Sunday, March 15, 2009

Some interesting articles

Since Amartya is busy with his lemonade stand, I can actually do some reading and writing. Here are a few things in today's New York Times that I found worthwhile.
(1) "Chilean Town Withers in Free Market for Water"- privatized water rights run amuk. How do you handle water in a very dry place, where water has been polluted, amidst little regulation and privatized water provision?
(2) "Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?"- Is there even a doubt?
(3) of course, the article I wrote about earlier, under "outrage"
(4) "Harnessing the Sun, With Help From Cities" - if we were to starting internalizing the externalities, I think solar would start looking a lot less "subsidized" and more economical. Okay, for those non-economists, that just means bring in the costs that now are not paid any attention to when setting prices. For example, if gas prices included the damage to the environment and pollution gas consumption causes, then the price would be much higher. In the Indian context, where the sun is plentiful, the coal is even dirtier than in the US, and oil is imported, it is a total non-brainer in the long run, but getting there in the short run is still expensive and hard.
(5) "OFF THE SHELF: India’s Potential, Seen From the Inside" - a review of Nandan Nikekani's book entitled Imagining India. I have to confess that I haven't read the book yet, but Nandan is clearly a smart guy with interesting insights, and he clearly cares about India. My problem with him and the book stem from his treatment as one of the new Holy Cows of "modern" India. I think there are lots of folks with interesting things to say, but the Holy Cows get all the attention, and are handled with kid gloves. But it is probably worth a read.
(6) Immigration Explorer: A great interactive graphic on how the proportion of foreign born population differs over time, broken down by source of immigration, presented on a map by county of the US. I'm not sure the link will work, but it is worth tracking down if you are interested in these types of things (or just interesting data display).

Okay, that's it for now. Back to reading about urban planning and slums around the world.

No comments: