Policy Chatters: Recent Episodes
Public Policy Matters
Dr. Mark Kimura is a Senior Scientist at Oceanit Laboratories in Honolulu, HI. He received his MS/Ph.D. in Regional Science from Cornell University, where he studied Complexity Science and spatial pattern formation of cities. Prior to Oceanit, Mark was a Marketing Analyst at Hawaiian Airlines, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, Marketing Science & Innovation Director at Ipsos, Sr. Research Engineer at Spot Runner, Systems Director at Seico International Trading Company, and Retail Modeling Manager at MPSI Systems. At Oceanit he developed A.I. systems for the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation and local commercial clients. Mark is also known as a data storyteller and an infographics expert by the local community – he worked with Hawaii County Civil Defense during the 2014 lava flow crisis on the Big Island of Hawaii and he was featured in various news media such as FiveThirtyEight (10/28/2014), The New York Times (3/23/2015), and Hawaii Public Radio (1/7/2015) for his work. He was also a member, U.S. Department of the Interiors’ Strategic Science Group during the 2018 lava flow crisis.
In this podcast, Mark talks about what is exciting and new in AI including ChatGPT, and how AI continues to make inroads into our daily lives. He goes over the benefits and potential dis-benefits to low-income employment and how these disruptions will impact society. He also touches on how emerging markets can access AI and the philosophical dilemma that AI poses to our approach to work.
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Justice Malala is an award-winning journalist, television host, political commentator, and newspaper columnist. Malala is a regular contributor to the Guardian in London and his work has been published in The Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, and others. Malala was formerly a presenter and executive producer of the longest-running weekly political talk show in South Africa (The Justice Factor on eNCA). He has a new book coming out The Plot To Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation.
In this podcast, Justice focuses on a week in 1993, during South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy and the assassination of Chris Hani in the hope to derail the transition to democracy and igniting an all-out civil war. He also reflects on the history of post-colonial political assassinations of leaders connected to liberation movements. He elaborates on Nelson Mandela’s leadership style and his ability to compromise and reach across to political opponents. His book lays out 10 lessons for leadership. Justice reflects on the shared connection black South Africans feel to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the continuation of the practice of apartheid within this context.
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Duncan Kennedy is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence (emeritus) at Harvard Law School. He was a founding member of the Critical Legal Studies movement. Kennedy received an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1964 completing with an earnest undergraduate thesis on African Development. In 1970 earned an LL.B. from Yale Law School. Kennedy joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1971 as an Assistant Professor, becoming a full Professor in 1976 and retired in 2017. He has taught several courses including with Professor David Kennedy, Law and Development, Globalization of Law and Legal Thought, Contracts, Property and Torts, low-income housing law and policy, Israel/Palestine legal issues.
This podcast is part of the series Heterodox Approaches, which commemorates the 10-year death anniversary of Alice Amsden. In the first episode, Professor Kennedy reflects on his professional friendship with Professor Alice Amsden, how she engaged with her students and peers, and their mutual interest in Heterodox Approaches in Economics and Law. He further defines orthodox (presently known as mainstream) versus heterodox. He elaborates on various streams within mainstream economics and the phrase ‘The Washington Consensus’ and the set of industrial and social policies that were promoted and often made part of loan agreements to emerging markets as part of a one size fits all approach to growth.
In the second episode, Duncan continues the discussion of the Washington Consensus and situates Alice Amsden’s work in relation to mainstream economics. He uses two examples of Alice’s work to concretize the preceding discussion including the South Korean approach to selecting national champions, economic nationalism, and a critique of development versus welfare approaches and foreign aid.
In this third and final episode, Duncan discusses the genealogy of industrial policy, the relationship between the state and market, and Karl Marx's theories. Karl Polyani and Joseph Schumpeter. He also discusses Antonio Gramsci’s interpretation of an organic intellectual, and the relevance of Gramsci for the radical left today.
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Duncan Kennedy is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence (emeritus) at Harvard Law School. He was a founding member of the Critical Legal Studies movement. Kennedy received an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1964 completing with an earnest undergraduate thesis on African Development. In 1970 earned an LL.B. from Yale Law School. Kennedy joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1971 as an Assistant Professor, becoming a full Professor in 1976 and retired in 2017. He has taught several courses including with Professor David Kennedy, Law and Development, Globalization of Law and Legal Thought, Contracts, Property and Torts, low-income housing law and policy, Israel/Palestine legal issues.
This podcast is part of the series Heterodox Approaches, which commemorates the 10-year death anniversary of Alice Amsden. The podcast will be released in three segments over the coming month. In the first episode, Professor Kennedy reflects on his professional friendship with Professor Alice Amsden, how she engaged with her students and peers, their mutual interest in Heterodox Approaches in Economics and Law. He further defines orthodox (presently known as mainstream) versus heterodox. He elaborates on various streams within mainstream economics and the phrase ‘The Washington Consensus’ and the set of industrial and social policies that were promoted and often made part of loan agreements to emerging markets as part of a one size fits all approach to growth.
In this second episode, Duncan continues the discussion of the Washington Consensus and situates Alice Amsden’s work in relation to mainstream economics. He uses two examples of Alice’s work to concretize the preceding discussion including the South Korean approach to selecting national champions, economic nationalism, and a critique of development versus welfare approaches and foreign aid.
Find the full podcast below.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neetamisra.substack.com/subscribe
Xavier Morales (Ph.D.) is the Executive Director of The Praxis Project. Xavier is a longtime advocate for community-driven initiatives to achieve health equity and environmental justice. Xavier currently serves on the board of the Urban Peace Initiative, and was, until recently, the Chair of City of Berkeley sugar-sweetened beverage tax expert panel, a former Peace Corps volunteer (Hungary), is originally from Sanger, California, studied environmental sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a master’s and doctorate in city and regional planning from Cornell University.
In this podcast, Xavier talks about his work on environmental justice and transitioning this to public health. He talks about equity as a process vs. equity as an outcome. Praxis's mission is to build healthy communities by transforming the power relationships and structures that affect people’s lives and communities. What this means in practice and how to operationalize it. He talks about the need to focus on power, it’s not about more research, more facts, or more data. Xavier says that is all important, but the biggest struggles we have today are grounded in power inequities.
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Jacques Gordon joined the faculty of MIT's Center for Real Estate in January after a 40-year career as a real estate investment manager and industry researcher. For most of that time he was Head of Research and Strategy at LaSalle Investment Management, which is part of JLL, a global real estate services company which operates in 90 different countries. While at JLL Jacques led the development of. Global Transparency Index.
Jacques did his dissertation work while at MIT and with support from the Joint Center for Housing Studies on the topic of "hidden housing production". This study looked at the ways that housing units were created through conversions, ADUs, and off-the-books renovation activity. He will be teaching a course on portfolio management and contributing to the work of the Sustainability Lab here at the Center.
In this podcast Jacques discusses the hot topics that both industry and academics are tackling. Provides examples of how real estate transparency and national economic policies interact. He also talks about a global transparency index that he was instrumental in developing and how he sees policy makers and different stakeholders using it and the next iteration of the index.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neetamisra.substack.com/subscribe
Madhura Swaminathan is Professor and Head of the Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.
She has a doctorate in Economics from the University of Oxford and has worked on issues of food security, agriculture and rural development for over 25 years. She has authored ten books and numerous publications including Weakening Welfare: The Public Distribution of Food in India in 2000 and How Do Small Farmers Fare? Evidence from Village Studies in India in 2017. Her most recent edited book is on Women and Work in Rural India (2020). She was a member of the Government of India’s High Level Panel on Long Term Food Security, a two-term member of the board of governors of CIP (2002-8) and served on the Committee of Development Policy of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations for the period 2013-2015. Currently, she is a Member of the Kerala Statistical Commission.
In this podcast Professor Swaminathan discusses the fact that official statistics don't reveal the true picture about women's work in rural India. Time use data suggest women spend long hours a day on economic activity and care work, together resulting in 60 to 80 hour weeks. When women are not engaged in economic activity, it is because of lack of suitable employment. She suggests that we need to disaggregate the peasant household and examine women's contribution to labour on and off the family farm separately. Patterns of male and female work in agriculture are distinct and also changing in different ways.
The biggest source of new employment for rural women in recent years has been as low-paid, contractual "voluntary" or "scheme" workers in the education, health and nutrition sectors. While working for the government, these women lack all social security benefits.
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Justice Malala is an award-winning journalist, television host, political commentator, and newspaper columnist. Malala is a regular contributor to the Guardian in London and his work has been published in The Washington Post, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London and others. Malala was formerly presenter and executive producer of the longest-running weekly political talk show in South Africa (The Justice Factor on eNCA). He has a new book coming out The Plot To Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation.
In this podcast Justice focuses on the current energy crises in South Africa; a genesis of the crises, what steps are being taken and where the solution lies. He also reflects on how state capture by the Gupta family during the Jacob Zuma presidency has set South Africa back and contributed to the energy crises and talks about the riveting Phala Phala scandal that has engulfed current President Cyril Ramaphosa. Riveting political commentary on South African Matters.
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Duncan Kennedy is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School. He was a founding member of the Critical Legal Studies movement. Kennedy received an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1964 and in 1970 earned an LL.B. from Yale Law School. After completing a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Kennedy joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1971 as an Assistant Professor, becoming a full Professor in 1976. He has taught contracts, torts, property, trusts, the history of legal thought, low income housing law and policy, Israel/Palestine legal issues, the globalization of law and legal thought, and the politics of private law.
His publications have contributed to legal and social theory, the history of legal thought, legal semiotics, law and economics, contract law, and legal education. His five books are; Legal Reasoning: Collected Essays (Davies Group Publishers 2008); The Rise and Fall of Classical Legal Thought (Beard Books, 1998 [1975]); A Critique of Adjudication [fin de siècle] (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1997); Sexy Dressing, etc. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993); Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy (AFAR, Cambridge, 1983).
This podcast is part of the series Heterodox Approaches, which commemorates the 10-year death anniversary of Alice Amsden. In the podcast, Duncan reflects on his professional friendship with Alice, her approach towards mainstream economics, a genealogy of Industrial Policy; Marx and the Institutional Economics Group, Karl Polyani, and Schumpeter. The evolution of the developmental state, orthodox versus heterodox strains within economics, examples of Alice’s work on Korea and aid, the organic intellectual, and the relevance of Gramsci for the radical left and intellectuals today.
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A podcast with Andrew Scull Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of California San Diego, by Neeta Misra.
