My PhD supervisor told me give the reader just four numbers to remember; doesn't matter however elaborate and complicated your empirical analysis. Those from whom I learnt public speaking said, Make three points – no one remembers anything beyond that.
This is not the first time world order is splintering. But economic interconnectedness traditionally raised fragmentation costs and thus held the world together. Now the logic is reversed: economic integration is a prime contributor to fragmentation.
The richest nations on the planet are almost all small states. This paper shows that this, together with how poor economies are cheap, means (1) small states need to lead the global economy on trade; (2) technical progress is no universal good.
Adam Posen's brilliant and powerful article on the illogic of US Zero-Sum Economics: Even with concerns over national security, climate change, and resilience, it will still be that America's Industrial Policy and subsidies do more harm than good.
In response to COVID-19, one nation locked down and was described as inflicting "great cost to people's livelihoods and personal liberties";another nation locked down and was said to be (valiantly) "risking its economy in an effort to contain Europe's worst coronavirus outbreak"
OPEN LETTER TO LEE KUAN YEW SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
Dear Dean
@DannyQuah
I am astounded by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy's decision to award the Lee Kuan Yew Exchange Fellowship to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Lee Kuan Yew, the Father of Singapore, was
Obsidian
@ObsdMD
second brain's graphical view of all my research and writing files tagged
#inequality
spread across scores of subfolders (that once I'd thought would provide a good organization). Thanks to
@ObsdMD
future-proofed as I write only in puretext LaTeX, Markdown, R.
Two decades ago, when others around me were just mindlessly repeating prejudices about how Easterners did well only on exams, he asked me, Can Asians Think?
The world's two great superpowers each face profound internal challenges, and are embroiled in geostrategic rivalry with one another. Global leadership on global COVID recovery has to come from elsewhere. So, some specific steps for ASEAN+n :
The central banker who fought IMF orthodoxy and won, and who guided her nation's economy over two tumultuous decades, tells me that every year it looks like my hair has gone whiter and whiter, so she barely recognises me... and asks is my job really that stressful.
Kishore Mahbubani and I might disagree on the specifics of some global narrative or other, but photographs taken by others don't lie: We genuinely like hanging out with each other.
#InstaMyLKYSPP
#lkysppPeople
#lkysppNostalgia
In Paris, so close to the 100th anniversary of Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace, it's easy to recall how Paul Volcker reminded everyone that that book was what brought economics "squarely into the world of geopolitics".
The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
@LKYSch
hosted US Vice President Kamala Harris
@VP
this week as she delivered her speech on US policy in the Indo-Pacific, and then the moderated discussion with senior US officials from the Vice President's office, ... (1/2)
The erosion of social cohesion is on everyone's list of slow-burning global risks. The pandemic has not helped. But which are the social challenges most reliably related to income disparities; how has the pandemic worsened them? What will help improve social cohesion in Asia?
With deepest sadness, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy extends condolences to Prof Wang Gungwu on the passing of his wife, Mrs Margaret Wang. At the School, Margaret was a constant steady presence alongside Prof Wang, our School’s first Chairman.
This is how they made America great.
In the 1970s, Japan was widely believed to threaten US tech supremacy. America would surely lose as the Japanese state—through MITI—continued their support of national consumer electronics and supercomputer industries.
When last you saw her, she was in a darkened Peacock Theatre at LSE scribbling notes on your Econ B lecture slides, but now — after Harvard, No 10 Downing St — you call her "Your Excellency" (because, you know, HM Trade Commissioner, Asia-Pacific).
If globalisation has indeed caused inequality to rise in the US but has at the same time also lifted out of extreme poverty hundreds of millions around the world - whose side do you take?
The world's largest trade pact: One third of all humanity, 30% of the global economy, every member of ASEAN... came together to collaborate on something good, open, and inclusive - even in the midst of slowing global growth and fraying multilateralism.
That divergence from 1989 when China opened up and from 2001 when China joined the international economic system. If India grows 2 %points faster than China every single year, it will take India 85 years to reach parity with China (credit James Eagle)
The one where Frank Fukuyama came to the Lee Kuan Yew School and spoke brilliantly about liberalism, and I asked him questions afterwards.
Video at ; order form for Liberalism and its Discontents
@LKYSch
@FukuyamaFrancis
This chart is a very important one to help keep us all safe: it's the difference between someone infecting 400 people next month and infecting basically no one. The figures are informed by the math behind social distancing. While ...
