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The Express gets it right in its editorial today on trade policy.
When the state trumpets about “targets” for exports, it is an embarrassing reflection of a sixties mindset. Modern economies no longer set “targets” for exports. Exports are the outcome of a market economy, and not something that a government controls.
…
We no longer need to […]

While googling for VKRV Rao, I came across this webpage of the Delhi School of Economics. Manmohan Singh became the 14th Prime Minister of India nearly a year back (May 22, 2004) but the Delhi School, where he taught international trade between 1969-71, still thinks he’s a former Finance Minister!
Maybe someone should suggest that there […]

Johan Norberg, the defender of global capitalism had an interesting experience while giving a talk in Jordan.
Yesterday at an overcrowded lecture at the university in Amman, I got a lot of interested responses and questions from the students, until the moderator, a teatcher and supervisor, intervened and said that my book was offensive, and […]

Free markets are sustainable in the face of shrinking fossil fuel resources.

I don’t concern myself much with the debate on social security, which is raging in the US (although I did engage Patrix once on the issue). Loads of libertarian sites and blogs have written on it in far greater depth than I would be able to manage. For a flavour, go to Cato’s Project on […]

A simple explanation best demolishes common myths. Don Boudreaux does it time and again. Here he takes on the myth of social security being a safety net.
A safety net is something that one never wants to use; everyone wishes to avoid contact with it. It’s there in the event of an accident, an unplanned mishap.
Whether […]

Bryan Caplan on EconLog, picks up an old interview from Capitalism Magazine on Legalizing Insider Trading. I agree, but it’s déjà vu (twice in once day!)
Seven odd years back, Ajay Shah convinced me against a ban on insider trading. Here’s what Ajay (then a professor at IGIDR) wrote in the Business Standard (25 March […]

The Harvard Business School newsletter Working Knowledge has an article on Dr. Devi Shetty’s Narayana Hrudalaya.

It’s kind of a Robin Hood hospital. When you walk in with a heart ailment, if you can pay, you pay; if you can’t pay, you get treated for free. It doesn’t matter what your heart ailment is. Its operating […]

Don Boudreaux responds to my post yesterday by pointing out that the high prices of goods following the tsunami is not a second disaster, but simply part of the original disaster. He also recalls a conversation with a student who disagreed with him and shows how these price increases are not incompatible with charity […]

Swaminathan Aiyar’s excellent

Many friends look upon economic freedom as some luxury. “India needs social infrastructure more. Luxuries later”. Unfortunately, they do not know what economic freedom really means. David Boaz reminds us
We must not forget the real importance of economic freedom. Besides the value of freedom itself, economic freedom leads to economic growth. And growth is not […]

Radley Balko contrasts a “caring” capitalist with a “greedy” capitalist and comes up with a conclusion that may shock you. He’s titled his piece Altruism? Bah, Humbug, so that might give you an idea. So would this excerpt.
A corporation’s only duty is to its shareholders. Corporations must abide by the law, of course. But a […]

Steven Landsburg writes in praise of Ebenezer Scrooge and miserliness.
In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser—the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and […]

Interesting interview of Jagdish Bhagwati on “Walk the Talk.” Shekhar Gupta gets him to talk about his Cambridge days with Manmohan Singh and Amartya Sen, and about his defence of globalisation. Bhagwati is gentle on his opponents but his quietly damning putdowns are superb.
On Arundhati Roy: Arundhati Roy is unfortunately…unfortunate because she’s our […]

Parth at Spontaneous Order has a pithy post on people who moan about “commercialisation” of festivals.
Commerce was always part of festivals–did all Indians, say 50/100 years ago, make their own fire crakers or Ganesh idols? No, they bought them. So what we see today is not a new phenomenon of commercialisation but simply the old […]

Guest post by Arun “Quizman” Simha
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution (and George Mason University) argues that the music industry often sues its own customers to create commercial norms in which consumers are not trained to think of music as a free commodity. The lawsuits, are meant to serve as deterring signals to young consumers who […]

While doing some reading for a seminar that I will be attending later this week, I came across two excellent articles by Leon Louw. I remembered hearing an earlier version of these articles when Leon was in Delhi in February 2002.
The Miracle of Poverty
Poverty is miraculous, perhaps the most extraordinary accomplishment of […]

I go to visit a friend in a nearby town. I buy some stuff from him. I meet some of his friends and buy some stuff from them also. Happy with my trip and my purchases, I return home.
As I am about to enter my house, a highwayman stops me and asks me for […]

Interesting pictorial on pollution and development. Scroll down to see the India - China comparison.

There are two ways we can produce cars. We can build them (in Gurgaon / Pune / Tamil Nadu, etc) or we can grow them. Everyone knows how we build cars. To grow cars, we must first grow the raw material from which they are made–wheat (or rice or onions, etc). We put the […]