Pop music

People ought to enjoy the arts for, err, well personal reasons. To the great disapproval of my friends who live in Hampstead and Islington (and parts of New York City. And Beijing. And Shanghai. Singapore. Mumbai. Helsinki. Rome. Brussels. Oh heck, just about everywhere) I enjoy pop music. For them pop music has no staying power and therefore no redeeming features. For me it is precisely that pop music is transient that gives it value. Because it does not endure, pop music provides an indelible marker in time.

In the same way, valueless data serve useful functions. By providing nonsense values that sweep appropriately through the underlying probability space, such data become indexes that provide balanced access into individual records in a database. These valueless data become keys whose precise values no user will ever want to know. However, simply from being invisibly present, they keep a database from becoming unbalanced, unwieldy, and slow to retrieve.

This blog entry similarly says nothing but I hope it provides balance and a marker in time. Most recently I have already talked too much:

14 November 2007 Confucius Institute for Business London Public Lecture: Knowledge economies in China [Podcast] [Presentation (PDF, 696Kb). The dynamic animation won't show in the PDF file but is available here]

28 November 2007 Queen Mary CGR Public Lecture: Global imbalance, global inequality [Podcast] [Presentation (PDF, 861Kb). The dynamic animations won't show in the PDF file but are available at $1-poverty and $2-poverty]

30 November 2007 BBC2 Money Programme: Superstar, Super-Rich (iPlayer broadcast soon)

04 December 2007 Inequality debate with Richard Wilkinson, at St Mary-le-Bow Church [Opening speech (PDF, 79Kb)]

The Confidence of Nations

In 1993 the New York Times ranked as one of the world’s top 10 restaurants the Far East Asian eatery Din Tai Fung (鼎泰丰): This restaurant specializes in xialongbao (small steamed dumplings).

Overnight, culture snobs everywhere no longer had to hide their inner ethnic hawker stall-foodie.

When I was growing up on a small Far East Asian island—when I say small, I mean 46 miles around—the height of sophistication was to eschew hawker foods like small steamed dumplings. Instead, if you were one of the cool kids, you boasted of having been at least once to an air-conditioned café, to sit there and have lunch comprising a ham sandwich and a salad, with tomatoes in it (although this last cost extra).

These days, of course, you can’t stay in any top international hotel in most countries in the Far East without waking up to a breakfast (or lunch or dinner) of koay teow thng, laksa, nasi lemak, sar hor fun, rojak, char koay teow, murtabak, oh chien, …, and, last but not least, small steamed dumplings. Everyone is now Deckard gesturing for two portions, only sitting in fancy surroundings.

What’s going on here? When did emerging economies acquire the self-confidence that allowed their native foods—for centuries sold only in back alleys and street-side hawker stalls, and served on banana leaf and old newspaper—to assume the mantle of cosmopolitan sophistication? Is it just higher incomes per capita? Is it the lifting of hundreds of millions of their populations out of absolute poverty? Or did the self-confidence come first and it is that that drove the people living in these economies to engage with the rest of humanity through trade and exchange, to clear out corrupt and ineffectual governments, to go to schools and be educated, to organize markets and to engineer efficient production?

I like it that my students at the LSE (including the 70% non-UK ones of LSE’s 8300, from over 150 countries worldwide) have that kind of self-confidence. This year (together with the very personable and prolific Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law at the LSE) I got to give a welcome lecture to their parents the week before classes began. I talked to them about “Globalization and The Student,” [PDF transcript, podcast coming soon]; I enjoyed tremendously the entire event, the questions the parents asked, and the conversations I got to have with them afterwards at the drinks reception. From everything I’ve seen at the LSE in my time here, their kids—our charges for the next few years—will be as interesting and interested, as delightful and entertaining as those kind people I got to meet Thursday evening.

Global balance and equality

In August 2007 I was part of the opening keynote panel discussion at the Singapore Economic Review Conference (and got to have lunch with LSE alumni and friends in Singapore).

