#Abhijit Banerjee Nobel Prize

[vipschoolbaddi]

Nobel Prize Winners in India

Nobel Prize is a prestigious award that is given in six fields, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, physics, economic sciences and peace. It was founded by Alfred Nobel, who was a Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist. Henri Dunant of Switzerland and Frederic Passy of France were the first recipients of the Nobel Prize in 1901. The first Indian to receive the Nobel Prize was Rabindranath Tagore in 1913. After him, many Indians have won this Prize in different fields, here is the list of Indian Nobel Prize Winners.

1. Rabindranath Tagore

2. C.V Raman

3. Har Gobind Khorana

4. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

5. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

6. Kailash Satyarthi

7. Abhijit Banerjee

The above list demonstrates the capability of Indian brains and their potential to make meaningful changes on a global scale. However, note that many exceptional Indians, such as Dr Narinder Singh Kapany, did not get the recognition they deserved for various reasons. Still, their contribution made a mark on the world, advancing knowledge and shaping industries. So, feel proud and try to make a difference in the field that you are most interested in and want to work in the future. Your work and dedication will be India’s pride and achievement.

[ghostcrows]

Uhg this is maybe gonna sound patronizing but sometimes people on here spend to much time making sociological theories and forget that evidence based practice >>>>> theories that tie things together and explain everything. Every time. Every time they trump it. So it’s like the current state of mental healthcare and disability accommodations being so bad leads to the theory of how pathology is a structural validation to stigmatization of neurodiversity esp things like schizophrenia. And that coupled with the hater mindset around how “popular” and “lol quirky” adhd and autism are being portrayed on social media (this sounds deeply unserious but it’s the best way I can put it) leads to people who are adhd and autistic which can be materially physically seen and is real dismissing themselves in favor of the theory. Like idk. People love to do lots of thinking and I am not at all trying to disparage it but even when you’re a radial anti establishment politically extreme leftist if you’re theorizing then you’re theorizing and venerable to the pitfalls of theories. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer won a nobel prize semi recently for doing the most water-is-wet thing and conducting experiments and looking at the results to determine policy change instead of basing policy on theory. It really opened my eyes to read about. The theory is just a tool to talk about the world. The world comes first always. Adhd being a physical condition of the brain does not fit into certain theories and so proponents of the theory will consciously or not, willfully or not, brush aside certain things that do not fit into the worldview supported by the theory or would be complicated or made worse by implementing the policy proposed by the theory. But it’s all just smoke. Does this make any sense. I saw someone say bipolar wasnt harmful outside of the stigmatization because they prescribe to the theory and I was so shocked. Manic episodes can lead to the bipolar person becoming physically violent and thank god for medication. Bipolar can ruin a life because of the things you do while in a manic episode and it can end a life in a depressive episode it’s like. Circling back around to denial of mental illness.

definitely does make sense i agree with this, we can speculate all day long but at the end of the day people are struggling, and they would likely struggle regardless of society's response towards their conditions

it really does loop back around in the end and its just frustrating

i understand not wanting to be pathologized, i understand not trusting the psychs, i understand that the system is as broken as it ever was with maybe a shinier coat of paint over it now and slightly less medieval torture methods deployed...but regardless how you classify mental illness or how you rename it, its a fairly consistent set of symptoms and experiences

its like when people have this idea that mental illness will cease to exist in the utopian post-capitalist world the revolution will bring

but the way i really know people still dont get it even within these circles is the way they cant seem to agree on how much of mental illness is even in the control of the sufferer. like theres always a point at which its simply an excuse, because, well i suffer from this and i wouldnt do that...in the fight against the stigma we throw so many people under the bus and end up only advocating for the people who can speak for themselves in the first place, the 'high functioning' people (who subsequently are not really allowed to show symptoms either because, you're too functional, you're too cognizant of your own actions, you must be doing it on purpose too)

and the anti-med stance is another i cant really get behind even knowing that yeah...you can go through everything they got and never find one that works for you, you can get meds that fuck you all the way up, even when youre on them you might still struggle, you might hate the side effects more than the illness...i get all that and i recognize all that and people totally have the right not to take shit they dont want to...but also i know people who need their medication...big pharma or not doesnt fucking matter cause its obviously something that tangibly helps enough people that we cant just not have it. same with therapy its totally understandable to lose all faith in that avenue of help but there will always be people who need that kind of service even in its imperfect state

reminds me a lot of a book i read called 'no one cares about crazy people' , every few decades we have a new dominating theory of mental illness and the people who are labeled mentally ill continue to struggle through every iteration of it

[sunaleisocial]

Study in India shows kids use different math skills at work vs. school

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/study-in-india-shows-kids-use-different-math-skills-at-work-vs-school/

Study in India shows kids use different math skills at work vs. school

In India, many kids who work in retail markets have good math skills: They can quickly perform a range of calculations to complete transactions. But as a new study shows, these kids often perform much worse on the same kinds of problems as they are taught in the classroom. This happens even though many of these students still attend school or attended school through 7th or 8th grades.