Read: 5 Big Ideas on Mental Illness
By Andrew Scull
One of the most pressing issues we face as a society is mental illness. Few of us escape its ravages - and no one escapes its social burdens. As a historian of psychiatry, I’ve spent half a century trying to understand and make sense of the ways we’ve tried to address and treat mental illness. My new book, Desperate Remedies, Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness, starts with the birth of the asylums in the reformist zeal of the 1830s and ends with the crisis in psychopharmacology and the latest efforts to find a genetic basis for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Here are five major issues to think about:
- Desperate Remedies: People with serious mental illness have been unusually vulnerable to therapeutic experimentation. Often greeted as great breakthroughs by the medical establishment and the press, many deeply intrusive interventions have subsequently been shown to be seriously misguided. To mention only a handful: there were programs to induce fevers by deliberately infecting patients with malaria; to surgically remove teeth and tonsils (as well as stomachs, spleens, cervixes and colons); to bring patients to the brink of death through insulin comas; and to induce artificial epileptic seizures (an approach some still swear by despite evidence it can wreak havoc on memory); and, most dramatically of all, to sever brain tissue by thrusting an ice-pick through the eye socket into the brain. (Egas Moniz, who invented the lobotomy in 1935, won the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his innovation.)
Today, we are seeing great enthusiasm for such novel therapies as deep brain stimulation and ketamine for depression, and a renewed interest in psychedelics as therapy for mental disorders. The scientific basis for these interventions is limited at best, and past experience suggests that the latest fads might best be treated with skepticism.
- Women and people of color were targets for experimentation. Legally and morally, those suffering from psychosis and severe depression have often been regarded as non-persons, incapable of making rational decisions. But differential treatment has been particularly marked for women and racial minorities.
Take lobotomy. In its heyday in the 1940s and 50s, 60 per cent or more of those operated on were women. Black Americans, particularly those seen as violent, were also singled out for lobotomies.
When asylums were created in the nineteenth century, Black Americans were either segregated into separate wards, or institutionalized in asylums for the “colored” insane. “Separate but equal” as always meant appalling and dire. When America abandoned asylums in the late twentieth century in favor of the euphemistically-named “community care,” many Black Americans struggling with mental illness were caught up in the endless cycle of the flop-house, the streets, and jails, with only brief encounters with psychiatric facilities that tried to pacify them with anti-psychotics. The Los Angeles County Jail is now the world’s largest psychiatric institution. Black Americans are 9.6 per cent of the county’s population, but 31 per cent of the prisoners, and almost 44 per cent of those diagnosed with serious mental illness.
- Community care is a sham. For more than a century, America invested vast amounts of economic and intellectual capital in support of the idea that the best response to serious mental illness was to put its victims into mental hospitals where they could be treated by physicians who initially believed they could cure them. By the early 1950s, these places housed more than half a million people. But mental hospitals came under sustained assault, dismissed as snake pits that systematically damaged and dehumanized those they confined. By the 1990s, they had essentially vanished from the scene.
Deinstitutionalization was proclaimed a grand reform. A more tolerant and hospitable community would instead welcome the mentally ill back into society, and provide effective and humane treatment in its midst. It was a fairy story. The decanting of patients, many suffering from acute psychosis, took place with virtually no advance planning or provision for housing or the other needs of those with disabling mental illnesses. This is a major source of the contemporary explosion of homelessness. Asylums were founded in the nineteenth century to rescue the mentally ill from jails and prisons. Today, the largest providers of psychiatric services in the US are the Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island Jail in New York, and the Cook County Jail in Chicago.
- There is no psychiatric penicillin. The psychopharmacological revolution that began in the early 1950s has unquestionably benefitted some patients, relieving their hallucinations and delusions and enabling them to resume some semblance of a normal life. Anti-depressants have improved the lives of some of those taking them, and new forms of psychosocial therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy have helped those with less serious forms of mood disturbance.
And yet…the drugs provide only a measure of symptomatic relief, and they do so for only a minority of those prescribed them. Moreover, they carry with them a heavy burden of side effects, side effects that are sometimes permanent and extremely serious. Controlled studies show that anti-depressants are only marginally more effective than placebo. Their side effects can be debilitating and enduring. Anti-psychotics do little to alleviate the most damaging negative effects of schizophrenia: blunted affect, social withdrawal, disorganized thoughts, poverty of speech, and an inability to function in a social environment. When the National Institute of Mental Health sponsored a large-scale study comparing three so-called atypical or second-generation anti-psychotics with a drug from the nineteen-fifties, the modern drugs fared no better than the first-generation drug. Between 67 percent and 82 percent of the patients dropped out, depending upon which drug they were taking, either because the treatment was not working, or because they found the side effects intolerable.
- Contemporary psychiatry is facing a crisis. The year 2013, saw the publication of the 5th edition of its diagnostic system, DSM 5, even larger than its predecessors, which continued to adopt a tick-the-boxes approach to diagnosis. It was promptly denounced by the head of NIMH, Thomas Insel, and his immediate predecessor, Steven Hyman of Harvard, in the harshest terms. Hyman called it “an absolute scientific nightmare…totally wrong in a way [its authors] couldn’t have imagined.” Insel announced that his institute would ignore its categories when funding future research on mental illness. Psychiatrists, he wrote scornfully, “actually believe [these DSM] diagnoses are real. But there’s no reality. These are just constructs. There’s no reality to schizophrenia or depression.”
If the diagnosis is a mess, the prospects for improving the pharmacological treatment of a mental illness are also bleak. Virtually all the major drug companies have announced that they are disbanding or sharply curtailing their research on psychopharmacology.
Finally, the therapeutic payoff from four decades of betting on biology as the singular source of mental illness seems to have run aground. The decoding of the human genome raised hopes that the genetic origins of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression would soon be discovered. That has not happened. Four decades of neuroscientific research have produced little therapeutic value. Don’t take the word of a sociologist. When Thomas Insel stepped down as head of NIMH, he spoke of what he had achieved: “I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded in getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large cost – I think $20 billion – I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, [or] improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have a mental illness.”