I wanted to show the large forces that drive global inequality and poverty, those changes that affect, in one fell swoop, the quality of life for many of the 6.3 billion people on earth.

I have two candidates for massive worldwide change: First, economic growth; second, China. The graphic illustrates both.



(a larger dynamic animation can be invoked if the inline version above isn't clear enough in your browser; or just click anywhere in the figure).

The vertical axis measures millions of people living on less than 1 US dollar a day (actually, the threshold is 1 International Dollar a day, but close enough). The horizontal axis is per capita income in the country or bloc of countries: Economic growth means movement rightwards horizontally. The size of a bubble measures the total population. EAP indicates East Asia and the Pacific Region; LAC, Latin America and the Caribbean; MENA, Middle East and North Africa; SAS, South Asia; and SSA, Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, China and India are given separately in the graphic.

The animation follows these continental groupings over time, from 1990 through 2004, and shows how as growth occurs, poverty falls.

In principle, if inequality within a continent or within China or India increased sufficiently with economic growth, then the corresponding bubble in the picture might well rise vertically. All that means then is that, in that case, even though average income increases with growth, inequality increases so overwhelmingly that the joint growth-inequality process grinds ever more people into ever greater bone-crunching poverty.

(To be clear, inequality does not have to increase with economic growth. But many people and quite a few economists think it might---hence the so-called tradeoff between equality and efficiency. The data do not speak very strongly on this, in either direction. But I think such a putative regularity is of little consequence for the point here.)

Almost uniformly, the graphic shows inequality is unable to rise enough to overcome the benefits of economic growth. As a matter of logic alone, of course, it might: an actual, large instance in the animation is China between 1996 and 1999: In that 3-year period the China bubble moved rightwards and upwards. So there's nothing in the arithmetic that rules out the possibility. But it is unusual. As time proceeds, almost uniformly, the bubbles move southeasterly, shifting rightwards and dropping towards the floor. This is a very good thing. Economic growth reduces poverty.

In the animation, right at the start of the sample Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) implodes leftwards, just as post-Communist transition began. But then after that pretty much only the rightwards movement is visible. Compared to China, that other 1-billion people economy India, up through 2004, still hadn't done very much. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) all this time basically did nothing but percolate upwards: It didn't grow and it saw vast numbers of its people fall ever further into grinding poverty.

In 1981 1.47 billion people on earth lived on less than 1 dollar a day. By 2004 that number had fallen to 0.97 billion, a reduction of half a billion. (If you don't like these numbers, you come up with better ones. In economic research it takes a model to beat a model, so simply complaining that a model isn't a good model or is unrealistic doesn't get you very far. So too whining that an estimate isn't a good estimate.) The animation shows that pretty much all of that worldwide poverty reduction is due to just ... China.

Since this animation, like all digital goods, is infinitely expansible, I also presented it at a British-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce lunch and as part of a lecture at the British Council in Malaysia, both also in August, as part of Malaysia's 50th anniversary celebration of its independence from Britain. (The animation is also on youtube and you can put a version on your cellphone if you like.)

The underlying data are from Chen and Ravallion (2007) "Absolute Poverty Measures for the Developing World" and from World Development Indicators (2006) online. Further analysis is in Quah (2007) "Life in Unequal Growing Economies". Related discussion appears in Quah (2003) "One Third of the World's Growth and Inequality".

I generated the animation by

latex 2007.08-SERC-lug-dq.tex
dvips -pp 5-10 -o - 2007.08-SERC-lug-dq.dvi | ps2pdf - - | convert -delay 80 - 1-2007.08-SERC-lug-dq.gif

i.e., using standard tools latex, dvips, ps2pdf, and convert.

"3 little syllables": LSE graduation, July 2007

Given how knowledge is supposed to be just world knowledge---not Korean, Japanese, British, or American knowledge---it is impressive how much gets written comparing to those in the West the sheer numbers employed in Chinese science and technology, or the levels of expertise in Indian engineering. How long will it be, it is implied, before Chinese knowledge or Indian knowledge overtake Western knowledge?

