Why blogs can be useful in academia?

Chris Blattman, a successful blogger and development political economist, explains why blogging can be useful. I don't always agree with his ideas (in particular, he has an unjustified attraction for quantitative research in political economy), but have learnt a lot from his ideas. I just cannot succeed as much as he does in presenting my ideas in this blog and, especially, distributing around!

Private equity firms

The New York Times just published a great news documentary on private equity firms. It illustrates the asymetries in the US between companies in the financial sector (which make billions through deals) and a majority of workers who suffer from those deals. Many questions come out of this:

a. Are primary equity firms any better or worse than public companies?

b. How extended is equity firms among different varieties of capitalism?

c. What are the lessons for Latin America? Will a US-style financial sector be any better or worse than the current one dominated by family conglomerates?

d. Will the recent financial crisis change anything?

Progressives may be losing the battle

At the beginning, I thought that the financial crisis would open the door for new policy debates and a new "progressive consensus". More expansionary macro-policies and the debate on the health reform in the US would open the door for a return to a social-democratic understanding of distributional rules. It turns out that I could not be more wrong!!!! In the next few days, we have seen:

a. A return to bonuses in Wall Street ($700,000 per Goldman employee!) with no apologies for it.

b. An accent on stability and prudence after the crisis (somehow we can imagine who is paying for it).

On top of that, a column in today FT defends the need to let the consumer make decisions in the health sector.

Have we lost a historical opportunity to change things?

According to a Republican political science is not a science at all

Senator Colborn does not think that research on political science (and one would think on other sciences as well) should be funded. This includes research on citizenship and democracy in developing countries and electoral participation. What can I say?

Is Krugman changing his position towards Economics?

In my last post, I criticize Krugman for failing to mention heterodox economics in his recent NYT article. In many ways, I thought the article was good but the same old, mainstream Krugman. However, the last entry in his blog (see here) is more surprising and reveals some changes. After insisting for years in the importance of presenting all arguments in mathematical language, he now recognizes that there is some good work in economics with no math. If only this view could expand a little...

Paul Krugman on the mistakes of macroeconomics

Paul Krugman has succeeded once again in explaining the basic conflicts in economics in a simple way. In Saturday´s article on the crisis in the NYT, he explains the conflict between New Classical Economists and New Keynesian Economists and he even recognize the mistakes of the latter. He also makes sensible proposals for the evolution of mainstream macro... AND YET what is most surprising is his total unwillingness to recognize the extensive work of heterodox economists (post-Keynesian in particular), who have done extensive work on the problems of financial markets and the instability of the capitalist economies. It is still surprising how mainstream economists forget the work at the fringes... and very sad for the future development of the discipline.

Leaving Guatemala (initial reactions)

Just two weeks do not allow you to understand a contradictory and fascinating country like Guatemala. They are a good start, however, to try to understand the reasons behind the violent past and the difficult present of Central America in general, and Guatemala in particular. After talking with people, reading a little and observing as much as I could, it is clear that: (a) A stronger and more effective state is a necessary but not sufficient condition for development; (b) We need to think harder about the links between multiculturalism, development and state policy; (c) It is important to complement our understanding of macro-processes of development with a solid analysis of all the micro-initiatives to promote "progressive change". This and much more is something that we all need to reflect, using as much as possible a comparative perspective.