Insel is right. People with serious mental illness live, on average, fifteen to twenty-five years less than the rest of us and that gap is growing, not diminishing. Perhaps we should try something different.
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Andrew Stokols is an urban planner, designer, and researcher. He is currently a Phd student at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, City Design and Development Group.
Andrew’s research explores varieties of digital urbanism emerging throughout the world, drawing on the perspectives of political science, science and technology studies (STS), and urban theory to explore the co-evolution of urban space and digital technologies, and the ways in which national governments increasingly use urban development to incubate new economic sectors and project national power. He has worked previously with Future Cities Lab Singapore, and World Resources Institute. He has a masters in urban planning from Harvard GSD and was a Fulbright Scholar to China.
In this podcast, Andrew explores whether the developmental state concept which was and remains a powerful framework for explaining the success of East Asian tigers and other countries, is still relevant in an age of digital development, compressed development, and geopolitical decoupling. He also discusses how U.S.-China geopolitical tension manifests in Southeast Asia in terms of state approaches to development, a region caught between the two powers but also with its own dynamic and rapidly expanding economies. He looks at spatial and urban policies in the countries he is studying, Singapore and Thailand, and examines how existing projects reflect prior legacies or historical approaches to development.
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Jayan Jose Thomas is a Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, where he has been employed since July 2010. His research deals with various issues related to development, mainly labour, industrialization and the macroeconomy. He teaches courses on macroeconomics, Indian economic development, international economics, and planning and development. Jayan is a former Member of the Kerala State Planning Board.
In this podcast, Jayan looks at the Indian economy today with an emphasis on employment, social spending, capital expenditures and higher education. Key highlights are:
In 2020, India accounted for 20.6% of the worldwide population of 15-to-29-year-olds. The rest of the world foresees a fortune in India's young population.Public expenditures on the social sectors are often considered ‘wasteful’. However, they actually constitute an investment for the future -- more so for a country with a predominantly young population.Inflated fears about the fiscal deficit and government debt will only be counterproductive in a country possessing vast reserves of untapped human and other resources as India does.
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LYNN HECHT SCHAFRAN, JD, is Senior Vice President of Legal Momentum, the Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund and Director of its National Judicial Education Program (NJEP) since 1981. She has designed and presented courses for numerous national, state and federal judicial colleges, focused on the ways explicit and implicit gender bias can undermine fairness in family, juvenile, civil, criminal and problem-solving courts. She has a long-standing interest in neuroscience and the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (ACEs). In 2000 she added a ground-breaking unit on the neurobiology of trauma to NJEP’s two-day judicial education curriculum, Understanding Sexual Violence: The Judicial Response to Stranger and Nonstranger Rape and Sexual Assault.. Her article Domestic Violence, Developing Brains and the Lifespan: New Knowledge from Neuroscience was published in The Judges’ Journal in 2014. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the American Law Institute.
In Part 1 of this podcast series, Lynn and Neeta discuss the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. They discuss a recent case of a Hague Mother Narkis Golan whose case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2022, where she won her case. They discuss how the Hague Convention has not kept up with the times and ends up criminalizing women and children who have been victims of domestic violence and reuniting them with their abusers.
This bonus feature is a discussion between a Hague mother who moved between South Africa, India, and the United States, and Lynn Schafran.
Listen to the entire podcast here:
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LYNN HECHT SCHAFRAN, JD, is Senior Vice President of Legal Momentum, the Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Director of its National Judicial Education Program (NJEP) since 1981. She has designed and presented courses for numerous national, state, and federal judicial colleges, focused on the ways explicit and implicit gender bias can undermine fairness in family, juvenile, civil, criminal, and problem-solving courts. She has a long-standing interest in neuroscience and the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (ACEs). In 2000 she added a ground-breaking unit on the neurobiology of trauma to NJEP’s two-day judicial education curriculum, Understanding Sexual Violence: The Judicial Response to Stranger and Non-stranger Rape and Sexual Assault. Her article Domestic Violence, Developing Brains and the Lifespan: New Knowledge from Neuroscience was published in The Judges’ Journal in 2014. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the American Law Institute.
In this podcast, Lynn and Neeta discuss the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. They discuss a recent case of a Hague Mother Narkis Golan whose case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2022, where she won her case. They discuss how the Hague Convention has not kept up with the times and ends up criminalizing women and children who have been victims of domestic violence and reuniting them with their abusers.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neetamisra.substack.com/subscribe
Afua Bruce is a leading public interest technologist who works at the intersection of technology, policy, and society. Afua is the Principal of the ANB Advisory Group LLC, a consulting firm that supports organizations developing, implementing, or funding responsible data and technology. With her background in software engineering, data science, and artificial intelligence, combined with experience developing and deploying technology in and with communities, Afua incorporates an equity-based framework into her engagements. Afua is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an affiliate at Harvard Kennedy School’s Berkman Klein Center. Afua’s newest book, The Tech That Comes Next: How Changemakers, Technologists, and Philanthropists can Build an Equitable World, describes how technology can advance equity.
In this podcast, Afua explores the intersection of technology, data, and justice. The key skills and expertise necessary to make a difference in technology, data, and justice, and reflects on how her experiences in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors inform her work today. She believes that regardless of people’s perspectives, they can influence the conversation, technology, and policies around tech, data, and justice.
