Brio in Blog Posts

First Words

Even among blog posts expressing an intriguing, insightful idea, some are meandering messes, while others pack a powerful punch. What is the difference? The answer matters. I have the students in my “Monetary and Financial Theory” class write 3 posts a week on an internal class blog, and host many of the best of those as guest posts on supplysideliberal.com. Of course I am looking for a good idea at the heart of the post, as I explained in “On Having a Thesis.”  But another quality is also crucial: what I will call brio.

Middle Words

What is “brio”? The dictionary definition “vigor or vivacity of style or performance” is a good start. But all the other words I went through looking for just the right one are also helpful: 

  • drive

  • forward motion

  • momentum

  • energy

  • focus

  • relentlessness

Above all, brio is knowing exactly where one is going, then going there by the shortest possible path

Someone who sets a good example of writing with brio is Noah Smith. I admire his blog writing style, and have benefitted from seeing his writing in action in pieces the two of us have coauthored (1, 2, 3, 4). I studied brio by studying the structure of Noah’s Bloomberg View columns and posts on his blog Noahpinion.  Here is what I learned. 

First, a blog post should have one point. If two points can be treated separately, they should be made into two blog posts. There may be subpoints, but for a post to have brio, those subpoints have to feel like one point driven home in various ways. 

The “five-paragraph essay” taught to students facing the AP English exam is not a good structure for a blog post. The trouble with the five-paragraph essay is that in between the introduction and the conclusion the three middle paragraphs have three different points often only distantly related to one another, though tied together somehow. If the same argument were made on a blog, it might be better made as three separate posts.

As is clear from Noah’s columns and posts, the rule of having a single point does not mean that the middle section of a blog post is necessarily short. It often takes a lot of explaining even to make one’s point clear, let alone back it up with half-decent arguments. In my own blog writing as well, many is the time I told myself “I’ll just write a quick blog post to make this point” only to see the post grow to a hefty size by the time I could adequately explain what I wanted to say. That is particularly true when writing in a technical field such as economics, where readers need to be given key background information in order to make sense of the main point. 

In my analysis of Noah’s Bloomberg View columns, I was surprised by how often his thesis statement was not stated until the end of the middle section of his column–simply because many readers couldn’t have understood the thesis statement and why it might make sense until after a good deal of explanation. Thus, in many cases, the thesis statement came as a pulling-together of many ideas that Noah had systematically laid out in order to lead to that point. But in every case, once the point was made, it felt as if the structure of the whole column clicked into place.

Here is what I think of as the structure of a blog post with brio. There are three parts, which I will discuss in turn: 

  1. the hook

  2. the point

  3. the grand finale.

1. The Hook: The hook or introduction needs to answer the question readers implicitly come to a post with: “Why should I care about this?” or “What makes you think I would be at all interested in this.” The objective of a post’s title should be to get people to read the first few sentences–that is, to read the hook–while accurately reflecting the post’s contents. The objective of the hook is to get someone to read the rest of the post. Now that I have begun cross-posting many of my posts to Medium, it is humbling to see in Medium’s penetrating statistics how many people start reading, but do not finish. So getting someone to read on is a real issue.

2. The Point: The middle chunk of the post can be short or somewhat longer, but it has one primary objective: getting across the main point of the post. That is, it needs to answer the question “What is the point?” Beyond explaining the point, the second objective is to back it up–to answer the question “Why should I believe it?”

3. The Grand Finale: The last few sentences of a blog post should give the reader words worth remembering. They might be inspirational words, or thought-provoking words, or words that encapsulate the point one more time, but this time in a nutshell. But they should be memorable. The grand finale answers the question “What is the broader meaning of the point?” (Even the distillation of the point into a nutshell answers this question, since shorter statements inevitably become a bit more general and so connect with many other ideas.)

Last Words

Although it can be tough on the ego, one of the easiest ways to add brio to a post is to subtract words from it. In the first pass, anything it takes to get the ideas down on the page is great. But then it pays to go through the draft a second time to see if there is any way to say things equally well or better in fewer words or simpler words. And take a good hard look at passages that lead off in an extraneous direction; they may need to chopped off and thrown into the pile of ideas for future posts. 

“Less is more” can mean many things; among them is “Other things equal, using fewer words is better.”

Writing well is a source of power. It can be used for good or ill. For those who are good at heart and go to the strenuous effort needed to understand how the world works, writing well is a tool that can help to make the world a better place.