Conversely, the study also finds, Indian students who are still enrolled in school and don’t have jobs do better on school-type math problems, but they often fare poorly at the kinds of problems that occur in marketplaces.

Overall, both the “market kids” and the “school kids” struggle with the approach the other group is proficient in, raising questions about how to help both groups learn math more comprehensively.

“For the school kids, they do worse when you go from an abstract problem to a concrete problem,” says MIT economist Esther Duflo, co-author of a new paper detailing the study’s results. “For the market kids, it’s the opposite.”

Indeed, the kids with jobs who are also in school “underperform despite being extraordinarily good at mental math,” says Abhijit Banerjee an MIT economist and another co-author of the paper. “That for me was always the revelation, that the one doesn’t translate into the other.”

The paper, “Children’s arithmetic skills do not transfer between applied and academic math,” is published today in Nature. The authors are Banerjee, the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT; Swati Bhattacharjee of the newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika, in Kolkata, India; Raghabendra Chattopadhyay of the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata; Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT; Alejandro J. Ganimian, a professor of applied psychology and economics at New York University; Kailash Rajaha, a doctoral candidate in economics at MIT; and Elizabeth S. Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard University.

Duflo and Banerjee shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 and are co-founders of MIT’s Jameel Abdul Lateef Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a global leader in development economics.

Three experiments

The study consists largely of three data-collection exercises with some embedded experiments. The first one shows that 201 kids working in markets in Kolkata do have good math skills. For instance, a researcher, posing as an ordinary shopper, would ask for the cost of 800 grams of potatoes sold at 20 rupees per kilogram, then ask for the cost of 1.4 kilograms of onions sold at 15 rupees per kilo. They would request the combined answer — 37 rupees —  then hand the market worker a 200 rupee note and collect 163 rupees back. All told, the kids working in markets correctly solved this kind of problem from 95 to 98 percent of the time by the second try.

However, when the working children were pulled aside (with their parents’ permission) and given a standardized Indian national math test, just 32 percent could correctly divide a three-digit number by a one-digit number, and just 54 percent could correctly subtract a two-digit number from another two-digit number two times. Clearly, the kids’ skills were not yielding classroom results.

The researchers then conducted a second study with 400 kids working in markets in Delhi, which replicated the results: Working kids had a strong ability to handle market transactions, but only about 15 percent of the ones also in school were at average proficiency in math.

In the second study, the researchers also asked the reverse question: How do students doing well in school fare at market math problems? Here, with 200 students from 17 Delhi schools who do not work in markets, they found that 96 percent of the students could solve typical problems with a pencil, paper, unlimited time, and one opportunity to self-correct. But when the students had to solve the problems in a make-believe “market” setting, that figure dropped to just 60 percent. The students had unlimited time and access to paper and pencil, so that figure may actually overestimate how they would fare in a market.

Finally, in a third study, conducted in Delhi with over 200 kids, the researchers compared the performances of both “market” and “school” kids again on numerous math problems in varying conditions. While 85 percent of the working kids got the right answer to a market transaction problem, only 10 percent of nonworking kids correctly answered a question of similar difficulty, when faced with limited time and with no aids like pencil and paper. However, given the same division and subtraction problems, but with pencil and paper, 59 percent of nonmarket kids got them right, compared to 45 percent of market kids.

To further evaluate market kids and school kids on a level playing field, the researchers then presented each group with a word problem about a boy going to the market and buying two vegetables. Roughly one-third of the market kids were able to solve this without any aid, while fewer than 1 percent of the school kids did.

Why might the performance of the nonworking students decline when given a problem in market conditions?

“They learned an algorithm but didn’t understand it,” Banerjee says.

Meanwhile, the market kids seemed to use certain tactics to handle retail transactions. For one thing, they appear to use rounding well. Take a problem like 43 times 11. To handle that intuitively, you might multiply 43 times 10, and then add 43, for the final answer of 473. This appears to be what they are doing.

“The market kids are able to exploit base 10, so they do better on base 10 problems,” Duflo says. “The school kids have no idea. It makes no difference to them. The market kids may have additional tricks of this sort that we did not see.” On the other hand, the school kids had a better grasp of formal written methods of divison, subtraction, and more.

Going farther in school

The findings raise a significant point about students skills and academic progress. While it is a good thing that the kids with market jobs are proficient at generating rapid answers, it would likely be better for the long-term futures if they also did well in school and wound up with a high school degree or better. Finding a way to cross the divide between informal and formal ways of tackling math problems, then, could notably help some Indian children.