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Ajay Chhibber and Ganesh Natarajan talk about the Indian budget 2023, achievements over 75 years of independence, farm reform, women’s employment, and what needs to happen in the next 25 years.
Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is Chairman of 5FWorld and Honeywell Automation India and a Board Director of State Bank of India, Global Talent Track, Hinduja Global Solutions, Lighthouse Communities Foundation and the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network.
Ganesh has led two significant public firms - APTECH and Zensar to global success and is the subject of two case studies taught at Harvard Business School. He is the author/co-author of thirteen books including his latest co-edited with Ejaz Ghani “India’s Pathways to Success: Winning in the Next Decade”
Dr. Ajay Chhibber is the Distinguished Visiting Scholar at, Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP), George Washington University, Washington D.C, and a Senior Visiting professor at ICRIER. He served in senior positions at the UN as Assistant Secretary-General and at the World Bank where he directed the seminal World Development Report on the Role of the State.
He has a Ph. D from Stanford University, an MA from the Delhi School of Economics. He has also done advanced management courses at Harvard University and at INSEAD, France.
His latest book co-authored with Salman Soz “Unshackling India: Hard Truths and Clear Choices for Economic Revival “Harper-Collins was declared the Best New Book in Economics for 2022 in the Financial Times and was awarded the India Economic Forum Literary Award for 2022.
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Alisa Di Caprio (Ph.D.) is the chief economist at R3, a blockchain platform company. She does the macroeconomic and strategic analysis for digital assets, central bank digital currencies, payments, and trade. Previously, she was a senior economist at Asian Development Bank in Tokyo and Manila. As the resident trade and technology economist, she spearheaded the institutional innovation program as well as trade digitization efforts. she also calculated the global trade finance gap from 2013-2017. She holds a master’s in international economics from John Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from MIT in international development with a focus on labor economics.
In this podcast Alisa sets the expectations for blockchain in 2023, reviews trade finance projects in 2022; the lesson learned from boom and bust cycles. She also predicts the big blockchain issues for governments this year, blockchain saturation in the financial sector, and her wish for 2023.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neetamisra.substack.com/subscribe
Mark Kimura (Ph.D.) is an AI engineer and computer vision expert. He is a senior scientist at Oceanit where he is developing an A.I. system to detect infrastructure damages (using TensorFlow Object Detection API), as well as other computer vision and miscellaneous A.I. projects. He has also developed a user-friendly A.I. toolbox for building Convolutional Neural Networks based on Keras/TensorFlow. He holds a master’s and a doctorate in regional planning from Cornell University.
In this podcast, Mark talks about what is exciting and new in AI including ChatGPT, and how AI continues to make inroads into our daily lives. He goes over the benefits and potential dis-benefits to low-income employment and how these disruptions will impact society. He also touches on how emerging markets can access AI and the philosophical dilemma that AI poses to our approach to work.
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Jason Jacksonis Ford Career Development Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Jason is also a member of the Task Force on Work of the Future at MIT.
In this podcast, Jason focuses on the relationship between states and markets. He focuses on the historical origins and evolution of the institutional arrangements through which states and markets are constituted from the late 19th century to the present with a focus on foreign investment in India from the late colonial period to the present, drawing on case studies from Brazil and the historical United States. He assesses the implications of political struggles between business, government, and societal actors for market structure and resulting competitive and distributional outcomes. Jason reflects on the research of Alice Amsden, Mushtaq Khan, Alfred Chandler and Vivek Chhibber.
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Source: Getty Images
This podcast is part of a two-podcast series on reforming the Bretton Woods institutions by Ajay Chhibber, drawing on his paper on reforming the Bretton Woods Institutions. Some of the issues that he highlights are that the Bretton Woods institutions are no longer fit for purpose to meet today’s global challenges because their governance structures remain more or less what was created at the end of World War II, and their size and mandate have made them less able to address today’s challenges. They are now seen primarily as institutions to help deal with problems in the developing world, and they are struggling to even do that. What is needed today are genuinely global institutions that address global problems.
The first podcast in this series focuses on reforming the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and this podcast follows up with reforming the World Bank Group (WBG). In this podcast, Ajay Chhibber lays out a key criticism of the WBG, that it is not doing enough about climate change. Moreover, he states that what the world needs today is a global institution tasked with guiding a global transformation toward a sustainable planet and promoting shared prosperity. Instead, the World Bank, which earlier adapted well to address global poverty, is now seen as a multipurpose development bank that tries to provide support to countries for their perceived needs, without much overall strategic vision. Even in that role, it has issues and problems. Key critiques of the WBG include failed structural-adjustment programs, its flawed Doing Business Index, and an excessive focus on lending at the expense of its much better acclaimed non-lending services and analytical work. It used to be a leader in thinking on economic development, but has lately fallen behind, and is often seen as a laggard in terms of how it addresses these issues. Another major critique of the World Bank Group is its insufficient focus on catalyzing private flows.
It has also been overly conservative and risk-averse in the use of its capital base. As a result, it has not been able to lend as much and leverage private capital flows for infrastructure and climate change. It has underutilized its guarantees, focused largely on loans, and has not financed insurance facilities as much as it could have. It has also been criticized for being too slow and laden with bureaucratic procedures that cause costly delays for its borrowers and make it difficult for the private sector to want to do business with it. Its country focus has improved performance but neglected its ability to meet global and regional financing needs. It needs a substantial overhaul of its objectives and much more innovative use of its capital base and financial instruments.
