Greek Complexity

Gujarat: Myth and reality

Excerpt: "For the last several years, [Gujarat's Chief Minister] Modi has been successful in projecting his "vibrant Gujarat" as a role model of economic growth and himself as ''Vikas Purush". Though one must give due credit to Modi for his effective skills in making projections, one must also critically analyse this "growth story of Gujarat" based on facts and figures"

More here: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-12/edit-page/32176123_1_gujarat-narendra-modi-industrial-growth

This is an auto-generated post from my reading list courtesy IFTTT. See http://ifttt.com

The economics of crime with Gary Becker

Excerpt: " In 1968, University of Chicago economist Gary Becker solved the problem that had plagued law enforcement officers, politicians, and city planners since, well, the dawn of civilization: How do we stop criminals from committing crimes, and is stopping crime even desirable? Becker’s paper, “Crim"

More here: http://chicagomaroon.com/2012/05/25/the-economics-of-crime-with-gary-becker/

This is an auto-generated post from my reading list courtesy IFTTT. See http://ifttt.com

Money, Money, Money. Can we talk about something else?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/money-money-money-can-we-talk-about-something-else.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=opinion

I wonder if the writer knows anything about Singapore. Probably does, to his chagrin. Separately, does anyone think there's scope to run a successful time bank in Singapore?

Capitalism's Crises

This isn't a macroeconomics blog (what blog is it?) but this video was sufficiently thought-provoking that I thought it a must-post:

The speaker is the academic David Harvey.

The World at Work

Just saw this great chart from McKinsey (click to enlarge):

I didn't know Singapore's median age was into the 40s! Nor that America's median age was well above China's. It's not obvious to me from casual observation. As a friend once asked me, "Why do people say that Singapore has an aging population? I see plenty of children on the street with their parents." In comparison, one rarely sees children in Japan. But the numbers tell a different story from the perception.

One other interesting point to note is the way the authors have classified the countries. Most countries are classified by their levels of education and age of population. India and China, though, get their own independent categories! That speaks for itself. Another way to do it would have been to separate out urban India and urban China, and lump them in with other parts of the world with similar characteristics. Urban China and India are older and wealthier than the rest of each country, so this could substantially alter the picture.

This chart is from a longer McKinsey report called The World at Work, which is available for free download.

Another great source of this sort of data, visualised just as nicely as this, is the absolutely spectacular website Gapminder. If you're reading this blog, you're probably aware of this website already.

Links of the, well, many days

For some reason, my little ifttt hack didn't work and the articles I bookmarked onto my radar over the past several days didn't actually make it to the blog. No matter. I emailed them. I'm sure they'll reply with a fix.

Meanwhile, here are some of the things I posted to my radar since my last blog post. If you get my email newsletter, you've already seen most of these. I'll disable the double-posts once the ifttt problem is fixed.

• Why Germany is phasing out nuclear power
• The Revenge of Wen Jiabao
• America’s dream unravels
• Has E-commerce Really Fallen Out Of Favour With Indian VCs?
• 7 Ways to Automate Your Life With ifttt: I still love ifttt even though it didn't work for me.
• Procreation vs. Overpopulation: The case against kids: This piece doesn't try to be as conclusive as its title pretends.
• Online behaviour: March of the tastemakers: From interests to the social graph to the interest graph. Things come full circle.
• The Credit Card Is The New App Platform
• How to Avoid Getting Fired from Your Own Startup: Article doesn't really match the title. Still interesting.
• Investors demand change at ailing techs: Interesting to see moves reminiscent of private companies playing out in listed companies

This is one of those few times I've actually sat down and looked at the kinds of stuff I post on the radar. Quite a hodge-podge. Plus there's stuff I read but don't post. Wonder how much my radar overlaps with other people's.

Top 3 myths about immigration

Short and informative video about immigration:

This is about America not about Singapore but I can't imagine the conclusions would be that different for Singapore or anywhere else.

Japan has outperformed the US over the last 20 years

Really? So says an op-ed in the NYT. The writer presents some strong arguments to bolster his case, including:

The fallacy of the “lost decades” story is apparent to American visitors the moment they set foot in the country. Typically starting their journeys at such potent symbols of American infrastructural decay as Kennedy or Dulles airports, they land at Japanese airports that have been extensively expanded and modernized in recent years.

America’s growth in recent decades has been overstated by as much as 2 percentage points a year. ... This factor alone may put the United States behind Japan in per-capita performance.

The Japanese are consistently among the world’s earliest adopters [of expensive, new high-tech items]. If anything, it is Americans who have been lagging. 

There are, I think, plenty of other facts he ignores, but this is still interesting to chew on. More: The Myth of Japan’s Failure

Gambling

A friend posted this on his Facebook page a few days ago:

The number of old aunties and uncles I see trying to draw cash at the ATM room next to the casino at RWS is shocking.

RWS is Resorts World Sentosa, one of Singapore's two new casino-cum-entertainment complexes.

Several people posted comments expressing shock and concern. Someone suggested increasing the entrance fee levied on Singaporeans and Singapore Permanent Residents to dissuade them from entering. This is currently about $100 AFAIK. Someone else suggested barring them entirely and only allowing tourists in.

My friend said in response to the commenter who suggested increasing the fee:

Then the aunties will just want to make back more of their "sunk" cost. Gambling, if you haven't already noticed, is price inelastic.

...and in response to the barring suggestion:

Barring Singaporeans is not a good option because it opens other cans (of worms). It could imply that Singaporeans aren't able to control themselves (in some cases true) and changes the casinos' status to that of some foreign enclave. The cruise ship model was still the best - less access of the actual and not contracted sort, but then no revenue to gahmen. :)

I commented:

Did they look well off? If they want to gamble with their money, isn't it their choice?

Also, if the objection is to their age, would you rather they were young people just getting started on their careers, parenthood, first home, etc? Or middle-aged ones with growing children soon to enter expensive universities and with older parents to support?

One simple way to discourage gambling is to have the levy be a percentage of the amount wagered. That immediately brings down the odds of success. Gamblers, especially big ones, would understand this.

The percentage idea I'm talking about doesn't have to be a small single-digit percentage. It could even be 100% or more of the amount wagered. But, similar to what my friend said, this could end up discouraging gambling so well that government revenues (from Singaporean gamblers) actually go down in absolute dollars.

No simple answers, but what do you think?

It's finally that time

Time for me to capitulate and create a Politics category for this blog. I tried to sneak this in a while back by creating a "Government/policy" category but I might as well go the whole hog.

And for my next trick: a copy-paste of a short discussion I had on a friend's Facebook page (minor edits done for sake of flow and grammar).

Friend's post: Now Singaporeans remember, we need another 900,000 foreign workers on work permits

[a few inconsequential comments followed by...]

Person A: Guys, a huge portion of them fill the construction industry. Without them, who to build our ever increasing housing demand?