Results for “china book”
662 found

Guatemala fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

A historic case of extraterritoriality was the seizure of the railways of Nicaragua by Brown Brothers Harriman, a U.S. banking firm. Under the Knox-Castrillo Treaty of 1911 these railroads became legally part of the State of Maine, according to former president of Guatemala, Juan José Arévalo, in his book The Shark and the Sardines (Lyle Stuart, New York, 1961), pp. 210–220.

That's from the Wikipedia entry on extraterritoriality, a concept which none of you seem to have mentioned yesterday, at least last I looked.  It's an old idea and here is Shih Shun Liu's seminal work Extraterritoriality: Its Rise and Decline.  Here is a map of the Shanghai concessions and here are other Chinese ports.  Liu describes Martens's Das Consularwesen
und die Consularjurisdiction im Orient as "indispensable".  Many applications of the idea originate with the Crusades.  Here is the Italian version of the concept.

I would count Puerto Rico, although it does not quite fit the formal definition, as a relatively successful application of the concept; the Panama Canal zone was another example.  It is harder to find good examples with a more recent origin and it is unlikely the idea will be applied, say, to either Kaliningrad or the Kurdish part of Iraq.  Here are comments from Will Wilkinson.

The U.S. Senate, by the way, did not ratify the Knox-Castrillo treaty.

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Genesis, by Bernard Beckett.  A dystopia by a Kiwi author who writes (broadly) in the style of Margaret Atwood.  My complaint that it was too short is one of the better complaints you can have about a book.

2. Calvin, by F. Bruce Gordon.  This excellent biography brings French Renaissance theology to life.  Recommended.

3. Bangkok Days, by Lawrence Osborne.  Books on this topic are tricky because they have a tendency to exploit cheap salaciousness but this one is quite good and also conceptual in nature.  It prompted me to order more books by the author.

4. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes.  It's a well-written book with a great cover, a nice title, favorable reviews everywhere, and good information on each page.  Still, I don't quite see what it all adds up to.  But if you're inclined to read it, I don't see any reason not to.

5. The Generalissimo: Chiang-Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China, by Jay Taylor.  A new and apparently exhaustive biography, based on many new sources.  The first fifty pages (all I've read so far) read very well.  I am told that Chiang was "incorruptible" — who would have known?  "Brutal, but underrated" seems to be the takeaway.  This could well be one of the more important non-fiction books of the year.

Eduardo Barreiros and the Recovery of Spain

by  Tyler Cowen in

That's the new and interesting Hugh Thomas book about the leading Spanish businessman of the 20th century, Eduardo Barreiros.  Barreiros entered into car manufacturing, but with the Cuban government as his business partner:

Luis Morente, more subtly, thought that the Cuban government wanted to use Eduardo to see whether Communism could collaborate with capitalism as it has done in recent years in China.  Businesses that were half-private, half-state-controlled (empresas mixtas) followed.  But there were innumerable difficulties: first, the government would select personnel to work with Eduardo according to their political position; second, the "second-rank executives" often found themselves being analysed by their subordinates; absenteeism was not denounced and indeed not considered as such; in Pinar del Rio, workers had to be allowed off to work in the tobacco harvest; incentives and productivity played no part.  The party, the Bank of Cuba, the unions, the provincial government were always intervening; energy supplies were irregular; parts were delivered very slowly; no one cared if supplies deteriorated before delivery; and in 1988, after a hurricane, the factory was flooded.  All these things needed Eduardo's continual attention.

It should be noted that, relative to the standards of the Cuban economy, the venture was a success.

Daniel Tarullo

by  Tyler Cowen in

I read his comment (JSTOR) on Richard Cooper’s paper on capital controls.  Tarullo is very willing to countenance the notion, in a way that might appeal to Dani Rodrik.  He even considers the notion that perhaps such controls should be permanent for some countries.

