The American Heritage dictionary defines “hoopla” as 1. Boisterous, jovial commotion or excitement. 2. Extravagant publicity: The new sedan was introduced to the public with much hoopla. 3. Talk intended to mislead or confuse. Reading about the PanIIT 2006 brought that word to mind. There will be much posturing and congratulatory mutual back-slapping in Mumbai [...]
Back in the late 1990s, economists were trying to figure out what it was that led to the secular acceleration of economic growth in the United States: the longest and largest peace-time economic expansion in the 20th century (see footnotes). How was it that a country could grow so much and for so long without causing inflation and [...]
This is a true story. The faculty member involved emailed me a few days ago. Scene: an IIT professor interviewing a potential candidate for PhD in a technical subject. “Suppose you have two integers, each between 0 and 5. You add them up. What is the range of their sum?” “It can vary.” “Sure, it [...]
I received an email from a gentleman named Annamalai Veerappan recently which raised some interesting questions that I am not qualified to answer. I’m posting his entire email here, in the hope that IEB readers will pitch in. I’ve been following the US housing bubble for the past 2 years and it’s been amazing. How [...]
It should come as no surprise that the US is selling arms to Pakistan. “2,769 Radio Frequency TOW 2A missiles, 415 RF bunker buster missiles, fly-to-buy missiles in both these categories, 121 TOW launchers for wire-guided and wireless missiles, E-2C HAWKEYE 2000 Airborne Early Warning Systems, simulators and support equipment. Their total worth could be [...]
Ever since I first read about the Singur controversy, a bee has been buzzing in my bonnet. It finally bit. Six months ago, I had written a post about how the TATA Motors decision to set up a plant in West Bengal was disastrous. However I wrote that post merely from the labour trouble perspective. [...]
Contemplating a ban on iron-ore exports is absurd The bulk of India’s iron-ore exports last year went to China. This is being bandied as something sinister by those who dislike China because of geopolitical reasons and by those who dislike selling ‘our’ ore to ‘them’ instead of letting ‘our’ manufacturers have it. 1. So why [...]
The San Jose Mercury News has a recent report about how mobile phones are going to be for India what the PC was for the US. Naturally, they quote the most passionate evangelist for the mobile web, my colleague and MD of Netcore, Mr Rajesh Jain. The matter that the article focuses on is of [...]
This is just a short piece to follow-up on Gaurav’s very to the point post last week on this topic (and the interesting debate in comments). Now Prashant sent round this link to a WSJ article by Salil Tripathi which I think bears reading and thinking about. We are presently having something of an ongoing [...]
Remember John Kerry’s Benedict Arnold speech, Lou Dobbs and his infamous rant on outsourcing and most of all, Scott Kirwin? Well, Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek informs us of Scott’s current whereabouts: Almost three years ago, Scott Kirwin was Wired’s pissed off programmer (“The New Face of the Silicon Age,” issue 12.02). Tossed from his [...]
Please welcome two more contributors to IEB — Nanubhai Desai, who’s already got a marvelous post on the US – India nuclear deal, and Gautam Bastian, who returns to the blogosphere after a hiatus. We recruited him right away.
If you go to the NASA website, you can see beautiful satellite pictures of the earth at night. If you look carefully where the lights are, it says a lot about where the world economy is today. Europe is probably the most uniformly luminous; but not as bright as the eastern part of the US [...]
Reader and IEB friend, Joydeep Mukherji sent us this article from the Business Standard, noting that There is so much garbage about alleged “jobless growth” in India that this is a nice antidote. It shows how the booming textile sector in Punjab is running out of workers. The firms are raising wages, improving conditions, seeking [...]
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