Thomas Friedman describes in The World is Flat how Craig Barret --- the current Chairman and former CEO of Intel Corporation --- shocks Americans by admitting Intel could well thrive as a company even if it never hired another American, although this of course is neither Intel's intent or desire. "We still do hire lots of Americans. But today we can hire the best talent around the world and be very successful," casting his eye over how a lot of Intel investment now takes place in Russia, China, India, Malaysia, and Israel.

Why hold back? Why not hire only the best?

The other story making the rounds is how in many Western firms now, annual prize ceremonies for top performance come with cheat-sheets to help the CEO pronounce the names of 9 out of 10 of the firm's most outstanding employees. Now and then, of course, "John Smith" from Peoria Illinois surprises.


So it was with some trepidation in early July that, as Head of the LSE Economics Department, I looked over the list of 300 or so graduating students whose names I would have to announce, before an audience of 1,000 in the Peacock Theatre at LSE's graduation ceremony. As I had previously blogged last December and October, that audience would include friends and family who had travelled vast distances to attend.

LSE has long been and continues to be far more international than any other university I know. Of its student population of 8,000, half come from more than 120 countries outside the European Union. Last year, for the first time ever, China and Hong Kong fielded over 950, the highest number of foreign students at the LSE. Malaysia and Singapore, even when added together manage only a tiny population at home. Yet, somehow they routinely send the LSE almost as many students as does the Chinese mainland now, and one-third more students than does all of Germany.

At the ceremony, I got up to the podium and, following protocol, tipped my hat to Howard Davies, the Director of the LSE, standing across the stage. He nodded, and looked pointedly back at me, for my Department's students were the bulk of those waiting to be called up on stage to shake his hand. I started down the list, and got smoothly around the first bend with "Igor Cesarec", "Christina Yuen Kiu Chan", "Wang Sheair Chua", "Yahan Li", "Sulwyn Lim", "Saravanan Nagappan", "Hieu Nguyen", "Sunehra Rahman", and "Muhammad Kashif Riaz".

I figured I was doing well. I only had 240 names that morning; some graduates had decided to go home or had had to start work, and couldn't attend.

I could see the finish line. I headed towards it with "Adrian Zhi Da Wong", "Sukjai Wongwaisiriwat", and "Zhi Jia Yap". I was on the final straightaway now with "Jiaqian Chen", "Ilja Boelaars", "Kun Lung Wu", "Vasileios Gkionakis", and "Nuarpear Warn Lekfuangfu".

Then I messed up.

"Linda Peng". Three syllables. From Malaysia.

These people I have named and others in the Peacock Theatre that morning are friends of mine. Of those who graduated BSc from the Economics Department, three years back I had given them and their classmates, all 850 of them, the very first lecture they ever attended at the LSE. Not by coincidence, that had also occurred in the Peacock Theatre; it was the first lecture on Introductory Economics. These people are members of an amazing and accomplished class. I wasn't pleased to see them leave that July morning. But I was proud I got to announce their names as they left.

World knowledge it is then.

"So, where again did you say teach now?"

Beginning of the month, 07 December, I was in Delhi, at LSE's Asia Forum. I'm lucky enough to have gotten to speak at all three of these now, beginning in Bangkok in 2004, then Hong Kong in 2005, and this year Delhi. And it is with some considerable pride when it came clear to me at this event that the LSE in India is no casual flirtation but instead a relationship that has bedded in over decades.

Since the Forum itself has already been written up elsewhere, I won't rehearse again announcements on how the Reserve Bank of India and the State Bank have helped endow the IG Patel Chair at LSE; how Nick Stern, who'd just authored the Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change, will leave the UK government to be the Chair's first incumbent, and so on.

