Results for “sri lanka” 63 found
Why don’t economists study Haiti more?
Tate Watkins, referring to an old Chris Blattman post, asks me such a question. One might raise a similar query about Sri Lanka. In both cases there are some obvious answers, having to do with ease of access and languages and also levels of violence (in the past, if not always today).
But I would like to raise a more general issue and I hope the development economists and social scientists reading this can add their expertise in the comments section. To what extent is the choice of venue for study due to what I will call “social science infrastructure”?
I don’t mean roads and bridges. I mean having trained armies of local assistants, data gathering and processing facilities, populations which are used to signing informed consent forms, medical clinics which understand how to work with social scientists and register data, and other less visible assets. I once visited a Poverty Action Lab evaluation in Hyderabad and it struck me immediately just how much local assistance they needed to get their study of micro-credit off the ground. As far as I could tell, the local assistance seemed really quite able but of course that cannot be taken for granted in all locales.
It has struck me for a while just how many RCT papers appear to be set in a relatively small number of places in Kenya. Presumably these parts of Kenya have a very good social science infrastructure.
So what is going on here? Who can shed light on this? And to what extent does having a good social science infrastructure correlate with other features which will bias the results of these studies?
Stories to watch for in 2013
Here is a list from The Guardian. Here is an FT list. My list looks more like this:
1. Economic turnarounds in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and possibly Pakistan and Myanmar.
2. Pressures for secession in Catalonia, and a potential crisis of the Spanish state.
3. East Asian belligerence, with more hawkish leaders in the three major countries.
4. There is actually a non-trivial chance we totally blow it on the debt ceiling.
5. The continuing rise of machine intelligence and the general recognition of such as the next major technological breakthrough.
6. Significant positive reforms in Mexico on education, foreign investment, and other matters too.
7. Political collapse in South Africa.
8. Continuation of America’s “Medicaid Wars,” over state-level coverage, combined with the actual implementation of much more of ACA. Continuing attempts in Rwanda, Mexico, and China to significantly extend health care coverage to much poorer populations.
9. The return of dysfunctional Italian politics, combined with the arrival of recession in most of the eurozone economies, including France and Germany.
10. The ongoing barbarization of North Africa, including Mali, Syria, and possibly Egypt. And whether any of these trends will spread to the Gulf states.
11. Whether China manages a speedy recovery and turnaround.
12. Watching India try to overcome its power supply problems, its educational bottlenecks, and its low agricultural productivity.
13. Seeing whether Ghana makes it to “middle income” status and how well broader parts of Africa move beyond resource-based growth.
14. Whether U.S. and also European political institutions can handle the intensely distributional nature of current fiscal questions.
Those are some of the main stories I will have my eye on, but of course I expect to be surprised. I suppose Israel and Iran should be on that list somehow, North Korea too, but I don’t find that thinking and reading about it yields much in the way of return, compared to a simple “wait and see.”
Addendum: Here is Matt’s list.
How to eat well in Berlin
Paris has dozens of restaurants which are better than any in Berlin, and then hundreds more better than the rest. Yet it may be the case that you have, overall, a better food life in Berlin than in Paris.
Berlin has a weak reputation among foodies, but culinary life in the city is much improved. Here are my tips for a good eating life in Berlin:
1. Find a steady source of innovative rolls, buns, and dark breads. These are the glories of Berlin and in many parts of town there will be at least one such source per residential block. The more irregular the colors, seeds, and topologies of the breads, the more enthusiastically you should buy them. Do not treat this as the French bread buying experience.
2. Find a source for good spreads, such as cherry, raspberry, etc. and stock up. Repeatedly apply the spreads to the breads, until death of the researcher intervenes. This procedure is the basis for everything else you will do. It ensures that all of your food days will be good ones.
3. Seek out mid-level German restaurants, of the kind promoted in the Time Out Guide; Renger-Patzsch is a good example. The vegetables in such places will be consistently excellent.
4. The speed and service quality of most meals will be much better if you arrive before 7 p.m.
5. Don't obsess over German food. It's underrated, but still a lot of it isn't that good. In Berlin, and many other parts of Germany, you have first-class delicatessens or stores with foodstuffs from France, Italy, and many other parts of the world. Use them. Berlin offers one of the best overall selections in this regard, better than New York City or Paris, for instance, in terms of real access. You can eat first-rate French cheese every day.
6. When it comes to Berlin German food, don't eat anything in a sauce. It will be either boring or disgusting. Sorry.
7. The sausage spread at the KaDeWe (make sure you live near that place) is probably the best in the entire world. Go there regularly. They also have first-rate sausages from France, Spain, and other countries, as well as an unparalleled selection of sausages from the different regions of Germany, organized one region per case. This food source, like #1, insures that each of your food days will be a splendid one.