The fact that such a divide exists, meanwhile, suggests some new approaches could be tried in the classroom.

Banerjee, for one, suspects that part of the issue is a classroom process making it seem as if there is only one true route to funding an arithmetic answer. Instead, he believes, following the work of co-author Spelke, that helping students reason their way to an approximation of the right answer can help them truly get a handle on what is needed to solve these types of problems.

Even so, Duflo adds, “We don’t want to blame the teachers. It’s not their fault. They are given a strict curriculum to follow, and strict methods to follow.”

That still leaves open the question of what to change, in concrete classroom terms. That topic, it happens, is something the research group is in the process of weighing, as they consider new experiments that might address it directly. The current finding, however, makes clear progress would be useful.

“These findings highlight the importance of educational curricula that bridge the gap between intuitive and formal mathematics,” the authors state in the paper.

Support for the research was provided, in part, by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s Post-Primary Education Initiative, the Foundation Blaise Pascal, and the AXA Research Fund. 

[ippnoida]

Jaipur Literature Festival 2025 hosts Delhi Preview

The Jaipur Literature Festival, celebrated as the greatest literary show on earth, is set to return for its 18th edition from 30 January to 3 February 2025, at Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur. Ahead of the main Festival, Teamwork Arts hosted a Delhi preview at The Leela Palace, New Delhi, on 9 January offering a glimpse into the detailed programming that defines this global literary extravaganza. 

This year, the festival’s themes reflect narratives that shape our world and books that have triggered our imagination with a variety of sessions. 

Sessions that focus on themes such as democracy and equality will examine the timeless quest for justice and the truths behind constitutional ideals. The crime fiction segment will bring thrilling narratives of mystery and suspense, while the biographies and memoirs section promises to offer intimate insights into extraordinary lives. For food enthusiasts, the gastronomy theme will celebrate culinary traditions and flavors that unite cultures across borders. Additionally, sessions on theatre adaptations, cinema, history, and culture will present an array of perspectives, celebrating the diverse narratives that shape our collective heritage. 

The Jaipur Literature Festival 2025 will feature an impressive lineup of speakers, including Abhijit Banerjee, Andrew O'Hagan, Anita Anand, Anna Funder, Amol Palekar, Anirudh Kanisetti, Barnaby Rogerson, Benjamin Moser, Cauvery Madhavan, Claire Messud, Claudia De Rham, David Hare, David Nicholls, Esther Duflo, Fiona Carnarvon, Geetanjali Shree, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Gideon Levy, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Ijeoma Oluo, Imtiaz Ali, Ira Mukhoty, Irenosen Okojie, James Wood, Javed Akhtar, Jenny Erpenbeck, Joe Boyd, John Vaillant, Kallol Bhattacherjee, Katy Hessel, Lamorna Ash, Lindsey Hilsum, Maithree Wickramasinghe, Manav Kaul, Manu S Pillai, Matt Preston, Miriam Margolyes, Nathan Thrall, Pankaj Mishra, Peter Sarris, Philip Marsden, Philippe Sands, Prayaag Akbar, Priyanka Mattoo, Rahul Bose, Ranjit Hoskote, Robert Service, Shahu Patole, Sophy Roberts, Stephen Greenblatt, Stephen R Platt, Sunil Amrith, Susan Jung, Tarun Khanna, Tina Brown, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, V V Ganeshananthan, Venki Ramakrishnan, Yaroslav Trofimov, and Yuvan Aves.

A commitment to inclusivity remains at the heart of the festival with the return of the sign language interpretation sessions in collaboration with Nupur Sansthan. This initiative, widely appreciated in previous editions, ensures that the festival is accessible to everyone, fostering a space where stories and ideas can truly reach everyone. 

The Festival will host over 300 luminaries, including Nobel laureates, Booker Prize-winners, journalists, policymakers, and acclaimed writers. The concurrent Jaipur BookMark (JBM), South Asia’s leading publishing conclave, will celebrate its 12th year with a focus on translations, storytelling innovations, and the role of AI in shaping the future of publishing. 

William Dalrymple, historian and festival co-director, said, “The Jaipur Literature Festival, the biggest literary festival in the world, returns with a spectacular lineup, featuring a range of award-winning writers. The festival continues to serve as a global platform where some of the world’s most influential voices come together to engage, inspire, and exchange ideas. It fosters meaningful dialogue across a wide range of topics, bridging perspectives from diverse cultural and intellectual backgrounds. It not only celebrates literature but also acts as a beacon for understanding and collaboration in an increasingly interconnected yet divided world. We hope to see you all there, where the greatest writers on the planet come together for an extraordinary celebration of literature, ideas, and dialogue, with accessibility at its finest." 

