India – how gigantic is the new giant?

This book is the result of a fatherly injunction to “write a definite book on India”. Prof Arvind Panagariya’s “India, the Emerging Giant”, definitely is such a book. It will probably be an authoritative reference book for the next few years to come on India’s economy. The talk is of a giant, but India still only represents 1% of world merchandise trade, and 2.7% of its services trade. Yet the book is a very important contribution to the understanding of economic development and the policies that can lead to it – or not. The book traces India’s economic history since its independence and in particular links its growth performance with the policies undertaken by its successive governments. The author identifies four main phases:

Pop Politics from America

Paul Krugman changed my life. But I am now disappointed.

An eccentric’s* refreshing views on the international economic system (very slight ed.)

[One of the rare book reviews that do not fit the category “always late in my readings”....]

Razeen Sally - my former supervisor at the LSE, and the reason for my move to ECIPE - just published a small book at the Institute of Economic Affairs. It’s called pompously “Trade Policy, New Century. The WTO, FTAs and Asia Rising”. It’s downloadable for free here.

This book is a merger and compilation of various writings that had been accumulating over the last years. It is short, extremely well written, and refreshingly non-technical. Razeen Sally’s talent for writing is the icing on the cake of his ability to think big but keep it short. Despite many catchy phrases and formulations, it is a dense read based on solid facts and deepest theoretical understanding.

As usual, Sally turns out to be once again highly provocative.

Good sense into the climate change debate

This is a document that inspired me so much that my announced blogging pause will have to do away for now. At an international think tank forum in Atlanta, USA, this week-end, I grabbed a few publications on display for visitors, and must say I was gripped by one in particular: the Civil Society Report on Climate Change, published in November 2007 (I am posting this in my “Always late in my readings category ;-))by a coalition of 41 international free market and free society think tanks. Finally, some reason into the climate change debate! Neither denial of the fact of climate change nor Al Gore style alarmism and new-wave Bali five-star hotel bigotry.

What it says is basically the following: Kyoto-type protocols are not going to solve the problem. Imposing emission targets, as the current protocol does, will cost too much and contribute to impoverishing the world. At the same time, given the projected changes in temperatures, the targets imposed by Kyoto are largely insufficient.

Bothering to actually read Hayek

It took me years to get there…. I just finished Friedrich von Hayek’s famous “The Constitution of Liberty” (1960). I decided I would publicly admit my shame at doing the job I am doing and not having come round to read this book directly, and not simply about it in secondary sources. But I decided that I am certainly not the only one (am I wrong, dear reader?), and it is always good to share information and ideas. So here a quick, short, spontaneous review, appropriately saved under the the “Always late in my readings” category in this blog….

Chatty book commentary: for a concentric, fuzzy, and differently democratic European Union

2007, to which we are now saying good-by, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the founding document of the European Union.

2007 was a year of crisis for the EU: it needed to find a way out of the impasse created by Dutch and French no-votes to the Constitutional treaty back in 2005. With the entry of very poor and still deeply corrupt Romania and Bulgaria in the same year 2007, this foreign-policy-bureaucratic, foreign-investment-economic-convergence machinery called Enlargement has been called into question. Enlargement fatigue is prevailing…. But now, in December 2007, the gloom slowly starts dissipating.

So, is it the End of History for the former Soviet bloc?

It is now almost twenty years since the Berlin Wall was torn down and Francis Fukuyama announced the End of History, a world full of democratic capitalist countries and boring Western-style normality…. So, is the former Soviet bloc there now?

In an authoritative book already mentioned in my recent posts, Anders Aslund from the Peterson Institute undertook a first systematic stocktaking of Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia. The former Soviet bloc has known a great number of convoluted developments since then. The uncertainties surrounding Russia’s future and place in the world, as well as the controversies raised by the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union make this book a timely contribution to the debate on what went right, and what went wrong. Certainly, Aslund’s book makes a few points that will raise some controversies.

As one cannot be too long in a blog post, I will try to be short on the main conclusion drawn by Aslund on reform: the quicker and more systematic the better.

Tycoons

Globalisation has brought with it its breed of new super-rich. Forbes recently released its new rich list. The richest man in the world now is a Mexican telecoms magnate, Carlos Slim, worth US$ 59bn. He just overtook so far unbeatable Bill Gates. The new super-rich appear in the world’s booming emerging markets. Mexico. China. Russia. The Middle East. India. The existence of such super-rich and powerful men (yes, they are generally male) feeds into the debate about inequality: is the appearance of such a class of billionaires normal, morally and socially acceptable, …. and economically sound?

An excellent book by the Swedish economist Anders Aslund takes stock of transition to the capitalist system in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. One chapter analyses “The Role of Oligarchs”:

Hate Big Business? Me too! But not for the same reason

Foreign Policy –  usually an interesting magazine publishing refreshing articles came up with a sorry, very sorry article in its latest edition. Robert Reich’s  published on: “How Capitalism is Killing Democracy” Tagline: “Free markets were supposed to lead to free societies. Instead, today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies everywhere. Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.”

Yet this  terribly misguided article is a good excuse for me to get into a few clarifications on what “capitalism” is all about. Definitions of capitalism differ according to the ideological stance one has towards it. Just try to google the term… I for my part defend capitalism. I defend capitalism as an economic order based on market principles. What I don’t defend, however, is Big Business. This because I don’t believe Big Business is “proper” capitalism – it is not a system of “natural liberty” (term inspired from Adam Smith) .

Towards a new position for Europe in the world

This year 2007 the EU celebrates its 50th anniversary. European integration is overall an unprecedented success on a grand scale – achieving both lasting peace on a traditionally war-prone continent, and high levels of prosperity thanks to the progressive creation of a Common, then Single Market. With the recent accession of Central and Eastern European countries Europe is, finally, united. Except where it really matters in today’s world. What is more, Europe at 50 is brooding. Brooding over its relative “decline”. And it suffers from a sense of not really performing on the world stage as it could.

Recently, a powerful product was put onto the market of ideas on how to make things move forward for our good old Europe.