John Stuart Mill: The Central Government Should Be Slow to Overrule, but Quick to Denounce Bad Actions of Local Governments

In the final paragraph of On Liberty (paragraph 23 of “Chapter V: Applications”) that I quote at the end of this post, John Stuart Mill contributes a twist on the debate about what is called “Federalism” in the US. He argues that while the central government should be slow to overrule regional and local governments, it should be quick to denounce actions that it thinks are bad. This is an idea I had not heard before. By and large, the debate I have heard about Federalism moves between the two alternatives of strengthening central government power or respecting regional and local government actions. The middle course of the central government strenuously criticizing what it sees as bad actions of regional and local governments is not something I have heard much discussion of.

Moreover, what criticism of state and local actions I have heard from the national government has been mostly either in the area of social policy such as gay rights or abortion, or has been a general criticism of a state or locality having policies too much in line with the opposing political party.

I can think of two areas where greater central government criticism of the actions of regional and local governments is called for: criticism of overly tight limits on construction and criticism of regulations that disadvantage the poor in the workplace. Let me address each of these in turn.

Criticizing Limits on Construction

As lead-in, it is worth mentioning that in my travels to central banks around the world, many are very worried about financial stability; but a little inquiry reveals that their biggest worry about financial stability boils down to worrying about soaring house prices in the capital city and other large cities. As Matt Rognlie points out, soaring house prices also contribute a lot to inequality. There is an easy solution to soaring house prices: making construction easier. And with all all of the bureaucracy attending new construction in most big cities in rich countries around the world, it is not hard to think of bureaucratic reforms that could make construction much, much easier. 

The problem boils down to a political economy problem so easy to understand and so important for social welfare that it deserves to be taught in every Economics 101 class: local governments, if they try to maximize the welfare of local residents, try to tilt rents, house prices, and other building prices too high because they don’t take into account the benefit to those not now living in the city of having low house prices and rents in the city. Pecuniary externalities only cancel out of calculations of total surplus if the surplus of everyone involved in a market is included. 

Given issues of congestion, wind tunneling, shadows cast by tall buildings, etc., the exact optimal amount of construction in a city for a given social welfare function is a complex calculation. But what can be said with perfect confidence is that if a local government makes the complex calculations well and maximizes a social welfare function for local residents, it will definitely push prices too high by permitting too little construction relative to a criterion that appends to the same social welfare function for local residents some accounting of the welfare of those who do not now live in the city, but might want to in the future, who would benefit from low prices and rents in the city.  

In other words, although local governments are likely to be quite good at deciding exactly where within a city and according to what building codes building should be allowed within a city for any give total amount of construction, local governments can’t be trusted to make the right decisions about the total amount of construction. The central government should therefore see it as part of its job to push for more construction at least by roundly criticizing local governments who don’t allow enough construction. At a minimum, the national government should make sure that the fundamental selfishness of most local governments in not allowing more construction should be exposed clearly to view. 

I don’t see a principled reason why national government actions beyond criticism couldn’t be justified, but I think it makes sense to try criticism first. 

Criticizing Work Restrictions That Keep the Poor Out of Jobs

I have written quite a bit about work restrictions that make it harder for the poor to get jobs. Take a look, for example at these:

Because those one rung up on the economic ladder are much more likely to vote than the very poor, there are many, many policies that favor those one rung up on the economic ladder at the expense of the very poor. And it can sometimes be easier to generate concern for the long-run interests of the very poor at the national level than at the local level, since localities can always hope to simply encourage the very poor to go find another locality to hang out in. 

An Exhortation

In both of the examples I have given: criticizing construction limitations and criticism impediments to the very poor getting jobs, it is not necessary to depend on the national government to do all of the criticizing. Each of us can raise our voices and contribute to the criticism. It is my hope that through our efforts the ugly self-interest in overly tight limitations on construction and in trying to drive out of existence jobs that are accessible to the very poorwill be exposed in each case where it arises. For extra inspiration, take a look at my post “Keep the Riffraff Out!” and my sermon “The Message of Jesus for Non-Supernaturalists.” 