Here is some of his policy work, mostly centrist Democrat it seems.  Here is his testimony on reforming the IMF and World Bank.  He wants to make the Bank smaller, hire fewer academic economists, devote more attention to project evaluation, and (good luck) restructure the dysfunctional role of the Bank’s governing board.  He wants to give greater IMF quotas to the rising economic powers such as China.

He just wrote a whole book picking apart Basel II; here is a summary of his conclusions.  They make sense but somehow they don’t read as if he is getting to the heart of the matter.  When he writes he is reluctant to generalize.  The Basel work is probably one reason why Obama nominated him for the Board of Governors.  He is much more a "regulation guy" than a "monetary policy" guy.  That suggests he won’t challenge Bernanke on monetary policy.  Overall it is another sign that Obama is committed to making high-IQ, high experience, high quality economic nominations.

He teaches law at Georgetown.  He is currently working on a book on international banking regulation; basic biographical information is here.  He won’t get to finish the book.

Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics

by  Tyler Cowen in

That’s the title of the new book by Yasheng Huang.  This very serious work reexamines the role of the state in the Chinese economy.  It suggests that the Chinese private sector has been more productive than claimed, China fits the traditional theory of property rights and incentives more than is often realized, the Chinese economy is not necessarily getting freer, market ideas are strongest in rural China, rural China was reregulated in an undesirable way starting in the early 1990s, the "Shanghai miracle" is overrated, when you calculate the size of the private sector in China it matters a great deal whether you use input or output measures, and China may collapse into crony capitalism rather than following the previous lead of Korea and Japan.

The dissection of Joseph Stiglitz on China, starting on p.68, is remarkable.

I do not have the detailed knowledge to evaluate all of these claims but in each case the author offers serious evidence and arguments.  This book does not make for light reading (though it is clearly written), but it is quite possibly the most important economics so far this year.  Here is a good review from The Economist.

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize

by  Tyler Cowen in

He is cited for trade theory and, appropriately, location theory and economic geography.  He could have been cited for his work on currency crises as well.  Here are the most basic links on Paul, it is hard to know where to start.  I have to say I did not expect him to win until Bush left office, as I thought the Swedes wanted the resulting discussion to focus on Paul’s academic work rather than on issues of politics.  So I am surprised by the timing but not by the choice.

Here’s Krugman’s NYT column from today; there is so so much on him and by him.  Here is his blog.  Here is a short post-prize interview.  He has been influential in pushing the United States toward a bank recapitalization plan.  Here is Krugman on video, from just the other day, talking about the crisis and how bad it might get.  Krugman, of course, also called the housing bubble in advance.

Krugman is very well known for his work on strategic trade theory, as it is now called.  Building on ideas from Dixit, Helpman, and others, he showed how increasing returns could imply a possible role for welfare-improving protectionism.  Krugman, however, insisted that he did not in practice favor protectionism; it is difficult for policymakers to fine tune the relevant variables.  Boeing vs. Airbus is perhaps a simple example of the argument.  If a government can subsidize the home firm to be a market leader, the subsidizing country can come out ahead through the mechanism of capturing the gains from increasing returns to scale.  Here are some very useful slides on the theory.  Here is Dixit’s excellent summary of Krugman on trade.  Krugman himself has admitted that parts of the theory may be less relevant for rich-poor countries trade (America and China) rather than rich-rich trade, such as America and Japan.

I am most fond of Krugman’s pieces on economic geography, in particular on cities and the economic rationales for clustering.  He almost single-handedly resurrected the importance of "location theory," an all-important but previously neglected branch of economics.  Here is the best summary piece of Krugman’s work in this area.  I believe this work will continue to rise in influence.

I have my own favorite pieces by Krugman.  This include his short critique of Austrian trade cycle theory and his short piece on why the British had such bad food.

He is also, by the way, a loyal MR reader but he is not the first reader to win the prize.

Krugman’s books:

Here is my review of Conscience of a Liberal.  That book argued that politics and policy can reshape the distribution of income in a more egalitarian direction.  Peddling Prosperity is one of the best-written economics books, ever, as are also The Age of Diminished Expectations and Pop Internationalism.  The latter started a trend of Krugman as a debunker of erroneous economic claims.  The supply-siders and the low-level industrial policy advocates were early targets of his pen.  Pop Internationalism is also the work of Krugman’s most likely to be popular with market-oriented economists.  Here is a collection of Krugman’s earlier writings.  The Great Unraveling — circa 2004 — is for me too under-argued.  His book Currencies and Crises is in my view his most underrated work; it provides a very readable introduction to some of his ideas on financial crises and it has a nice use of the concept of option value.  Development, Geography, and Economic Theory is a very good and very readable introduction to his work on economic geography.  That and the currency book are my two favorites by Krugman.  Geography and Trade is useful plus here is a more technical collection on the spatial economy.

Krugman has a widely used Principles text, co-authored with his wife Robin Wells.  He also has a leading text in international economics co-authored with Maurice Obstfeld.

Here are profiles and bio pieces, none very recent.  Here is Krugman on how he works — very personal and insightful.  Some of Krugman’s thinking on the liquidity trap — a key issue today for the crisis — can be found here.

Krugman of course is a controversial figure in the blogosphere and in politics but I believe for today it is best to set those issues aside.  His Wikipedia page has lots on the critics plus some bio as well.  Daniel Klein for instance argued that Krugman should do more to speak out for freer markets in various settings.

Krugman’s early columns for Slate.com were an important model for shaping what the econ blogosphere later became.  They are models of clarity and rigor which we all would do well to emulate.  His exposition of Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage is remarkably good and it is one of the best pieces of popular economics writing I know.

Award analysis: This was definitely a "real world" pick and a nod in the direction of economists who are engaged in policy analysis and writing for the broader public.  Krugman is a solo winner and solo winners are becoming increasingly rare.  That is the real statement here, namely that Krugman deserves his own prize, all to himself.  This could easily have been a joint prize, given to other trade figures as well, but in handing it out solo I believe the committee is a) stressing Krugman’s work in economic geography, and b) stressing the importance of relevance for economics.  Daniel Davies also sees it as a career-based award. 

Who are the big losers?  Avinash Dixit and Elhanan Helpman and Maurice Obstfeld have to feel their chances for the prize went down significantly.

Addendum: Here is Bryan Caplan on "Paul Krugman, Guilty Pleasure."

Fruitless Fall

by  Tyler Cowen in

The subtitle is The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis and the author is Rowan Jacobsen.  Many books on biodiversity have bad economics but this book has very good economics:

Sometimes the fraud is chemical, as when rice syrup is doctored to resemble honey, and sometimes it’s ontological.  For instance, what is honey?  If you answered something like "a syrup made entirely out of nectar by bees," then consider yourself hopelessly out-of-date.  Let me introduce you to "Packer’s Blend," the latest offering from China.  It appeared on the market in 2006, shortly after the bond-posting loophole was closed by Congress.  Chinese honey may be subject to tariffs, but if a product is less than 50 percent honey, it isn’t covered by the law.  This "funny honey," as beekeeprs call it, is between 40 and 49 percent honey.  The rest is syrup; corn syrup, but also rice syrup, lactose syrup — whatever’s on hand and cheap.  The importers who bring in these blends may sell them to manufacturers as blends or as pure honey, adding some nice American or Canadian clover honey to give the blend a semblance of the real thing and get it past the manufacturers.

This book also offers a thoughtful analysis of the dangers facing biodiversity, a fascinating look at what Gordon Tullock called "the economics of insect societies," and a revision of Steven Cheung’s "Fable of the Bees" (the story now involves almond growers in a major role).  It is one of the best popular science books I have read in the last few years.