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Dave Harden is the CEO of Q2 Impact - a firm that leverages talent, technology, and capital to help solve some of the world's most complex problems. Working with the private sector, communities, and governments, Q2 Impact seeks to promote trade and investment, develop economic opportunity, advance security, and stability, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance at home and abroad.
Before this, he was a Minister Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service. He served as the Assistant Administrator for the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance in the Obama Administration. He spearheaded all USAID efforts to respond to crises and stabilization efforts – including responses in Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, the West Bank/Gaza, and Yemen.
Dave also ran for public office and in a two-part series for Policy Chatters he talks about his career in the foreign service and his experience running for public office in rural Maryland in the US. Listen to the podcast on aid and conflict here. This podcast focuses on his experience running for public office in rural Maryland.
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Dave Harden is the CEO of Q2 Impact - a firm that leverages talent, technology, and capital to help solve some of the world's most complex problems. Working with the private sector, communities, and governments, Q2 Impact seeks to promote trade and investment, develop economic opportunity, advance security, and stability, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance at home and abroad.
Prior to this, he was a Minister Counselor in the career Senior Foreign Service. He served as the Assistant Administrator for the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance in the Obama Administration. He spearheaded all USAID efforts to respond to crises and stabilization efforts – including responses in Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, the West Bank/Gaza, and Yemen.
Dave also ran for public office and in a two-part series for Policy Chatters he talks about his career in the foreign service and his experience running for public office in rural Maryland in the US. This podcast focuses on his work in the foreign service and implementing aid programs in conflict-affected areas.
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https://www.pcf-p.com/projects/international-monetary-fund-headquarters-2/
In this podcast, Ajay Chhibber draws on his paper on reforming the Bretton Woods Institutions and focuses on the IMF. Some of the issues that he highlights are that the Bretton Woods institutions are no longer fit for purpose to meet today’s global challenges because their governance structures remain more or less what was created at the end of World War II, and their size and mandate have made them less able to address today’s challenges. They are now seen primarily as institutions to help deal with problems in the developing world, and they are struggling to even do that. What is needed today are genuinely global institutions that address global problems.
The IMF is accused of having failed at two of its major functions—to warn the world of impending global crises and do adequate surveillance of the global monetary and financial system.
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Myra Strober is a labor economist and Professor Emerita at Stanford University. She was the founding director of the Stanford Center for Research on Women (now the Clayman Institute for Gender Research) and the first chair of the National Council for Research on Women. You can find more information on her latest book MONEY AND LOVE: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions at https://www.moneylovebook.com/
We are often told that love and money decisions need separate approaches; we should leave romantic decisions to our hearts and make financial choices with our heads. However, in their new book MONEY AND LOVE: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions (HarperOne, January 10, 2023), Stanford professor Myra Strober and social innovation leader Abby Davisson argue that relationship decisions involve money and career as well as love, and career decisions affect family.
Take the money and love quiz!
The authors provide a reassuring framework, the 5Cs, to ensure that readers consider all aspects of love and money decisions–vital decisions that determine the course of their lives. Should you move in with your partner, have another child, move to a new city, accept a career promotion? The 5Cs framework offers a simple approach to making complex choices.
1.Clarify what’s important to you: to make an effective decision you must first understand what you truly want and what you don’t
2.Communicate: as you clarify what you want, open up a two-way dialogue with others involved in the decision
3.Consider a Broad Range of Choices: few decisions are strictly either/or, and one key to better decision-making is broadening your alternatives
4.Check-in with Friends, Family, and Other Resources: sharing your thought process or reaching out to others can bring new insights
5.Explore Likely Consequences: weigh the short-term and long-term consequences of different choices before you make a final decision
This book is the perfect guide we all need as we grapple with the dramatic shifts in relationship and career roles in today’s post-pandemic era.
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Dr. Raees Mohammed comes from an Arundhatiyar family in Kotagiri, Nilgiris District, Tamil Nadu. After finishing his Doctoral Thesis on “Sanitation Workers in South India” from Indian Institute for Advance Studies in Shimla, he finished a post-doctorate from the University of West Cape, South Africa. Raees was active in anti-caste politics in his student days at Hyderabad Central University. He founded Dalit Camera – a YouTube channel in 2011 – which has reached 90,300 subscribers. Dalit Camera reports on and critically engages with issues around caste from the perspective of Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi and other minorities living in India.
He also was one of the founders of the Nilgiris Sanitation Workers Union, the first registered trade union of sanitation and allied workers. Following the collapse of a 20 feet wall that was erected to keep Dalits out in Mettupalayam – which killed 17 people including 10 women and 3 children – Raees shed his previous identity as Ravichandran Bathran and converted to Islam adopting the name Raees Mohammed “in order to leave the caste system”. Raees works on the ground mobilizing sanitation workers and ekes his livelihood by running a small shop and operating a septic tank cleaning truck.
Donations to Dalit Camera from Indian Nationals can be made to Google Pay +918220705729
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In this final episode of the series Heterodox Approaches to a Post-Pandemic World; What would Alice say? Professor Bish Sanyal shares his perspectives on Alice Amsden and her work. He recollects the early days of the International Development Group (IDG) at MIT, working with Alice Amsden, and Judith Tendler on the role of state and government successes in policymaking.
Bish is the Ford International Professor of Urban Development and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and also leads the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program at MIT.
Bish joined MIT in 1984, served as the Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 1994 to 2002, as the Chair of the MIT Faculty from 2007 until 2009, and most recently, as Head of the International Development Group.
Bish’s publications include five books; his most recent (2012) is called Planning Ideas that Matter (MIT Press). He has advised governments on four continents, as well as leading international institutions.