John Stuart Mill’s Take

With those examples in mind, consider the way John Stuart Mill puts his argument:

To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being; to secure as much of the advantages of centralized power and intelligence, as can be had without turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general activity—is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralization of information, and diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch of the general government. The organ of this superintendence would concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and experience derived from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the localities, from everything analogous which is done in foreign countries, and from the general principles of political science. This central organ should have a right to know all that is done, and its special duty should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one place available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much authority; but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I conceive, be limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for their guidance. In all things not provided for by general rules, those officers should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to their constituents. For the violation of rules, they should be responsible to law, and the rules themselves should be laid down by the legislature; the central administrative authority only watching over their execution, and if they were not properly carried into effect, appealing, according to the nature of the case, to the tribunals to enforce the law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the functionaries who had not executed it according to its spirit. Such, in its general conception, is the central superintendence which the Poor Law Board is intended to exercise over the administrators of the Poor Rate throughout the country. Whatever powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits of maladministration in matters deeply affecting not the localities merely, but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical condition of the whole labouring community. The powers of administrative coercion and subordinate legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board (but which, owing to the state of opinion on the subject, are very scantily exercised by them), though perfectly justifiable in a case of first-rate national interest, would be wholly out of place in the superintendence of interests purely local. But a central organ of information and instruction for all the localities, would be equally valuable in all departments of administration. A government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of informing, advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it makes them work in fetters, or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

Note: This post is the latest in a series on John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” that begins on my Tumblr blog “Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal.” Links to others can be found here:

Chapter II John Stuart Mill’s Brief for Freedom of Speech

Chapter III: John Stuart Mill’s Brief for Individuality

Chapter IV: John Stuart Mill’s Brief for the Limits of the Authority of Society over the Individual

More recents John Stuart Mill posts can be found in my

"QE May or May Not Work for Japan; Deep Negative Interest Rates Are the Surefire Way for Japan to Escape Secular Stagnation" in Japanese: QEは日本で効くかもしれないしそうではないかもしれない；大幅な負の利子率が日本が長期的停滞を抜け出す間違いのない方法 →

The link above is to the post in Japanese, translated by Makoto Shimizu. You can find the English version here.

Noah Smith: Hey, Republicans! Push Deregulation, Not Tax Cuts →

Note: On Facebook, Carmi Turchick offered these interesting references:

Graef, P., & Mehlkop, G. (2002). The impact of economic freedom on corruption: different patterns for rich and poor countries. European Journal of Political Economy, 19, 605-620

Kotera, G., Okada, K., & Samreth, S. (2012). Government size, democracy, and corruption: An empirical investigation. Economic Modelling, 29(6), 2340-2348.

A number of papers show the expected negative effects of increased corruption on growth and these papers show that lower levels of regulation in well developed economies corresponds with higher levels of corruption. This is not the same in developing economies, there more regulation corresponds with more corruption, the regulations are excuses for bribery. 

Luke Kawa: How Central Banks Gained More Control Over the World's Major Currencies

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Link to the article on Bloomberg Business

It was a very pleasant surprise when I received an email from Luke Kawa just a day after I put out “Why a Weaker Effect of Exchange Rates on Net Exports Doesn’t Weaken the Power of Monetary Policy” on Medium (the day before I posted it here) asking for clarification since he wanted to quote it in a Bloomberg Business article. He understood the point perfectly in his excellent article “How Central Banks Gained More Control Over the World’s Major Currencies.” You should read the whole thing, but here is a key graph, a key passage, and Luke’s quotation from my post: 

The foreign exchange team determined that an expected change in interest rate differentials between two countries from the Group of 10 nations is now accompanied by a much bigger move in the exchange rate:

… The rising import content in exports, however, does not imply that the efficacy of monetary policy has deteriorated.  In fact, it’s compatible with the increased responsiveness of currencies to expected interest rate differentials described by HSBC.

“If net exports are relatively insensitive to the exchange rate, the exchange rate will simply move more,” wrote Miles Kimball, professor of economics at the University of Michigan. “Large fluctuations in the exchange rate are exactly what one should expect if net exports are relatively insensitive to movements in the exchange rate.”

Why a Weaker Effect of Exchange Rates on Net Exports Doesn’t Weaken the Power of Monetary Policy

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Link to this post on Medium

On New Year’s Day, 2016, I tweeted what you see above.

Let me explain at greater length. Paul Hannon is right in his Wall Street Journal article “Why Weak Currencies Have a Smaller Effect on Exports” in writing:

When a country loosens its monetary policy, interest rates fall and investors tend to pull their money out in search of higher yields elsewhere, pushing down the currency’s value.