8. Go to Berlin's numerous and varied ethnic restaurants, especially in the slightly lower rent districts. If the food is supposed to be spicy, you must repeat the following incantation several times: "Ich will es essen, genau wie Sie es zu Hause essen. Ich bin kein deutscher." [I want to eat it exactly as you eat it at home. I am not a German."] Repeat especially that last part: "Ich bin kein deutscher." Repeat it even if you are a German. This will usually work and typically your Chinese or Thai or Indian server will smile and laugh in response. If they view you as a German, you are screwed no matter what. Simply asking for the food to be "spicy" or even "very spicy" is laughable. It is showing yourself to be a fool and a sucker.
9. Food here is much cheaper than in Paris, and it is much easier to get into virtually any restaurant. Take advantage of both features.
10. Italian food here is almost always reasonably good, and reasonably cheap, but it is rarely great. Lots of cream sauces. It's a good enough fall back and you find it virtually everywhere. A quite good pasta for $6 or even less is a common experience. Sometimes it's actually German food in disguise, or not in disguise, such as when you get Carpaccio with Pfifferlinge.
11. For ethnic food, I recommend the following: Tian Fu in Wilmersdorf (very good Sichuan), Suriya-Kanthi (Sri Lankan in Prenzlauer Berg), Genazvale (Georgian food in Charlottenburg), Degirman is one good Turkish place of many, a slew of authentic Mexican restaurants (more than in Virginia), DAO restaurant in Charlottenburg (Thai food, best papaya salad I've had, all-around excellent), and Schneeweiss has first-rate Wiener Schnitzel.
Overall Sri Lankan and Nepalese and East bloc cuisines are better here, or more available, than in the USA.
If you visit for one day, you won't be so impressed with culinary life in Berlin. If you stay for a month, you won't want to go back to what you had before.
Berlin notes
Living here feels natural. I am happy but oddly unfascinated. Most of all, I notice the changed routines of my life. Every day I take mass transit and have cheese for breakfast, rather than the car and cereal. I am more likely to take in information by walking around different parts of town than by reading. I have only five CDs, a Kindle, and a few paperbacks, including the new (and good) David Mitchell novel.
The Berlin newspapers seem uninterested in the collapse of Greece and the future of the Eurozone; that probably reflects the preferences of their readership.
They have a whole shop, on my street, for books about the German train system; there is another shop just for books about miniature model boats.
There are many more photocopy shops here than I had expected; I wish I could short the sector. The Berlin Zoo has a "gay night."
There is a not-very-bohemian part of town, a somewhat bohemian part of town, and a "supposedly to be really bohemian but actually still quite German" part of town. A funny kind of pointless Tiebout competition reigns.
Berlin is a big playground with relatively little busines life or production, lots of space, and amazingly low rents. You can buy a good gelato for less than a Euro.
The vegetables are superb.
Sometimes you can't tell which national cuisine the Asian restaurants are serving and I don't mean that as a compliment. Sri Lankan food is one of the best respites from the oppression of food preparation in Deutschland.
If there is one overriding principle of German food, it is to avoid anything in a sauce.
The Turkish integration into Germany and German life is a major postwar success story, yet it is not much reported on.
The musical life and museums are first-rate, yet the real sight here is simply Germany itself.
When does large-scale public ownership work?
Matt and Ezra both comment on my post that most of the largest Chinese firms are state-owned or controlled by state-owned banks. (Both blogs, by the way, have interesting running coverage of the same China trip.) How can this be the case in the world's greatest economic growth miracle? How come it works (sort of, there were lots of privatizations, starting in the 1980s) in France too?
Yet state-owned industries do not have a fantastic record overall; ask England.
In part this is a puzzle but in part France and China have one important feature in common: it's high status to be a ruler. Very smart Frenchmen often grow up wanting to work for the government. Hardly anyone in France thinks that is weird and so the French bureaucracy has some of the best talent in the country.
There is also a long-standing tradition of the prestige of the Chinese mandarin. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate source of control and prestige for the entire society and it too attracts many talented people.
It's not enough to attract talented people, however. Unlike in the former communist Soviet Union, the Chinese government is (somewhat) dedicated to improving the nation. At least at a ten percent rate of growth, this political equilibrium works. And the state-controlled enterprises have to compete in a commercial environment, again unlike many former socialist experiments with state ownership. Most of all, China is grabbing the low-hanging fruit by moving smart, hard-working individuals from rural jobs to highly productive jobs and when you are grabbing the low-hanging fruit many things are possible. A lot of systems work OK until you get near the "you ought to shut down" constraint.
