
The underrated story of 2023
A fresh round of IMF bailouts is underway, and some of the world’s most indebted nations will have to sacrifice their currencies to get them.
The year has already seen three debt-laden countries — Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon — drop their exchange rates to unlock International Monetary Fund assistance. That may be just the beginning. With at least two dozen nations queuing up before the Fund for rescue packages, currency traders are bracing for a potential fresh wave of devaluations in the developing world…
“Currency devaluation makes a number of equity markets in the smaller emerging and frontier universe untouchable,” Malik said, naming Argentina, Egypt, Ghana, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.
Here is more from Bloomberg.
China loan fact of the day
Three of the largest recipients of China’s rescue lending have been Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Argentina, which together have received as much as $32.83bn since 2017, according to data compiled by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, a university in the US.
Other countries receiving rescue lending from Chinese state institutions included Kenya, Venezuela, Ecuador, Angola, Laos, Suriname, Belarus, Egypt, Mongolia and Ukraine, according to AidData, which did not provide details for these countries.
Here is more from the FT. I don’t actually see this ending well.
Thursday assorted links
Shopping in Russia
Finally, I offer a comment on the shuttered street level shops and mall tenants that have been gleefully reported by Western journalists: yes, major Western branded stores have closed down, not all, but a great many. Their loss is felt on the most prestigious shopping streets and malls, where they bought market share for their products by lavish spending on promotion, including prestige premises. However, outside these limited addresses, one does not see gaps in the street level stores in Petersburg. I see more empty store fronts in shopping streets in Brussels than here.
And more specifically:
This store chain [Azbuka Vkusa] puts the previous tenant to shame. The sheer variety and luxury of the present offering in fresh produce, cheeses, meats, fish, tinned conserves of all varieties is stunning. The fresh fish section offers swordfish from Sri Lanka, wild salmon from the Faroe Islands (presumably Russian caught), some unidentified white sea fish from Egypt, and dorade from Turkey. In a tank, there is a two kilogram live Kamchatka King Crab waiting for a buyer at 200 euros. Live oysters in another tank are brought from both Crimea (large) and from the Far East (very large). Farmed mussels are brought in from Crimea.
Here is the full story from Gilbert Doctorow, via Anecdotal.
Tuesday assorted links
1. The quest for young talent in tennis (NYT).
2. Listen to Abbey Road with only the Paul McCartney bass line. Macca ain’t gonna’ be the one who makes them take this down.
3. The promise of cultural philanthropy.
4. Organic farming went disastrously wrong in Sri Lanka.
5. 100-year-old man breaks Guinness World Record for working at same company for 84 years.
Organic Disaster
Sri Lanka’s President abruptly banned chemical fertilizers earlier this year in a bid to become 100% organic. The ban has resulted in reduced production and soaring prices that, together with declining tourism and the pandemic, have created an economic crisis.
According to major Sri Lankan tea conglomerate Herman Gunaratne, one of 46 experts picked by President Rajapaksa to spearhead the organic shift, the move’s consequences for the country are unimaginable.
“The ban has drawn the tea industry into complete disarray… If we go completely organic, we will lose 50 per cent of the crop, (but) we are not going to get 50 per cent higher prices,” he reportedly said.
…Former central bank deputy governor W.A. Wijewardena reportedly termed the organic plan as a “dream with unimaginable social, political and economic costs”. He said Sri Lanka’s food security had been “compromised” and without foreign currency, it’s “worsening day by day”.
An island-wide survey of farmers found out that 90 per cent use chemicals for farming and 85 per cent expected sizable reductions in their harvest if disallowed to use fertilisers. Moreover, the survey said that only 20 per cent farmers had the knowledge to transition to completely organic production.
It also found that 44 per cent farmers are experiencing a decline in harvests, and 85 per cent are expecting a fall in the future.
The survey also revealed that many key crops in Sri Lanka depend on heavy use of chemical input for cultivation, with the highest dependency in paddy at 94 per cent, followed by tea and rubber at 89 per cent each.
With the shift from chemical to organic cultivation, Sri Lanka needs a large domestic production of organic fertilisers and biofertilisers. However, the situation is very bleak.
The government has responded to the soaring prices not by reversing its decree but in the usual way by imposing price controls, attacking “hoarders” and seizing stocks of agricultural commodities like sugar.
Organic farming has its place but it takes a lot of human capital to make it work and overall it results in lower yield and thus more land used. Nor is organic farming less polluting per unit of output. See this piece from the Annual Review of Resource Economics.
Organic agriculture is often perceived as more sustainable than conventional farming. We review the literature on this topic from a global perspective. In terms of environmental and climate change effects, organic farming is less polluting than conventional farming when measured per unit of land but not when measured per unit of output. Organic farming, which currently accounts for only 1% of global agricultural land, is lower yielding on average. Due to higher knowledge requirements, observed yield gaps might further increase if a larger number of farmers would switch to organic practices. Widespread upscaling of organic agriculture would cause additional loss of natural habitats and also entail output price increases, making food less affordable for poor consumers in developing countries. Organic farming is not the paradigm for sustainable agriculture and food security, but smart combinations of organic and conventional methods could contribute toward sustainable productivity increases in global agriculture.
Saturday assorted links
1. Memos related to the hiring of the “radical” economists at U. Mass Amherst, way back when. And Bobby Fischer video on what went wrong with chess.
2. The history of Earl Slick, sideman guitarist.
3. A Richmond series on how the guardianship process leaves vulnerable people unprotected.
6. Columbus vs. Columbo (what!!??). That’s the TV character, not Sri Lanka.
7. “Farmbake biscuits are smashed into crumbs, combined with milk and thrown in the microwave to create fluffy chocolate “jail cake”.” Not the only thing they make in NZ prison, a new home for yogurt entrepreneurship.
What I’ve been reading
Roderick Floud, An Economic History of the English Garden. Every page of this book does indeed have economics. It just does not have interesting economics. Which may mean that gardens are not so interesting from an economic point of view. Which in turn would make this a good book. But not an interesting book.
Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. A critique of casteism and growing inequality, this book also doubles as a fascinating history of IIT. Best read in Straussian fashion as a sympathetic story of origins.
Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion & The Future of Clothes. Some parts of this book have bad economics and extreme mood affiliation, but in general it has more actual information than other books on the same topic and at times the author makes decent external cost arguments against the current system of clothes production. So a qualified recommendation, at least I am glad I read it, even though some parts are obviously too sloppy.
Razeen Sally, Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Island. People do not think enough about Sri Lanka, including in the social sciences! It is a richer and nicer country than what most people are expecting, and it is good for studying both conflict and ethnic tensions. This memoir — information rich rather than just blather — is one good place to get you started.
David Goldblatt, The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-First Century. Football meaning soccer of course, this book covers how soccer interacts with politics in many particular countries, including Africa, and just how much the game has grown in global markets. Mostly informative, good if you wish to read a book about this topic (I don’t).
Conversations with Zizek. Maybe the best introduction to why Žižek is a richer thinker than his critics allege? The book serves up insights on a consistent basis, and there is a minimum of jargon. Marcus Pound had a good blurb: “Audacious and vertiginous, this book is everything one expects from him, a heady mix of psychoanalysis, politics, theology, philosophy, and cultural studies that will leave the reader both exhausted and exhilarated.”