And the article goes on to make a very interesting point about how global supply chains might be blunting the effect of a given change in the exchange rate on net exports:

Measuring the impact of global supply chains on trade flows is the task of a project undertaken by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Trade Organization. …
Economists at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have used those measures to assess whether currency movements have the same impact they once did on exports and imports. They found that the effect has in fact reduced over time, by as much as 30% in some countries.

But Paul Hannon’s overall subtext that this weakens the power of monetary policy is wrong. Start with the basic accounting identity of international finance that Paul alludes to and that I discuss in detail in my post “International Finance: A Primer”: the provision of domestic currency to those outside one’s currency zone through net capital outflows NCO (and through other channels as remittances of foreigners sending money to their families back home) must lead to an increase in net exports NX of equal magnitude. (Also see my column “How Increasing Retirement Saving Could Give America More Balanced Trade.”) The only wiggle room in this statement is that for whatever period of time someone abroad are willing to temporarily hold a growing pile of our domestic currency provided byintentional purchases of foreign assets that counts as an unintentional capital flow in the reverse direction. As soon as they want to unload our currency, our currency will make its way back home one way or another. (If people abroad decided to hold a pile of our currency more permanently, that rightly counts as an intentional capital flow in the reverse direction, canceling out all or part of the initial capital flow.)

Of course, the way the price system guarantees the return home of domestic currency that is unwanted abroad is through exchange rate movements. But the logic here means that exchange rates move as much as it takes to bring about the return of domestic currency that is unwanted abroad. So an increase in intentional capital outflow of $1 creates a $1 increase in net exports over whatever horizon it takes for domestic currency that is unwanted abroad to make its way back home. The relevant horizon is not instantaneous, but foreigners are unlikely to be willing to hold piles of unwanted domestic currency for very long. (Of course, governments sometimes choose to override this part of the prices system by imposing fixed exchange rates. Fixed exchange rates work by having the government equal and opposite capital flows to neutralize the effect of changes in intentional private capital flows on exchange rates.)

When the central bank cuts interest rates, the initial step in affecting international finance is in generating net capital flows of a certain size as domestic investors search for higher returns abroad, and potential foreign investors think better of sending their funds to a low-interest-rate country. These capital flows then have a 1-for-1 effect on net exports after the recycling of currency described above, regardless of the elasticity of net exports with respect to the exchange rate.

If net exports are relatively insensitive to the exchange rate, the exchange rate will simply move more. Indeed, many casual observers are struck by the large fluctuations often seen in the exchange rate. Large fluctuations in the exchange rate are exactly what one should expect if net exports are relatively insensitive to movements in the exchange rate, as I wrote about in“The J Curve.”

What would affect the potency of monetary policy is if the effect of a given movement in interest rates on international capital flows went down. But I don’t know of anyone claiming that is the case. (What I do hear a lot of is the speculation that cutting interest rates into the negative region would be especially salient to investors and so might have a particularly large effect on international capital flows — which would then increase the potency of monetary policy.)

One particular area where the discussion above matters is in assessing Japanese monetary policy. How much stimulus the Bank of Japan has achieved through the international finance channel is much better measured by the size of the international capital flows generated than by the size of the exchange rate movements that result. Because overall Japanese investors have a particularly strong home-bias, the effect of monetary policy on international capital flows may be weaker than in most other countries. But it is factors such as home-bias that matter for the contribution of international finance to the potency of monetary policy, not the elasticity of net exports with respect to the exchange rate. (On Japanese monetary policy, also see “Is the Bank of Japan Succeeding in Its Goal of Raising Inflation?”, “Japan Should Be Trying Out a Next Generation Monetary Policy” and “QE May or May Not Work for Japan; Deep Negative Interest Rates Are the Surefire Way for Japan to Escape Secular Stagnation.”)

To repeat: Weak effects of a given size of exchange rate movement on net exports does not blunt the effects of monetary policy because exchange rates do whatever it takes to make net exports equal to net international capital flows.

Breaking Through the Zero Lower Bound and Electronic Money: The AEA Meeting Presentation

I wanted to invite all of you who are in San Francisco for the American Economics Association meetings to my presentation tomorrow (Monday) on how to eliminate the zero lower bound. You can see the details above.

I would love to meet and get a chance to talk in person to anyone who is a regular reader of this blog right after this session.

I trimmed down my Powerpoint file to this given the time constraints, and tried to get to the key idea quicker, even before getting to the “18 misconceptions.” Then it will be OK if I don’t manage to address all 18 misconceptions, especially since people are likely to ask questions that highlight some of the others.

