RBI Governor Subbarao in this speech explains how RBI balance sheet (B/S) was different from the other central banks in the crisis.
Archive for February, 2011
Charter cities starts with Honduras
February 3, 2011It was just a matter of time. With economists like Paul Romer at helm and massive appeal of the concept, charter cities was an idea just about to happen. In the blog, previous posts showed talks were on with some governments to launch the concept.
In a recent post Prof Romer says Honduras has passed amendments in its constitution to create charter cities:
State of global affairs
February 3, 2011A friend emailed me a superb insight. It explains the state of global affairs in just a few lines:
Can RBI predict World Cup cricket winner?
February 2, 2011Saying goodbye to 25 paise and below coins
February 2, 2011Govt. announced to withdraw 25 paise and below coins from the market from June 30, 2011 onwards.
In a follow up, RBI announced that banks have been instructed to arrange exchange of these coins for face value at their branches.
Well, people had given up using these coins long back. Barring Mumbai, I have not seen any other city using these or taking 25 paise coins for transactions. Infact, even 1 Rupee coins are difficult to find in most places. So one either gave up that change or had to accept toffees/some other 1 Rupeee item in exchange.
We will just see these coins in museums from Jul 1, 2011 onwards.
Indian Economy – Fortnightly Update
February 2, 2011The recent update is here.
It is amazing how a new base for WPI helps. Inflation comes lower, IIP is revised upwards and so is GDP. Read the update for further details.
How economics/GaryBecker can save marriages…
February 2, 2011Economists may not be valuable in saving economies from going into a tailspin. But their advice seems to be working in unlikely of places like marriage.
Paula Szuchman of Newsweek writes how Gary Becker helped in saving her marriage (HT: Prof Mankiw’s Blog).
After numerous fights and arguments she called up Gary Becker and Becker told her:
India in Twin Deficit Club – Implications and Issues
February 2, 2011This is the title of my new paper. Comments/criticisms welcome.
Have an idea that will create jobs but not cost money?
February 2, 2011US economists advocate capital controls
February 2, 2011Well, well, well…..
After the IMF twist in the tale, number of US econs have written an open letter (HT: WSJ Blog) to US government to include capital controls as a policy tool.
IPL nudging!
February 2, 2011The latest IPL player auctions generated huge media response and discussions. As the teams did not pick former India captain- Saurav Ganguly, it was only a given that it would be a major news item going forward. Since the Jan-11 auction, we keep getting newsbytes on teams approaching Ganguly, taking him as a mentor, fresh auction etc.
Latest is that Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had sought teams’ views on allowing a team to buy one of the Indian players left unsold in the January auction. There are three unsold players: Saurav Ganguly, Wasim Jaffer and VRV Singh. The IPL rules say players not picked in auction can only be chosen as replacement players. So IPL wrote to teamowners seeking asking if the rules could be tweaked and unsold players bought at their reserve price.
HT reported that IPL chief operating officer, Sundar Raman, mailed all the 10 team owners. His last words are an interesting application of default strategy:
I would be grateful if you would respond by the close of play on 3 February. If we do not hear from you we will assume that you are OK with the request.
So if team owners do not respond, the default is they are ok with the request. Default could have been they are not ok with the request as well. So one has to opt-out if not agreeable to the proposal. Has BCCI/IPL Body been reading nudge as well?
To add on to the story, some teams have objected so chances of these players getting bought are remote as of now.
Iceland changes timings of its Monetary Policy Decisions
February 1, 2011Wisdom from Christopher Sims
February 1, 2011I was reading this old interview of Chris Sims of Princeton University.
Sims has argued for a long time that fiscal policy matters for monetary policy credibility. It is called the fiscal theory of price level:
Robert Shiller interview
February 1, 2011Thebrowser has a superb interview of Robert Shiller. He picks his five favorite books and discusses several issues as well.
His first book is Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. He has some interesting ideas on this:
Tell me why you chose it.
This is a remarkable book, because although in some cases it’s outdated, he has an interest in exposing human traits that are relevant to thinking about our daily lives, and he has, to me, a surprisingly insightful ability to do that. He doesn’t have any of the research methods of the modern social sciences; it’s all casual observation, and reading, I suppose, of other people and literature. But there are observations and conclusions in there that I never had before. They’re focused on a purpose, which is understanding how our society works and how people get a sense of mission, of purpose, that somehow makes things work as well as they do.
Can you give a particular example of a trait where you thought, ‘Wow! I hadn’t thought of that before, but he’s so right’?
Well, if you put it that way, it’s going to be disappointing – because your readers will say, ‘Yes I had thought of that before’! It’s a personal thing. But the thing he starts the book off with is sympathy. He uses the word sympathy – and he’s really focused on selfishness versus social consciousness. He sees that sometimes people are completely selfish, and that’s the problem for any economic theory – how to make a society work when people are completely, unremittingly selfish.