1. No economy should be fooled by an apparent flattening of the infection curve into lifting lockdowns too quickly. Every economy has blind-spots in vulnerable groups living crowded together.
In geopolitics, the world is now epic fail, and that's worse than zero-sum.
Shiro Armstrong and Danny Quah. 2023. "Economics for the Global Economic Order: The Tragedy of Epic Fail Equilibria" (Oct)
#ThirdNations
#EpicFail
#ZeroSum
#GreatPowerRivalry
This very powerful message from the world's top wordsmith flows right into future Dean's job offers:
"I am offering you a job as Assistant Professor at our School. Let's work out a good deal! Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool! I will call you later."
The thing about writing both on inequality and on world order is that I get to see how, on the first set of issues, many people in an audience solemnly intone, "Something must be done to reduce inequality";
Where I confirmed that imminently the world's economic centre of gravity will be in GMT+8. But I also talked about why Industrial Revolutions in history failed, and how no amount of progress in science and technology alone ...
#ResearchEx
End of easy run in WCP, two teenage girls cycle up to me catching my breath, "Uncle, uncle, are you alright?! Can we get you some water to drink or anything?!"
Singapore social capital: A
My understanding of how vulnerable in age I already look: F. Must try harder
I have an amazing job. In it I get to sit down and discuss with Kings, Prime Ministers, Professors who wrote the book on the subject the great global challenges of our time - geopolitical rivalry, social cohesion, international cooperation...
Monday morning early, and our amazingly dedicated Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy staff
@LKYSch
@NUSingapore
are already in-place, masked-up and gloved, temperature-scanning those coming in.
Video recording of "Is US-China Conflict Unavoidable?", an IEA World Economic Order working group discussion with speakers John Mearsheimer and Susan Thornton, and discussants Jisi Wang, and Yongding Yu, from Tue 04 Jan 2022.
The event was moderated by Dani Rodrik.
Unbelievably, academics get to do Commencement year after year. Each time we get to see the joy it brings our students and their families and friends. The fancy robes and funny hats are otherwise only visible at Hogwarts, but on this one day, you don't sweat the small stuff.
When I was newly returned from the West, people would regularly ask why I left London. Then they realised the power of these ideas from where I now sit. They stopped asking.
"The political voice extends far. The entire world hears and admires."
(Thread) At
@AsiaSocietySF
Future of US-China:
1. When Great Powers see only a landscape of zero-sum competition between them, it is a matter of logic that not even the best goodwill, diplomacy, or strategic management will shift those nations away from head-on rivalry.
(1/6)
Meet the members of
@UNDP
Asia Pacific's ✨Eminent Advisory Council who will guide us on issues of strategic policy importance in international development:
@BrankoMilan
, Rohini Pande,
@MazzucatoM
@DannyQuah
w'
@SwarnimWagle
as member-secretary.
America is simply no longer that important to global trade. And if things keep going like this, soon the US$ will no longer be the world's reserve currency either.
Yes, inequality has risen. But not equally so everywhere. Some places can still talk about a rising tide lifting all boats. Elsewhere, it's a tectonic plate dislocation, with one end pulled upwards, the other end wrenched sickeningly down.
@DannyQuah
’s paper contrasts the growing inequality in average incomes across the income distributions of the US and those of other regions of the world. Excerpt from the paper below. Sobering, to say the least.
Dean
@DannyQuah
& Prof
@BenCashore
are placed in the top 1% of scientists worldwide for their citation impact for 2020 & lifetime citation impact in Stanford University's study. Assoc Prof Vu Minh Khuong & Asst Prof Araz Taeihagh came in the top 2% for citation impact for 2020.
In a beautiful FB post by Rachele Focardi Alexieva regarding the crisis in Italy:
"A China Eastern Airline Airbus A350 arriving from Shanghai landed in Rome this morning carrying a team of 9 doctors experts in Covid19 and much needed supplies ...
Thing about investment professionals is that one day, you're lecturing Econ B to them in LSE's Peacock Theatre or giving them degree certificates; next they're Vice Presidents and Executive Directors, and you're debating with them over the billions of dollars they're handling.
We talked about the considerations that should go into rebuilding a new world order. Revisionism doesn't have to mean something bad if the current world order is already agreed to be failing: (1) credible criticisms of hyper-globalization are both long-standing and modern (1/4)
I got to discuss with Prof Wang Gungwu before an NUS audience what deep history tells us about world order. I realised how something so big-picture and bluesky that only IR scholars, historians, and one or two economists studied can still inflame everyone's interest.