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Our guest on Policy Chatters is Professor Antonio Andreoni. He is a Professor of Development Economics at the Department of Economics, SOAS University of London. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London, and Visiting Professor at the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, University of Johannesburg.
Antonio speaks with Policy Chatters on his research on production dynamics, technological change, the social conditions of innovation; structural transformation, financialization, and the political economy of industrial policy. He also talks about the influence that Alice Amsden’s work has had on his research and his application of her work to climate change, compressed development, and late green industrialization and the changing geo-political situation within which industrialization is occurring.
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This podcast focuses on employment and industrial policy in India. Below is an interview with Professor Jayan Jose Thomas on the same topic.
- Tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am a Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, since July 2010. I am a former member of the Kerala State Planning Board. My research deals with various issues related to development, mainly labor, industrialization, and the macroeconomy. I teach courses on macroeconomics, Indian economic development, international economics, and planning and development. While India has been the primary focus of my research, I have been maintaining a lively academic interest in China and East Asia as well.
- What is the nature of the job challenge in India?
The implication are obvious. India needs to create many more jobs in sectors outside agriculture – industry, construction, and services. But that is where we have failed. Consider this: Between 2012 and 2018, India’s non-agricultural workforce could have increased at the rate of 17.5 million a year, considering the rates at which the working-age population was growing and workers were exiting agriculture. That is the potential labor supply. But the actual labor absorption in industry, construction, and services were at the rate of 4.5 million a year. There is thus a huge mismatch in the labor market, with demand falling way behind the potential labor supply. As a result, India’s unemployment rate jumped to 6.1% in 2017-18.
- How would you define industrial policy vis-a-vis employment absorption?
The difficulty is that the labor supply growth in India is accelerating during a period in which the employment elasticity of growth has declined significantly. Due to automation and other technological changes, the production of one ton of steel or garments requires much fewer workers today than it did two or three decades back. Therefore, it will be difficult for India to replicate China’s success in absorbing massive amounts of labor into its export-oriented industries during the 1990s and 2000s.
This means that India needs to do much more than improve the ‘ease of doing business for foreign and domestic firms and simply hope that they will create new jobs in large enough numbers. We need to invest in modern technologies –- not developed-country technologies that tend to displace laborAlice with machines, but instead in the knowledge that will create new value and employment opportunities in, say, agriculture or food processing. We need policies that promote the growth of small and medium enterprises, which have the potential to generate jobs. In sum, we need an industrial policy that urgently addresses our development needs.
- How do we situate the demographic dividend and the time frame for absorbing this into significant industrial growth?
It is clear that India is facing an employment crisis today. From the 2000s onwards, our working-age population has been growing at a fast rate. At the same time, we expect to see a growing shift of the workforce away from agriculture. Even in 2020, 43.5% of India’s workforce was engaged in agriculture and allied activities. The corresponding proportion was 25% in China and 1% in the US. A large segment of India’s agricultural workers is in what may be described as ‘disguised unemployment’. That is going to change. A young person in rural India, who is more educated and has greater aspirations than her parents, is not likely to consider agriculture as an employment option. Productivity and per capita incomes are not high in agriculture, and in any case, there is no need for so many workers to crowd the agricultural sector.
- Can you speak a little bit about intra-state variations?
There are significant differences across the Indian States with respect to the rates of demographic transition. For instance, estimates show that, in 2036, the proportion of the population in the age group of 15-59 years will be 66.5% in Uttar Pradesh but only 59.5% in Kerala. Therefore, industrial development and employment creation possibilities will also be different across the various States. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and other States with slowing population growth will not be successful in labor-intensive industries the way Uttar Pradesh or Bihar can be. In fact, industrial policies will have to be more state-specific. State governments should also have greater financial resources at their command to implement industrial and employment policies suited to their regions.
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This podcast series builds on the work of Professor Alice Amsden, former Barton L. Weller Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a leading heterodox economist. She was globally renowned for her work on industrial development and policies in developing countries. Her early research focused on the late industrializing economies of East Asia; she would later apply her theory of development to other regions. She challenged orthodox economic and normative policy making, in particular, the Washington Consensus; a Neo-liberal, one size fits all approach to policymaking agreed upon between the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Professor Amsden posited that the more freedom the developing countries had to set their policies the faster they grew. In an interview, she explained why she was drawn to East Asia “I am usually driven by injustice and hypocrisy, rather than by a two-sector model, although that is always in the background”. She would add, “learning to develop requires a shift from relying on pure deductive theories to relying on inductive live experiences in real-time. If emerging economies are to continue to surge if less developed countries are to step-up their output, they need a mutinous mind, a soul of sedition, and a revolution in reasoning about economic development”.
In her book on Taiwan, Beyond Late Development: Taiwan's Upgrading Policies, co-authored with Wan-Wen Chu the authors showed how latecomers caught up in high-tech industries and modern services, the critical factors being government policies and large-scale firms that drive skills, speed, and scale. In a separate and earlier study on Taiwan, on the manufacturing of machine tools, she showed how through local entrepreneurship, small firms devoid of any government support, used reverse engineering and tapped into an existing reservoir of skilled labor to make it to the top of the industry globally. She would say “This was one of the few industries I ever studied where government support was not required. I always use it as a benchmark. It got its capital from slogging away and selling its inner-city factories when real estate prices soared”.