But he also notes something else: he doesn’t use the word ‘empathy’, because ‘empathy’ hadn’t been defined yet. But it’s a very important observation about human behaviour, which is that we are wired to feel each other’s emotions and to have a theory of other people’s minds (not that he would have used the words ‘wired’ or ‘theory of mind’ either). The English word ‘empathy’ was coined around 1900, in a translation of the German word Einfühlung from a German book by psychologist Theodor Lipps. What it means is that it’s not that I feel bad because I observe that you are suffering, it means I actually feel your feelings. So people may often be selfish, but they also have empathy.
Smith also talks about a selfish passion, which is a desire for praise. He argues that people instinctively desire praise, but that, as they mature, this feeling develops into a desire for praiseworthiness. This is a little bit different, and I haven’t seen it written about anywhere else. He points out that, suppose you were praised for something that you knew you didn’t do: it was a mistake, people thought you did something, so they’re praising you, but in fact you didn’t do it. It wouldn’t be such a good feeling – even if you could keep the lie going, and continue to receive the praise. He uses that to show that what people really want is to be deservedly praised. And that turn of mind, which develops as people mature, is what makes us into people with integrity.
I think this underlies how the economy works. We start out with selfish feelings, which are intermixed with feelings of empathy for others, and then we develop this mature desire to be praiseworthy. I think it is central to our civilisation that people do that. Adam Smith uses the example of mathematicians. Mathematicians seem to be, in his observation, totally unconcerned with popular praise. That’s because they know they’re doing good work in their mathematics, but also that the public will never appreciate them for what they do. They live in relative poverty, and they don’t seem to care about praise, except from their fellow mathematicians. And yet they’re doing all of this work which benefits humanity. This is something that happens in our society, and it makes the system work. He doesn’t go on, in this book, to explain how this develops into something that works. But this does mark the beginning of the thought process leading to his later book, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776.
Hmm..intersting view of economic development based on human feelings. From selfish to praiseworthy…
He then picks up Nudge and points out that saving more tomorrow as a nudge all should be looking at adopting. Cutural issues are raised:
But in the savings example, isn’t there something cultural going on as well? The more capitalist a country is, the worse it seems to be at saving. I lived in China, where people might be earning RMB 1,000 a month, and yet somehow they managed to have RMB 30,000 in their savings account.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, and it may not be permanent. I think it may reflect the stage that China is going through. It used to be that the Japanese had a higher saving rate. In China, they have a sense of epic transformation right now. It’s a kind of patriotic feeling, as well as a sense of uncertainty, that encourages saving. It’s not the capitalist difference, I don’t think. You’re suggesting that China saves more because of some cultural values that are at odds with capitalism?
I think culture plays a big role in our attitude to money. I’m originally from Holland, where we like being thrifty.
That’s a stereotype of the Dutch, isn’t it? That they’re stingy?
It’s true. You may have a million dollars in the bank, but you’ll still take a bus rather than a taxi.
I bet it’s not true. Because if the Dutch had been conspicuous savers for centuries, they would be vastly richer than any of us. It would accumulate over centuries. I like to use another example from Holland, which is that home prices in Amsterdam, according to Piet Eichholtz at Maastricht University, haven’t gone up – they’re no higher in real terms today than they were 300 years ago. So, I’m sorry, but you can’t be right.
The amazing thing about saving is that if you really save a lot and you do it for a hundred years, reinvesting interest, you will get awfully rich, and that’s a fact. The best example of that is not Holland, it’s Singapore, which has had a government imposed saving plan. In Singapore, they have a mandatory saving plan that has propelled that nation up rapidly. It’s just arithmetic. If you save and invest, it adds up, because of the power of compound interest.
Next one he picks up Rajan’s ”Faultlines” and he says inequality is a major problem. In the end he says:
We have to understand human psychology; we have to accept an impulse towards selfishness, which is the reality. We cannot change that: it’s through millions of years of evolution that this has come. And yet, we do have an engineered environment. Our economy is an invention, a reaction to past crises and depressions, and we can try to coordinate it. We can’t change people’s emotions, so part of what we do is we tolerate greedy behaviour, within limits. If it follows certain rules, and if there’s a certain integrity that underlies it, we tolerate it.
Nice short read.
In a unrlelated post, FinanceClippings blog points that Shiller says that EMH predicts financial crisis can’t happen. Whatever little I have read EMH is both right and wrong. It is right as one cannot predict markets. It is wrong saying that markets are always correct and any mispriced asset will get corrected in quicktime. The mispricing may not correct immediately and may take years to correct as we saw recently. If there is a belief that assets are fairly prices by large number of investors, herd mentality takes the price further away from fundamentals.
The problem with EMH has been its interpretation (or misinterpretation). FinClip blog says the same. EMH is quite narrow and has been expanded to interpret all kinds of things. What is even more ironical is that there is a huge finance industry who is paid to predict markets and asset prices. Most miss predictions every year, but salaries/bonuses keep rising.