How sports makes us focus on the human spirit and look to that of which humanity is capable. Emma Raducanu, the US Open winner, is Canadian-born and the daughter of a Romanian father and a Chinese mother, and happens to live and train in the UK.
Dean's List dinner with
@LKYSch
students after a long pandemic shutdown.
In-person is excellent. But the shock of actually seeing one another isn't as great any more, because all these months... we had social media.
When it's been a while since you last saw your PhD advisor, and he's won a Nobel Prize and trained hundreds of students in the meantime, and you reckon you just about managed to make it through the pandemic OK.
"How important is America to global trade?" (08 Sep 2018)
Can only America be reliable steward of the international system? Is the choice that that America says, between “on the one hand, Rule of Law, and the other, arbitrary use of power”?
Sorry, I'm from a very small nation, and we don't always understand Great Power norms. Where is it written that because you're a Great Power leader debating in front of millions of people, ...
I got to host at Lee Kuan Yew School the amazing Governor of Tokyo, The Honorable Yuriko Koike
@EcoYuri
. Governor Koike discussed our two dynamic cities, Singapore and Tokyo, and her Acceleration Program in Tokyo (APT) Women, supporting entrepreneurship and ideas of women.
LKYSPP-in-Asia will help us improve understanding of governance and public policy across all Asia, eventually. We begin this week in Lombok.
I'm piggybacking on the School's MPA goodwill... and so am out here too.
#LKYSPPinAsia
@LKYSch
Some are lucky. Their interests align so much with their jobs they argue about the same things at work as they do outside.
Others think those people are just sad.
Another IEA session where economists and IR scholars engage... because the problem we're now studying is big enough for more than just a single discipline.
Tue 04 Jan 2022 0900 EST (adjust for your own timezone)
Elderly uncle comes up to me at the end, "I see you running everyday, so far, so fast. But now, looking into your eyes, I think you're not so young after all."
Turns out we were born within hours of each other. Ok, so maybe he's not "elderly uncle".
.. you can forget your manners, be rude to your opponent and the moderator, and speak over everyone else? This isn't robust disagreement; it's just bad behaviour.
Along with the rest of my tribe, there is little I value more than engaging in the marketplace of ideas. At this dinner event in Davos I had opportunity to describe how in my reckoning Economics has endogenized Geopolitics, and how Inequality is not a sufficient statistic. (1/2)
The Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE is just one of many, many bidirectional, people-people connections between Singapore and London re-activating offline as COVID restrictions continue to streamline.
Economics Nobel Committee says where it's at? Nature and knowledge in macroeconomic analysis - US duo Nordhaus, Romer win Nobel Economics Prize for work on climate change and innovation
Scripted propaganda or otherwise, this clip of how you feed 1.4bn under quarantine using a mix of government intervention and market-driven spontaneous adaptation has a ring of authenticity and good sense.
Who me? Well, like everyone else on the list, I just come into the office every morning and work on those research questions that fill me with passion and curiosity.
@LKYSch
@NUSingapore
Paul and I haven't seen each other in nearly two decades, and it was great talking about all the things that have happened since then. Paul: Nobel Prize; me: oh yeah, I took up running.
Kishore Mahbubani
@mahbubani_k
, Founding Dean
@LKYSch
, is at Harvard, working on US-China, the critical geopolitical relationship. Thankfully, our School will get to see him here again soon, with “Has the West Lost It?”
Kishore, telling it like it is.
Wed 09 Feb I'm speaking alongside Mari Pangestu and Raghu Rajan at the Mandiri Investment Forum on possibilities for the post-pandemic economic and geopolitical landscape. See you there if you're interested.
>Schedule>Wed 09 Feb 2022 (times WIB/Jakarta)
In the new world of technology, disruption, and public policy, everyone is being encouraged to code. So I reckon there is no longer shame in a social scientist doing actual hardcore hacking. Finally, I can come out of the closet.
Many around the world have long debated the challenges and benefits of having the world's leading economics journals concentrated around the northern Atlantic. Sign up at
Our Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Dean Kishore Mahbubani retires at the end of this year. So at Annual Retreat the Faculty were photographed standing with Dean.
My current active work (with blogs and commentaries sometimes appearing before the technical paper, but if that last has an abstract, an introduction, and some sections complete, then it’s here)