Will Mumbai go Kolkata way?

Abhijit Banerjee of MIT Poverty Action Lab has a terrific monthly column in Hindustan Times called The Poverty Line.

In December column, he tried answering an an important question – Aren’t all Indian economists Bengali and mathematicians South Indians? He skipped the maths part but did look into the economics bit. He says it is not something to do with genes but some excellent economics teachers in Calcutta which drove the passion for economics.

In his recent March column, he takes one back to old Calcutta days when the city was vibrant and drew talent from all parts of the country (great economists as well). However, in his youth time the concerns started and people lost hope in Bengal. Exodus of talent led to even more exodus thanks to some poor policies:

Is taylor rule descriptive or prescriptive?

In his latest blogpost, John Taylor says it is prescriptive. People wrongly think it is descriptive as in explains a historic event:

Revolving door between Japanese nuclear industry and regulators

After the crisis, kind of things one gets to read these days has been  so shocking. One really wonders what has been happening in so-called developed economies.

The financial crisis showed how there was a revolving door between people in the financial industry and regulators. One could be a regulator one day and walk next day to become a key financial player. As he got bored, he makes a comeback as regulator. Hence the term revolving door.

Daniel Kaufmann of Brookings has this nice essay on Japan’s nuclear energy crisis. He looks at this Japan’s Triple Disaster: Governance and the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crises.

He says though Japan is ranked highly on governance indicators, but still ranks much lower in developed economies. Chile and Nordic economies which are smaller economies rank higher. The lower rankings had an impact on the poor handling of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The deficiency was glaring in particular with handling of the nuclear reactor crisis.

Wanted a dream team of Indian economy managers..

A K Bhattacharya (AK) of Business Standard writes a nice article.

He says India needs a dream team to usher new wave of economic reforms. He goes back to 1991 when the then FM Manmohan Singh took bold reforms: