A Strategy for Development - Nicholas Stern

After joining the World Bank as Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President, Nicholas Stern published A Strategy for Development, which deploys the vision of the World Bank during the last decade.

Development and development assistance have been perceived in different ways since World War II. Originally, it was thought that creating infrastructure would be enough to unchain the economic forces of developing countries: a bridge over there, and a dam in the next river, would be enough to bring prosperity and higher standards of living across the World. The problem with that was that developing countries contracted tremendous amounts of debt (with the World Bank, obviously) and eventually went bankrupt (the World Bank obviously refinanced their loans). In the 1980s, the focus of development moved from the microfoundations of a sound infrastructure to the macroeconomics: discipline in fiscal and monetary policy, in addition to an open capital account, would tame inflation, attract foreign investment, and would allow mrkets to clear, creating employment. The problem with that was that austerity was not popular within the population, and that developing countries did not have the technical skills or the political weight to survey capital account movements.

At the end of the XXth century, it became evident that a combination of a state that could address market failures with somewhat efficient markets would alleviate poverty across the World.  Creating the legal and economic infrastructure that would avoid the excesses of the sixties and crowd in the private sector became the priority of the development community. Terms like "governance" or "smart state" became common places and attractive funding projects in Washington. Two natural experiments were hailed as examples of what the right mix of state and markets could achieve in terms of poverty reduction: India and China, both of which did more to alleviate poverty and inequality than the rest of the World during the eighties and nineties, most of the time disregarding the policy advice of the World Bank.

A Strategy for Development is an argument in favor of having a strong and smart state that could create the conditions for business development. There were two problems with this argument: the first is conceptual: having a smart state sounds great and of course it would help enormously to alleviate poverty. The problem is that having a state that avoids capture, cronyism, and delivers infrastructure, and provides rule of law at the same time, is a characteristic of a developed country. A country does not become developed by creating a smart state; in fact, a country has a smart state because it is developed. The classical egg and chicken problem, or to put it in economic terms, the causality determination problem.

The second problem is probably more important in practical terms. Stern has a blind faith on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as engine of growh. The problem with the argument is that it rests on the premise that small is beautiful. That is wrong. SMEs have a structure of costs that make them inefficient and not prone to innovation. SMEs are important as long as they are allowed to grow and, eventually, become huge conglomerates that trade in the stock markets.

The World Bank is now in the middle of an intellectual crossroads: we have liberalized trade and the capital account, and the problem of poverty is still prevalent (we could liberalize migration, but rich countries do not like that idea). In addition, it is becoming evident that governance sounds fantastic as a concept (I mean, once you define it), but getting good governance is the final part of the development process, not the first one.

Now that everyone likes to be alternative, some Bank economists actually play with some ideas that used to be anathema until recently: maybe property rights actually hinder industrial development in developing countries; probably natural resources conservation is great for tourists from developed countries, but people in the field would actually benefit from harvesting corn or commercial crops. Governance might be great, but rich countries had terrible governance until after World War II: the political process of the United States was co-opted by corporations most of the first half of the XXth century; London was an awful place to live in the XIXth century, just like Ciudad Juárez or Islamabad today. Getting governance right might actually take some centuries and needs to be a bottom-up process...

By the time Nicholas Stern left the World Bank, the institution created a set of indicators dedicated to evaluate governance and ease of doing business. The governance indicators used to be the flagship of the World Bank, but are now forgotten and underfunded for political reasons (basically, African countries do not like to be in the last places). The doing business indicators are loved by governments of developing countries, which use these metrics as an excuse to promote vested interest of the corporate sector.

Nicholas Stern eventually authored a famous report on climate change.

Sic transit....

Babylonia en Guagua - Manu Chao

Babylonia en Guagua présente quelques chansons interpretées par Manu Chao en Septembre 2001 à Paris. Ce DVD est la version courte de l'album Radio Bemba Sound System. L'édition de Babylonia en Guagua est très mauvaise: les coupages entre les chansons sont très évidents et la qualité de l'image n'est pas très bonne.

La valeur ajoutée du DVD sur l'album, si il en a une, c'est les behind the scenes et les tournages à Gênes lors du sommet du G-8 en 2001, où l'on peut voir comment les jeunes était pour un Monde plus ouvert, sans discrimination, et sans frontìeres. Rien à voir avec les "indignados" et les "Occupy Wall Street", ou, encore pire, avec les émeuttes à Paris en 2005 et Londres en 2011: les uns veulent une retraite assurée par l'état et le retour à une utopie idyllique; les autres veulent piquer l'Ipod de leurs vosins.

Même Manu Chao a changé: il ne faut que comparer Radio Bemba Sound System avec Baïonarena...

Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

"For all here chic thinness, she had almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday."

-Truman Capote

Nobody knows for sure how much of a disguised autobiography Breakfast at Tiffany's really is. Half of the women that Truman Capote knew claim that Holly Golightly is based upon them. What we certainly know is that Miss Golightly embodied the aspirations of American women. It is not hard to track the pretentiousness of Lady Gaga to the lightness and carelessness of Holly.


Holly Golightly is like a modern Madame Bovary: both of them are naïve women who think that they are liberated when, in fact, they are nothing but pieces of exchange in the males' games of honor. The only difference between them is that Holly succeeded -that's why she's not considered a whore.


The humor and mood of Breakfast at Tiffany's turned out to be the basis of modern TV series. Back in the 1940's it was almost impossible to see the word lesbian published in any book, or even said in any city outside NewYork. Today we at least can watch a show called The L-Word.


There's a Hollywood version of Breakfast at Tiffany's. I still have to see it, but I'm sure that it's a decaffeinated version of Capote's book. That's Hollywood's specialty.


You can find a preview of the book here, via Google Books.


And below is Capote himself reading an excerpt of the book: 

Joaquín Sabina y Viceversa en Directo - Joaquín Sabina

"Mola más tu Madrid que el Aranjuez de Rodrigo"

- Joaquín Sabína, "Aprendiz de pintor"

Este album / video fue el que catapultó la carrera de Joaquín Sabina de los bares madrileños a los teatros de toda España y, después, al continente americano. Las canciones son tan viejas que probablemente muchos de los fans de Sabina menores de 30 años no hayan oído hablar de ellas. El video contiene sólo dos canciones que Sabina canta regularmente en la actualidad: "Princesa" y "Calle Melancolía" (con Luis Eduardo Aute en los coros). Como observarán los que vean los links, la forma en que Sabina interpreta estos temas ha variado considerablemente: "Princesa" se ha convertido en la canción de despecho que originalmente pretendió ser, y "Calle Melancolía" finalmente suena como una canción triste. Quitarle protagonismo a los malditos teclados ochenteros sin duda ha contribuido a la mejora de estos temas.


Además de temas que están en el baúl de los recuerdos, en esta producción vemos a un Sabina con voz, capaz de llegar a notas altas. La corista es sólo eso, y no ocupa un papel protagónico como lo hizo en su momento Olga Román. La única balada es "Pongamos que hablo de Joaquín", tema interpretado por Aute; el resto de las canciones pueden ser catalogadas como pop-rock, o de plano rock. Veinticinco años no pasan en vano. 


Tampoco pasan en vano para Madrid ni para la sociedad Española. El video y las letras de las canciones son un retrato del Madrid de La Movida, esa bocanada de aire fresco que tomó una sociedad asfixiada por 40 años de franquismo. En la movida hubo de todo, además de drogas: oficinistas que salen del clóset, bigotes, ropas moradas que ya nadie, ni siquiera ese refrito de los 80 llamado Lady Gaga, usa, y, sobre todo, luces de neón, esa cosa tan ochentera.

Joaquín Sabina y Viceversa valen la pena tanto musical como históricamente. La mayoría de las canciones del video están disponibles en youtube.