If you want more background before coming, take a look at

How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide.

Update: It was a great session. Ken Rogoff could not make it due to his wife’s illness; I highly recommend the other paper presented by the Bank of England’s John Barrdear and Michael Kumhof: “The Macroeconomics of Central Bank-Issued Digitial Currency.”Andrew Rose was my discussant. He was very positive but less optimistic than I am about how soon the zero lower bound will be effectively eliminated. I was tickled that–like Ken Rogoff at the Chief Economist’s Conference at the Bank of England last May–Andrew described me as “evangelical” about negative interest rate policy.

Christianity as Atheism Toward All Gods But One

Link to Wikipedia’s article “Bonar’s Oak.” Above is a depiction of Boniface destroying Thor’s oak from The Little Lives of the Saints (1904), illustrated by Charles Robinson.

I have read that officials in the Roman Empire often described Christianity as a form or atheism, since Christians disbelieved in all gods but one (or all gods but three, as some observers of Christianity counted). In light of that description of Christianity, I found this story from the Middle Ages intriguing:

… encouraged by Pope Gregory II, Boniface traveled throughout the pagan lands of Germany on a new mission. In 723 Gregory II consecrated him a bishop so he could travel freely, ordaining priests and other bishops to establish new dioceses. 

Boniface was soon to be famed for a courageous act he performed at Geismar in Hesse (in western Germany). The local community worshiped a great oak tree, believing it to be the sanctuary of the god Thor. They thought that showing disrespect to the three would cause an angry Thor to punish them, but when Boniface felled the great tree, nothing happened. Those who witnessed this were convinced that Boniface could only be right in preaching that the Christian God was stronger than their own. According to the story, Boniface built a chapel with the wood from the tree …

– Michael Collins and Matthew A Price, The Story of Christianity: A Celebration of 2,000 Years of Faith, p. 86.

“… there is always pressure to block criticism: to shut off alternatives, shelter the familiar, stifle the imagination. Criticism is, after all, no fun for its targets. No one wants to be a failure, even a relative one. So reactionaries who fear disruption, technocrats who want to pick winners, and self-interested parties who want to shut out rivals can all be counted on to try to limit criticism and competition. The ability to resist this collusion against new ideas is perhaps the single most distinguishing feature of dynamic systems.”

– Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies

Expansionist India

I received a comment on my post “Will Narendra Modi’s Economic Reforms Put India on the Road to Being a Superpower?” that I thought was important enough that I should make it into a guest post. It had a lot of information that I had been unaware of. The author chose to remain anonymous. Here is what shehe wrote:

I am surfing the web and chanced upon this site, nice blog. Since you are opened to revision in response to cogent arguments, I am going to take a stab here. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of India. Yes I know, India is a democracy and all that. But this is a rather superficial understanding of the country. You might not have heard of India’s territorial disputes in the news, but this doesn’t mean India does not have them. In fact India (with the possible exception of Bangladesh, since I read that India and Bangladesh have reached an agreement to settle their borders this January) has not settled its borders with any of its neighbors. And worst, India has the dubious distinction of annexing every single of its neighbors land since it was created by the British in 1947. I know this may come as a shock to you, but here are the links you may want to check out:

1947 Annexation of Kashmir

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/06/indias-shame/

http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/kashmirs-young-rebels/

1949 Annexation of Manipur

http://www.tehelka.com/manipurs-merger-with-india-was-a-forced-annexation/

1949 Annexation of Tripura

http://www.crescent-online.net/2009/09/the-myths-of-one-nation-and-one-hinduism-in-india-zawahir-siddique-2316-articles.html

1951 Annexation of South Tibet:

http://kanglaonline.com/2011/06/khathing-the-taking-of-tawang/

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article2582.html

1961 Annexation of Goa:

http://goa-invasion-1961.blogspot.in/2013/09/india-pirated-goa-china-is-regaining_16.html

1962 Annexation of Kalapani, Nepal:

http://www.eurasiareview.com/07032012-indian-hegemony-in-nepal-oped/

1962 Aggression against China:

http://gregoryclark.net/redif.html

http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/news-events/podcasts/renewed-tension-indiachina-border-whos-blame