In her path-breaking book ‘Asia’s next Giant, South Korea and late Industrialization’ she documented how nationally owned firms learned their production engineering and project execution skills and found that it was skills rather than innovation that was a factor in their success in world markets. She highlighted how the government offered subsidies to firms, however, imposed strict performance standards and focused on export processing to absorb labor. The governments focus on jobs and employment and more importantly learning paid off. Korea’s entire industrialization was based on learning, she would state “the concerns about jobs and employment paid off for the Korean people in so many ways. Professional managers first gained experience in labor-intensive plants, and as employment grew, the government did not have to apologize for investing in capital-intensive industries, where the acquisition of technological capabilities surged, also heavy investment in jobs and education were critical for democratization”.
In her seminal book The Rise of “The Rest”: Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies she documented how after a century of struggle, a dozen non‐Western countries with pre‐Second World War manufacturing experience succeeded in entering the orbit of modern industry. For the first time, countries without the competitive asset of proprietary, pioneering technology became economic powers. How industrialization among these prime latecomers succeeded, why it followed a novel path, and what some countries did to advance farther than others are central theses of the book. She was an early predictor of China’s success. In her final book ‘The Role of Elite’s in Economic Development that she co-authored with Alisa Di Caprio and James Robinson, the authors would interrogate the role of the elite who were the beneficiaries of state subsidies in economic development, and played an outsized role in a country’s trajectory of growth.
In an interview given in 2008, to Professor Rolph van der Hoeven, she would state “Even today no one talks about gross unemployment. That’s too hot. Better stay out of the labor market. It’s all about poverty alleviation now. No one cares about jobs. They care more about cultural liberty, for example, because social theory is in fashion”. In response to a shift within developing countries to equitable and social development as promoted by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) she responded that “curing poverty by creating employment took time but trying to raise living standards by encouraging social reform would take an eternity”.
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Podcast with Dr. Alisa Di Caprio that is part of a series on the academic research and work of Alice Amsden, formerly the Barton L. Weller Professor of Political Economy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alice was a leading heterodox economist who published extensively on industrial strategies for emerging markets. Alisa is currently the chief economist at R3, a blockchain platform company. She does the macroeconomic and strategic analysis for digital assets, central bank digital currencies, payments, and trade. Previously, she was a Senior Economist at Asian Development Bank in Tokyo and Manila. As the resident trade and technology economist, she spearheaded the institutional innovation program as well as trade digitization efforts. she also calculated the global trade finance gap from 2013-2017. Her Ph.D. is in International Development with a focus on labor economics. She studied with Alice Amsden from 2001-2007 and co-authored a book with her in 2008.
Alisa focuses on industrial policy, techno nationalism, and resilient supply chains. She also discusses a book that she co-authored with Alice Amsden and James Robinson on the role of elites in economic development in this podcast. She shares her experiences of working with Alice Amsden.
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For the past week, women and men in Iran have taken to the streets to protest the custodial death of a young woman Mahsa Amini, age 22, at the hands of the morality police. Mahsa was arrested because her hijab did not cover her entire head and her hair was showing. A family member, Erfan Mortezaei, states “She was tortured, according to eyewitnesses," he claimed. "She was tortured in the van after her arrest, then tortured at the police station for half an hour, then hit on her head and she collapsed." Niloufar Hamedi the journalist who broke the story has been arrested. Hadis Najafi, age 21 was killed by six bullets when she joined the protests. Speaking from Tehran, Yasmin reminds us not to forget the brave women who are risking their lives to fight for their rights.
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In this episode of Policy Chatters Professor Michelle Thompson at the Department of Urban Planning and Studies at the University of New Orleans, discusses Quality Opportunity Zones (QOZ’s), policy evaluation, and innovation, where the policy has worked well and where it has moved away from its intended beneficiaries. As the Biden administration is poised to decide whether to allow the policy to continue and in what form, Professor Thompson provides insightful policy suggestions for the next issue of QOZ’s. She also discusses her work on environmental justice with respect to the water supply in Jackson, Mississippi, and the use of public-private participation (PPP) of the Geographic Information Models that she pioneered, the 15-minute City, and her plans to adapt PPP-GIS for Black Paris.
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Myra Strober
is a labor economist and Professor Emerita at the School of Education at Stanford University. She is also a Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University (by courtesy). Myra’s research and consulting focus on gender issues at the workplace, work and family, and multi-disciplinarity in higher education. She is the author of numerous articles on occupational segregation, women in the professions and management, the economics of childcare, feminist economics and the teaching of economics. Myra’s most recent book is a memoir, Sharing the Work: What My Family and Career Taught Me About Breaking Through (and Holding the Door Open for Others) 2016). She is also co-author, with Agnes Chan, of The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan (1999).
Myra is currently teaching a course on work and family at the Graduate School of Business.
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Part of the series on Pandemic Setbacks, my podcast with Sonali Khan, Managing Director, Sesame Workshop on their work in India, the Indian muppet Chamki, models for engaging in gender-neutral parenting, policy asks, measuring impact, and new methods for reaching homes and families over the pandemic.
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Neeta Misra speaks with professor Rolph Van Der Hoeven Emeritus Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University at the Hague.
This podcast is part of a series, Heterodox Approaches to a Post-Pandemic World: What would Alice say? that reflects on the academic research and work of Alice Amsden, formerly the Barton L. Weller Professor of Political Economy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alice was a leading heterodox economist who published extensively on industrial strategies for emerging markets and was a counterpoint to the existing pedagogy of Neo-classical economists and the Washington Consensus.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neetamisra.substack.com/subscribe
Policy Matters is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Dr. Purnima Menon Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) talks about the perfect storm that has pushed back nutrition achievements as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
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