The history of America since 1980

by  Tyler Cowen in

Brad DeLong spells it out:

  1. The end of the Cold War
  2. Other winner-take-all factors that have, in combination with
    education, pushed American income polarization back to Gilded Age
    levels.
  3. The failure of American taxpayers to support their state and local
    governments in expanding funding for public education–and the impact
    of reduced public education effort in sharpening the distinction
    between rich and poor.
  4. The computer revolution in productivity growth.
  5. The rise of China (and soon, we hope, India) as industrial powers.
  6. The extraordinary social liberalization of America–if you had told
    any Republican in 1980 that 2008 would see (a) a Negro with an
    Arabic-Swahili name beating a veteran fighter pilot in the presidential
    polls and (b) gay marriage as the big cultural issue of the day, said
    Republican would have blown several gaskets. And if you had said that
    this would have been the result of an "Age of Reagan" said Republican
    would have melted down completely.

I’m mostly on board (and read the broader post) but, in addition to mentioning Latinos, I’ll suggest two revisions.  First, on #3 I doubt if the stagnation of American lower education is the result of insufficient dollars.  It is notoriously difficult to find a convincing link between educational expenditures and educational quality and I don’t think that is econometric problems.  On #6 I never saw most of the Reagan Republicans as especially prudish or socially conservative; that was just a lie told to one of the interest groups attending the party.  Revolution in the Head — which is oddly enough a social history of the Beatles — is especially good on the connection between 1960s morals and the Reagan Revolution.

The history of Chinese food in Japan

by  Tyler Cowen in

The popularization of other Chinese dishes in Japan dates further back than that of gyoza, however.  The influx of Westerners into Yokohama, Nagasaki and Kobe during the 1860s set the stage for the diffusion of Chinese cuisine in modern Japan.  Although the Chinese had no legal right to remain in Japan before the first Sino-Japanese treaty was concluded in 1871, they were brought in under the legal protection of Western powers.  Western merchants relied heavily on their Chinese staff — servants, clerks and middle-men — to run the households and enterprises that they relocated from the China coast.  During the 1870s and 80s independent Chinese merchants began to settle in Japan as well, so that the Chinese soon constituted the majority of the foreign population residing in the ports.

That is from Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, by Katazyna J. Cwiertka.  One thing I learned from this book was how much Japanese wartime experience created the notion of a national cuisine in Japan.  Before the war, for instance, soy sauce and rice were not common foods in many parts of rural Japan.

Spot the Contradiction

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Daniel Gross’s review of Sachs’ Common Wealth was bizarre.  Consider this:

Even congenital optimists have good reason to suspect that this time
the prophets of economic doom may be on point, with the advent of
seemingly unstoppable developments like….the explosive growth of China and India.

Huh?  What kind of upside down logic makes high growth rates proof of economic doom?  Proving this was no idle slip Gross goes on to say:

Things are different today, [Sachs] writes, because of four trends: human
pressure on the earth, a dangerous rise in population, extreme poverty
and a political climate characterized by “cynicism, defeatism and
outdated institutions.” These pressures will increase as the developing
world inexorably catches up to the developed world. (emphasis added)

Silly me, I thought rising life expectancy, increasing wealth, and lower world inequality, which is what it means to say that the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world, was a good thing.  And then there is this:

The combination of climate change and a rapidly growing population
clustering in coastal urban zones will set the stage for many Katrinas,
not to mention “a global epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease
and adult-onset diabetes.”

Ok, climate change will create problems but how clueless do you have to be not to understand that a large fraction of the world’s people would love to live long enough to die from obesity and other diseases of wealth?

Don’t misunderstand, I know that growth brings problems.  My dispute with Gross is not that he thinks the glass is half-empty and I think it is half-full; my dispute is that Gross thinks the fuller the glass gets the more empty it becomes.

Addendum: Dan Gross writes to say that he was summarizing Sachs’ argument.  Point noted.

The world isn’t flat, installment #736

by  Tyler Cowen in

Wolf Totem, by Jiang Rong, is the most widely read book in China since Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.  In the United States it’s been out since March 27 and still it has only one Amazon review and a negative one at that.  So far I find it compelling and I am enjoying its panpsychic vulgarities.  It’s also a good guide to how the Chinese think about their foreign policy.