Strange Days - The Doors

"True sailing is dead"

-The Doors, "Horse Latitudes"

Strange Days contains two of The Doors' most famous tracks: "Love Me Two Times", and "People Are Strange". From that perspective,  this is a good introduction to the band for young listeners.


Second, This is also the band's "must have" album if you have to pick only one of their six studio productions. Strange Days is remarkable from a purely technical perspective: it was the band's first album recorded on an 8-track 1 " recorder. The Doors was also the first band to use this technology, so the entire production sounds and feels experimental up until today. The technological advantages provided by the 8-track recorder not only enhanced the quality of the album, but also enabled the band to experiment with other things: the sound of "Horse Latitudes", for instance, was achieved by using hand-sped pink-nois tape loops played into the studio's  echo chamber.  Morrison used a Telefunken U47 microphone, which is the same model used by consolidated artists like Elvis of Sinatra (whom Morrison actually admired).


Strange Days is also remarkable from the lyrics' perspective. "Moonlight Drive" combines love, darkness, and happy tabs, in an interesting way. "When the Music's Over" is one testimony of Morrison's improvisation capabilities, as well as a great closing to the entire album.

Determinants of Economic Growth - Robert J. Barro

"Being poor, which Sierra Leone and other African countries surely are, is not enough to generate high growth."

-Robert J. Barro

Most questions on economics are open to debate: is there a catch-up phenomenon for developing countries? Arguably, poor countries have more potential to grow faster (see China); however, countries in extreme poverty may lack the conditions necessary for the establishment of somewhat efficient markets. Does democracy promote growth? Some might argue -like F. A. Hayek- that democracy and capitalism always come together. Others can say, not without reason, that extreme participation and popular demands, especially on land reform and property rights, might serve as a  hindrance to growth.

These questions can go on forever, with all sides of the debate having room for a plausible and well articulated argument. However, Fortunately, we have econometrics to gather evidence on these questions and have some guidance for policymaking. In 1997, Robert Barro, from Harvard University, delivered three lectures at the London School of Economics trying to answer three questions: is there a catch up process between developing and developed countries? Does democracy promote growth? Does inflation hinder growth? After a thorough econometric analysis,  Barro's answers are: somewhat, up to an extent, and after a certain level. The three lectures are compiled in Determinants of Economic Growth. Ideologues and pundits might not like books like Barro's because they do not provide clear cut and straightforward answers. (to be honest, Barro's answers are clear cut and straightforward; they just do not divide the World in black and white, which is what ideologues and pundits do)

I do not want to leave the impression that econometrics is the key to answer all our questions. On the one hand, any decent econometrician knows that all models are rubbish: econometric models are just a way to simplify the policy debate. Without intellectual speculation and experiments, econometrics is just a simple average. Economists also have a vested interest in making economics and econometrics look more complicated than they actually are, so we should not take them too seriously, anyway.

On the other hand, we only have fifty years of decent data  (the U.S. is an exception with series that go back up until the 1800s) for most countries, and only twenty for the two emerging Asian powers: India and China. Fifty years is nothing compared to the almost 300 years of capitalism, and even 300 years is nothing compared to the 2,000 years of the Modern Era.  Maybe, in the end, liberal democracy is nothing else than a historical accident and all these experiments will be irrelevant in 500 years...

Econometrics is an imperfect tool, but that's all we have to analyze social sciences. Imperfect beings cannot create perfect tools. That's Philosophy 101...

Here's Barro's personal webpage.

And here are his datasets.

Nos sobran los motivos - Joaquín Sabina

El DVD Nos sobran los motivos reúne 9 canciones interpretadas en una gira que Sabina hizo en teatros pequeños en Madrid. Todas las canciones están disponibles en youtube.

Hay también un álbum homónimo incluye un disco con canciones acústicas y otro con canciones más rockeras. El booklet del disco no especifica dónde fue grabado.

Poco antes del lanzamiento del álbum y del DVD, Sabina cayó en una depresión que le duró 5 años....