Sanjaya Baru writes about how the world is following the China model. He defines China model as countries curbung freedoms in name of development.
He cites how the earlier models – Washington Consensus and Fukuyama Man- that advoated liberal democracy have been sidelined.
Indian media and businesses are celebrating GST 2.0 like there is no tomorrow.
But then there have been so many articles arguing how GST 1.0 was always flawed. It was hardly “the good and simple tax” that was advocated by the government. There were too many tax rates and many essentials such as insurance attracted very high tax rates.
However, instead of hearing these economists, they were mercilessly trolled and abused by media’s troll army. All kinds of things were said such as “they don’t understand economics”, “see the GST revenues” and above all “go to Pakistan”. Some of these economists became quiet and others kept writing despite the trolling.
The GST 2.0 is nothing but what has been said all this while by the trolled economists ever since GST was announced in 2017. There is massive media hype on how the wrongs of GST are being corrected as if some aliens imposed GST on us.
How Indian media over and over fails to show mirror and ask questions. Instead of opposing all the propganda, it is simply aggravating the whole propaganda.
Interesting research by Natalia Vasilenok of Stanford University (HT: MR Blog). It is her job market paper.
In this paper, I measure the effect of conflict on the demand for frames of reference, or heuristics that help individuals explain their social and political environment by means of analogy.
To do so, I examine how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 reshaped readership of history and social science books in Russia.
Combining roughly 4,000 book abstracts retrieved from the online catalogue of Russia’s largest bookstore chain with data on monthly reading patterns of more than 100,000 users of the most popular Russian-language social reading platform, I find that the invasion prompted an abrupt and substantial increase in readership of books that engage with the experience of life under dictatorship and acquiescence to dictatorial crimes, with a predominant focus on Nazi Germany. I interpret my results as evidence that history books, by offering regime-critical frames of reference, may serve as an outlet for expressing dissent in a repressive authoritarian regime.
Hmm.
Obviously the author would not have managed to do such research in Russia.One is alsi surprised that Russians can still read books on authoritainism!
If the Russian authorites get whiff of this paper, they might control and regulate the books in Russia’s largest book store mentioned by the author of the paper. The same store will be flooded with books on how god has send Russia’s current leader to restore past glories of Russia. The other media outlets such as newspapers will sing praises all day long for the greatest leader as it is happening in some of the countries today. Everything is a reform and everything is a blessing from the new god.
Mohsen Javdani has surveyed 2400 economists across 19 countries and finds that male and female econs see the economy differently:
My recent research contributes to broader efforts to understand how gender shapes the intellectual terrain of economics. Drawing on an original international survey of more than 2,400 economists across 19 countries, it systematically examines gender differences in views across a wide range of issues. The findings shed light on how gender diversity can translate into intellectual diversity within the discipline. Such insight is vital for building a pluralistic economics, one where diversity is not reduced to numbers but embraced as a way to broaden perspectives and challenge dominant frameworks and narratives. This need is especially urgent given long-standing critiques of mainstream economics as intellectually insular, methodologically rigid, and resistant to alternative perspectives.
The survey results show that women economists consistently expressed views that placed greater emphasis on equity, social justice, and structural critique than their male counterparts. They were more likely to support government intervention, acknowledge the harms of rising income inequality and corporate power, and recognize structural barriers to success. Women economists also appeared more inclined to question the core assumptions of mainstream economics and to endorse pluralistic approaches to economic inquiry. Across a set of 15 normative statements—many of which challenged neoclassical orthodoxy or highlighted issues of inequality—women economists reported substantially higher levels of agreement. These patterns reflect not only differences in policy preferences, but deeper divergences in how economic problems are understood and evaluated. Notably, the largest gender gap appeared on economics’ own “gender problem,” with women far more likely to affirm that “economics has made little progress in closing its gender gap” and that “the hurdles that women face in economics are very real.
https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/economics-blogs/
Mostly Economics 