Instead, I'll just put down what I saw. At the Forum both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Abdul Kalam attended and spoke. President Kalam is the only Head of State with whom I have had dinner who brought along to that dinner a Powerpoint presentation to accompany his speech: a detailed plan to alleviate rural poverty in India. Before becoming President, Kalam had contributed critically to India's space and missiles programs. He continues to support Open Source Software; and he is popular enough throughout India to have been nominated an MTV India Youth Icon.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke in the morning. I expected to hear good things about the relationship between LSE and India, and economics more generally, which he addressed sure enough; and about down-to-earth micro infrastructure problems in India, which, surprisingly, he did not. Instead, he talked the big macroeconomics of growth and distribution: the rise of India in the international marketplace; the changing balance of world economic power; the adjustment needed to expectations and well-being worldwide as global distributions of income and consumption shift, eastwards towards India and China.

Perhaps modern macroeconomics can stop being shy in how it saves itself only for bread and butter policy questions in the already developed economies of the world.


That morning I got to chat with Nandan Nilekani, who together with Tarun Das of the Conference of Indian Industry, Sheila Dikshit the Delhi Chief Minister, and Kishore Mahbubani the Dean of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, had agreed to be on a panel with me for the Forum. In case anyone missed Nilekani on p. 5 of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat (credited, no less, with planting the eponymous idea in the author's mind) Nandan really is as enthusiastic and nice and down-to-earth as is widely reported. He confirmed to me the amount of money spent on Indian publicity at the World Economic Forum last year (2006) in Davos. I told him how much I enjoyed seeing mega-celebrities and multi-billionaires lining up, scrambling, and fighting for the souvenirs his people handed out there. Fighting? Oh, yes, fighting me for those same souvenirs.

In Delhi I met many ex-students of mine, other alumni, and LSE friends. They were all so full of good cheer, I felt awkward inside when I thought about how little time I might have given them when I knew them at LSE. For the past seven years, though, I actually did at least lecture to almost every single undergraduate enrolled at the LSE and definitely to all the MSc Econ students. How do other academics deal with meeting alumni if they have never taught those alumni, but still have to represent their university in financial, intellectual, or policy negotiation with them?

The LSE Asia Forum was replete with goodwill, and rightly generated a lot of press. My own talk appeared in the Times of India 2006 December 13. (The version I prefer, one that points out infrastructure problems elsewhere, is slightly longer. But I still omitted discussion of how avoidable medical errors in the US kill 100,000 a year. Even if that were a gross over-estimate by 50%, say, that's still more deaths than from automobile accidents, breast cancer, and HIV/AIDS.)

So I'm cheering on all the billion-people economies. What used to be political correctness is now just plain, hard-nosed economic calculation.

It's just a metaphor!

I missed a September posting on this blog. On the other hand, being Head of Department lets me indulge in talking to large groups in other ways. For instance, I got to address the entering class of BSc Econ students at the LSE. 28 September 2006. So maybe that talk will have to do instead.


Speaking to these cosmopolitan students got me thinking about textbooks that, optimistically, label themselves International Edition, yet still use examples like consuming lobster at a New England clambake. These students of ours have munched fried silkworm while walking down Wangfujing in Beijing. They've come in from homes on windswept, treeless plains outside Ulanbataar; or they regularly shop Singapore's Orchard Road and Shanghai's Nanjing Road. They've bitten into black pudding, for breakfast both in an English cafe and with noodles in soup in a Far East Asian open-air foodcourt. Why does anyone think a New England clambake would hold any resonance for them? But then again why would it hold any resonance even for someone biting into corndog at a Minnesota state fair?

Maybe that was OK when the whole world watched CNN and MTV together. But no one does anymore. They're too busy looking at 180-second segments of amateur content on YouTube or MySpace, generated by relatively random people from over 130 countries around the world.

Oh, and yes, to the parents of these LSE kids: Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll is just a metaphor. Like when someone has 243 friends on LSE's Facebook? They are really working hard at school, and not hanging out with 243 people the entire time. Chill.