1971 Annexation of Turtuk, Pakistan:

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/suddenly-indian

1972 Annexation of Tin Bigha, Bangladesh

http://www.dhakatribune.com/op-ed/2014/feb/20/killing-fields

1975 Annexation of Sikkim (the whole country):

http://nepalitimes.com/issue/35/Nation/9621#.UohjPHQo6LA

http://www.amazon.com/Smash-Grab-Annexation-Sunanda-Datta-Ray/dp/9383260386

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/annexation-of-sikkim-by-india-was-not-legal-wangchuk-namgyal/1/391498.html

1983 (Aborted) Attempted invasion of Mauritius

http://thediplomat.com/2013/03/when-india-almost-invaded-mauritius/

1990 (Failed) Attempted annexation of Bhutan:

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/world/india-based-groups-seek-to-disrupt-bhutan.html

2006 Annexation of Duars, Bhutan:

http://wangchasangey.blogspot.in/2015/11/different-kind-of-anxieties-on.html#comment-form

2013 Annexation of Moreh, Myanmar

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nehginpao-kipgen/easing-indiamyanmar-borde_b_4633040.html

If you talk to India’s neighbors, the words ‘bullying’, 'hegemonic’, 'meddling’, 'intrusive’…are probably some of the adjective its neighbors will use to describe India. A recent example is India rejection of Bhutan’s plan to build a highway in the southern part of Bhutan. An earlier example is India’s creation of the Tamil Tigers which plunged Sri Lanka into many years of civil war. You might not have aware of it, but India has a rather testy relations with almost all of its neighbors.

As to why India is such a misunderstood country, I pondered it for a long time and here are the reason I think may have something to do with it.

1) India was created under British auspices and hence British India relations have a sort of mentor protégé element to it. As such Britain is naturally protective of India and hence tacitly approved or at least tolerate India’s aggression. Britain, as one the key member of the West, set the tone of how India should be treated.

2) In the early years after India’s creation in 1947, Britain saw India as a kind of proxy that represents Britain’s interest in South Asia. As such India’s aggression was not viewed to be detrimental to the world’s order. In fact not many people know, after 1947 a lot of the British Raj officials stayed and served in the new government especially in the foreign policy department. Hence the expansionary instinct (in order words land grabbing) of the British Raj continues in the new country.

3) The subcontinent was colonized for two hundred years, when it gained independence, there were a lot of goodwill towards India all over the world, not less from Britain itself. The situation is not dissimilar to South Africa. Nehru was basically the Nelson Mandela of his time. India skillfully exploits this sentiment and assume a role of moral superiority in dealing with international affairs. Nehru is famous for his self-righteousness internationally. This makes it hard to criticize India.

4) India is a democracy. The notion that democracies are intrinsically peaceful is seldom challenged. In fact the belief is so strong that whatever India says are usually accepted as fact with no question asked. Take Sikkim as an example, fifteen years before Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait, India annexed Sikkim. But how do India explain its act? According to India’s explanation, 97% of Sikkimese voted to join India, so India just spread its democracy to Sikkim by 'incorporating’ Sikkim into the India. I remembered when before the first gulf war when Saddam Hussein said he conducted an election and 99% of Iraqi voted for him, it was immediately dismissed as ridiculous (which it is). But when India says the same thing, it was accepted as fact.

5) Gandhi is a well-known icon of India. And Gandhi’s non-violence struggle against the British are well-known. This non-violence stereotype stick and people just assume that India is non-violence against its neighbors also. But of course nothing is further from the truth. Over seventy thousands Kashmiris disappeared without a trace in India occupied Kashmir with many show up in mass graves. A few years ago there was an uprising in Kashmir and in one demonstration Indian troops gunned down hundreds of Kashmiris. But the press seems not to be too bother about it. India gets away with murder, literally.

From a Request for a Referee Report

I found this passage from an email asking me to referee a paper very perceptive. The editor wrote:

From personal experience, there is a (growing?) tendency for referees to provide very long, detailed reports that sometimes read - with slight exaggeration - like an essay on the question “how I would have written this paper”. This is not always optimal - it costs the referee’s time, and it may result in a lengthy, non-converging refereeing process overall. Our main interest is in receiving advice on a. the overall significance of the findings and claims b. their technical correctness. In my experience, a relatively brief report containing a set of consecutively numbered paragraphs, each making one point, is most useful in reaching a final decision.

Update: This quotation received an extraordinarily positive reaction on my Facebook page (with 201 likes and counting, including many from well-known economists, plus several positive comments), as you can see here.