It's also possible that the successes of state ownership "decay" with time, as was arguably the case with the French model before the privatizations and has been the case with NASA in the United States.
The United States is far from having the right pieces to make public ownership work on a widespread basis and of all the major capitalist economies we have experimented with it about the least. Federalism, a regionalist Congress, separation of powers, and a high proportion of political appointees all militate against successful government ownership. Plus we are a large economy with relatively little external discipline in the form of international trade.
We could "respect" our bureaucrats much more than we do, yet they still would not have the real status they enjoy in France. It's simply not built into our culture, which worships wealthy businessmen and also the so-called "common man."
Imagine if everyone wrote a tweet: "Hey guys, over at the Department of Education. You're awesome. Luv ya!" It wouldn't much matter because still not many people deeply and sincerely wish to emulate them.
I also prefer to live in a society where the public sector does not have so much prestige. Very often governmental prestige stifles innovation and implies a series of more general insider, elitist, and sometimes authoritarian attitudes. It's also worth a quick look at the histories of what France and China had to do to build up so much governmental prestige; not pretty.
We should recognize that the public ownership model has worked for China, but I don't want to see it widely copied. I don't want to see it in Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cuba, India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Central African Republic, or anywhere in Eastern Europe, to name a few other candidate countries. Do you?
Cinnamon vs. Cassia
Taste:
Real or True Cinnamon is sweet and delicate where as Cinnamon Cassia is strong to peppery Color: Real Cinnamon is a tan color, whereas Cinnamon Cassia is a reddish brown to dark brown. Look: Cinnamon Cassia bark is thicker because its outer layer isn’t stripped off. For that reason, Cassia sticks curl inward from both sides toward the center as they dry. Real Cinnamon sticks curl from one side only and roll up like a newspaper as shown above. Feel: The surface of Cinnamon Cassia is rough and uneven, whereas Real Ceylon Cinnamon bark is smooth. Usage:
Real Ceylon Cinnamon is perfect in sweet and subtle dishes that require a delicate flavor.
It is important to own some of both. What they call cinnamon I call Mexican cinnamon (though it is imported from Sri Lanka) and what they call cassia is usually called cinnamon or Asian cinnamon. Sichuan recipes often call for cassia, but then "ordinary cinnamon" will do, you don't want Mexican (Sri Lankan) cinnamon.
I found this statement useful:
First picture [at the above link] shows the soft Real Ceylon Cinnamon sticks. These sticks are very soft and one can see the bristles. Second picture shows the hard Cassia sticks that are reddish brown in color and have single CURL that closes inward. One can easily grind the Ceylon Cinnamon in an electric grinder. You may burn the grinder if tried on Cassia !.
Assorted links
2. The future of the Republican Party?
3. Should there be a European Monetary Fund?
4. Jonathan Gruber's new estimates for how much the tax exclusion of health insurance matters.
6. Curling win probability table (for baseball here).
*Reflections on the Revolution in Europe*
I am surprised that Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West has not sparked more blogospheric debate (with a few exceptions). This is an intelligent, well-reasoned argument against allowing so many Muslims into Europe. That said, while the author does ask how many traditional Italian restaurants would have to close without immigrant labor, he doesn't pursue this chain of reasoning very far. What would happen to the Swiss tourist sector? Nor will he admit that, financial crisis aside, Europe has never been richer, freer, and stronger. Interestingly, he thinks that Latino immigration to the U.S. will go just fine, in part because Latinos are Christians. I should add that Stockholm has many more immigrants than does Sicily and which is the place in greater future trouble? It is interesting to see how many Somali (and other) immigrant women have adopted the gait and dress and demeanor of Swedish women.
I did, however, in Palermo have an excellent Sri Lankan-Sicilian fusion meal, namely sardines in a spicy dosa.
The bottom line: I'd like to see a list of his short positions in asset markets.
What determines fertility?
Here are some thoughts:
So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility:
the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American
one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to
promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The
U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in
terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social
stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially
accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very
accepted.”By this logic, the worst sort of system is one that
partly buys into the modern world – expanding educational and
employment opportunities for women – but keeps its traditional
mind-set. This would seem to define the demographic crisis that Italy,
Spain and Greece find themselves in – and, perhaps, Japan, South Korea,
Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of the world. Indeed, demographers
have been surprised to find rapid fertility changes in the third world,
as more and more women work and modern birth-control methods become
standard options. “The earlier distinct fertility regimes, ‘developed’
and ‘developing,’ are increasingly disappearing in global comparisons
of fertility levels,” according to Edward Jow-Ching Tu…the birthrate in 25 developing countries – including Cuba, Costa Rica,
Iran, Sri Lanka and China – now stands at or below the replacement
level.
