Hi all,
Sorry for the unscheduled absence last week—my son was ill, and sent a wave of sickness sweeping through our household. And in a sign of what may be to come as he spends more time outside the home and with other children at childcare, we had about a one-day respite before he fell ill again, and once again a gathering storm of bacteria and viruses is battering the breakwater of my immune system. But its not only been grim news this week: in a glorious surprise, Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. This was totally unexpected: he didn’t even appear on a list of authors given betting odds on LitHub recently, and fantastic news, of which more in link 7. Till then, you have to get through the economics.
- Gurnah’s win goes some way to repairing the reputation of an award sullied (in my view) by Bob Dylan’s win in 2016. The Economics Nobel (I know, I know, not really a Nobel; stand down, you repetitive clowns) still has a long way to go to repair its overwhelming male dominance, despite Esther Duflo being one of three winners two years ago. If Claudia Goldin, perennially one of the favourites, finally wins this year it will go a little further towards balance. A Goldin win would reward her years of brilliant research into gender inequality, much of which pops up in this interview with Tyler Cowen. He also keeps asking good—perhaps unanswerable—questions. Highly recommended.
- Tim Harford on scientific fraud. There is nothing new to say here—he covers Dan Ariely, and the even more obviously fraudulent Ivermectin study that was making the rounds (the one which was based on 22 observations, copy and pasted down an excel sheet)—though he says it very well. He suggests that the response is posting raw data with studies. That makes some sense, but that can only be part of it: most scientists don’t have loads of time on their hands to dig into the data on someone else’s study. The Ariely issue was discovered a couple of years after the data were made available, for example.
- Given [gesticulates wildly at the chaos around him] all this, you would be forgiven for missing the near-total collapse of the Lebanese economy over the last couple of years, but it has been dramatic. Planet Money have a show giving a small flavour of what’s going on, and how rapidly things are deteriorating (transcript). There seems to be no obvious way out, which is grim.
- Of course, when it comes to summarising complex ideas pithily, even NPR must kneel before David Evans, who has summarised 32 papers and presentations from the recent RISE conference in just one sentence each. I don’t know how he manages this, but I’m glad he does.
- Dave’s summaries are always a heartening reminder of how much cool research is being done around the world; but that isn’t to say economics doesn’t still have some deep problems. Diane Coyle, in the FT, sets out two main failings in modern economics: the absence of ethics at the heart of economic science (that is, the pursuit of the fiction that economics is a purely positive science and leaves ethical considerations to others), and its slowness to catch up with changes in what economies now look like. I couldn’t agree more with the first criticism she makes, but am less convinced by the second. We know there is a lot that nationally collected economic data doesn’t measure, or measure well, but there is also a great deal of work that nevertheless studies these things.
- In a similar, but much more detailed vein, is this brilliant interview with Branko Milanovic. Branko is on good form, talking about the role economics—both academic and policy—plays in society, but the questions are fantastic too. Every single one gives him the opportunity to go deep on something that matters. I hadn’t come across the Age of Economics before, but will be reading many more of their interviews now.
- Back to the Nobel: I first read Gurnah while living in Zanzibar, where he was born (and coincidentally where one of my friends shared an office with his brother) and he remains one of my favourite writers. You can easily love him solely for the beautiful writing and literary callbacks (By the Sea, my favourite of his novels, features a character who borrows Bartleby the Scrivener’s mantra, “I would prefer not to”, as a shield against a harsh and unwelcoming world), but what really appeals to me is how he centres and gives voice to refugees and the displaced, drawing on his own experiences. Maaza Mengiste’s guide to his work focuses on this, too. This win makes him the fifth African to win the Nobel for literature, and I hope it induces many people to read him, and through him, about the refugee experience.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
R