Ron Paul is Correct
The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven
by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern
democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists
view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the
West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign–over 95 percent of all the
incidents–has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to
withdraw.
That’s Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism, an in interview from several years ago. Steve Levitt points to the interview in one of his best posts. Here’s one bit from Levitt. Read the whole thing.
For most government officials, there is much more pressure to look like you
are trying to stop terrorism than there is to actually stop it. The head of the
TSA can’t be blamed if a plane gets shot down by a shoulder-launched missile, but he is in serious trouble if a tube of
explosive toothpaste takes down a plane. Consequently, we put much more effort
into the toothpaste even though it is probably a much less important threat.
Private Foreign Aid
The LATimes has a superb set of articles on remittances, it focuses not just on remittances from the U.S. to Mexico but also from Japan to the Phillipines, Italy to Kenya and Florida to Haiti.
Migrants have been sending money home, in one form or another, for
centuries. But only recently have economists recognized its
significance. Today, remittances are the largest, fastest-growing and
most reliable source of income for developing countries. Poor nations
reported $167 billion in receipts from overseas workers last year,
according to the World Bank, more than all foreign aid. Including
unrecorded transactions, the bank estimates that the total exceeded
$250 billion.…Mexico’s annual remittance inflow has doubled since 2002 and reached
$20 billion last year, second only to petroleum as a generator of
wealth for the country.Other developing nations also depend
heavily on their migrants’ money. Brazilian laborers in Japan send home
more than $2 billion a year, out-earning their country’s coffee
exports. Remittances bring in more than tea exports do in Sri Lanka and
tourism does in Morocco. In Jordan, Lesotho, Nicaragua, Tonga and
Tajikistan, they provide more than a quarter of the gross national
product.
Thanks to Carl Close for the pointer.
The Political Business Cycle
I am supposed to be voting for governor of Virginia today, no? I just read the following promise from a presidential candidate in Asia:
Every Sri Lankan home will be gifted with a high milk-yielding cow from
Kerala which could be expected to yield 10 liters to 16 liters of milk
every day. Even families who live in flats, who could make suitable
arrangements to look after a cow, will receive a gift of cow.
The post from IndiaUncut also lists their "previous posts on cows."
U.S. fact of the day
Total tsunami foreign aid from the U.S.: $908 million
U.S. tariff revenue from Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, and Indonesia: $1.87 billion
That is from Foreign Policy, September/October issue.
Should you send money to tsunami victims?
Probably yes, but why? After all, the world has had millions of victims of extreme misery for some time now.
What about opportunity cost? Why should you aid these people and not others? I can think of two arguments:
1. Aid is more effective when large numbers of donors coordinate upon addressing a single disaster in a focused manner.
2. Donors are frail in their commitment to altruistic ends. A dramatic headline induces them to give when they would not otherwise be generous. So if you find that images of tsunami victims tug at your heartstrings, give now because you will forget about being kind a week or month from now.
These two hypotheses are not fully distinct. Even if #2 does not describe you, it probably applies to many others. If your donations help make the tsunami victims a more "focal cause" this will induce more giving from altruistically frail others.
But when are these economies of scale exhausted? I doubt if the generated aid will come close to saving all the relevant lives. If these donations do in fact produce increasing returns across a giving network, why are you giving to any other causes?
Is it that donations will stop at the point when saving additional Sri Lankan lives hits a steeply upward-sloping cost curve? (Unlikely.) Or are we so altruistically frail that if we displace our other giving, we will have fewer giving motives on net and thus will give less overall? Can we not sit down and understand our frailty rationally and write one big check, once a year, to the "most efficient cause"? Possibly not.
Thanks to Jonathan S. for the pointer. And here is my previous post on whether you should give money to beggars.
Look Out for the Big, Messy Countries
Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China – the BRICs economies – could become a much larger force in the world economy. We map out GDP growth, income per capita and currency movements in the BRICs economies until 2050.
The results are startling. If things go right, in less than 40 years, the BRICs economies together could be larger than the G6 in US dollar terms. By 2025 they could account for over half the size of the G6. Of the current G6, only the US and Japan may be among the six largest economies in US dollar terms in 2050.
The list of the world’s ten largest economies may look quite different in 2050. The largest economies in the world (by GDP) may no longer be the richest (by income per capita), making strategic choices for firms more complex.
We are also told that India has the greatest long-term potential for growth over the next thirty to fifty years.
From Goldman-Sachs, click here to get the whole study.
My take: These numbers are very speculative. Don’t assign them any predictive weight, but the article does outline one possible scenario. Don’t forget, circa 1960 or so, many economists were picking Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Philippines as the next big winners.
Thanks to Bart Oosterveld for the pointer to the piece.