Namita Gokhale, writer and festival co-director, said, “The Jaipur Literature Festival returns to cast its web of magical enchantment over the world of books and ideas, poetry, and music. Our stellar programme covers a rich diversity of themes, across continents and cultures. This edition weaves a dynamic mosaic of books, ideas, arguments, and epiphanies. With 26 languages – 13 international and 13 Indian – it opens windows to many worlds, celebrating a unique linguistic landscape of Many Languages, One Literature. A vintage edition awaits!" 

Sanjoy K Roy, managing director of Teamwork Arts, said, “This year’s edition exemplifies the transformative power of books and ideas, building bridges across cultural and intellectual divides to celebrate our universal love for literature. The festival creates a space for thoughtful exchange, where stories and ideas come to life, fostering empathy, understanding, and collective growth. It is more than a celebration of the written word; it is a movement that connects individuals and communities through shared narratives and informed discourse.” 

Preeta Singh, president, Teamwork Arts, said, “Celebrating 18 incredible years of the Jaipur Literature Festival, we express deep gratitude to our partners – brands, ambassadors, foundations, and media – for their invaluable support and cooperation. Together, we’ve built an enduring experience, reaching over 400 million people globally. Even during the challenges of Covid, partners stood steadfast, with platforms like YouTube and Hotstar ensuring accessibility and media partnerships taking our stories to places like Jammu & Kashmir and Nagaland. 

“We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Nand Ghar, Hawthornden Foundation, The US Embassy, UN Women, Embassy of Ireland, Culture Ireland Grant, EU, Vedica, Mukesh Bansal, The Holberg Prize, Embassy of Netherlands, Embassy of Austria, BluSmart, Fratelli, Banyan School Tree, Rajasthan Tourism, Delhi Tourism, Harper Collins, and HUP MCLI. We also acknowledge our media partners – ABP News, Tv9, Daily Hunt, and The Print, along with our print media partners – New Indian Express, Rajasthan Patrika, Malayala Manorama, Business Standard, Amar Ujala, Dainik Bhaskar, and Sakal. To our Radio Partner, Red FM, for their invaluable support in amplifying the festival's spirit and message. With the support of JBM, the Norwegian Embassy, and Tamil publications, Jaipur Literature Festival has truly become the Kumbh of Literature, a beacon of ideas and inspiration for the world,” she said. 

Ambassador of Norway to India, May-Elin Stener, said, “Norway has been the country partner at Jaipur BookMark since its inception more than a decade ago. As founding partners of the event, we are proud of the way the publishers’ forum has developed and its integration into the Jaipur Literature Festival. JBM’s focus on the publishing industry and on translations is an important aspect of literature. We wish JBM all the best and look forward to the event in 2025.”  

The curtain-raiser featured a performance by the renowned Khartal maestro Bhungar Khan, who showcased the richness of Rajasthan’s folk rhythms. 

[jcmarchi]

From refugee to MIT graduate student

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/from-refugee-to-mit-graduate-student/

From refugee to MIT graduate student

Mlen-Too Wesley has faded memories of his early childhood in Liberia, but the sharpest one has shaped his life.

Wesley was 4 years old when he and his family boarded a military airplane to flee the West African nation. At the time, the country was embroiled in a 14-year civil war that killed approximately 200,000 people, displaced about 750,000, and starved countless more. When Wesley’s grandmother told him he would enjoy a meal during his flight, Wesley knew his fortune had changed. Yet, his first instinct was to offer his food to the people he left behind.

“I made a decision right then to come back,” Wesley says. “Even as I grew older and spent more time in the United States, I knew I wanted to contribute to Liberia’s future.”

Today, the 38-year-old is committed to empowering Liberians through economic growth. Wesley looked to the MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP) to achieve that goal. He examined issues such as micro-lending, state capture, and investment in health care in courses such as Foundations of Development Policy, Good Economics for Hard Times, and The Challenges of Global Poverty. Through case studies and research, Wesley discovered that economic incentives can encourage desired behaviors, curb corruption, and empower people.

“I couldn’t connect the dots”

Liberia is marred by corruption. According to Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception Index for 2023, Liberia scored 25 out of 100, with zero signifying the highest level of corruption. Yet, Wesley grew tired of textbooks and undergraduate professors saying that the status of Liberia and other African nations could be blamed entirely on corruption. Even worse, these sources gave Wesley the impression that nothing could be done to improve his native country. The sentiment frustrated him, he says.

“It struck me as flippant to attribute the challenges faced by billions of people to backward behaviors,” says Wesley. “There are several forces, internal and external, that have contributed to Liberia’s condition. If we really examine them, explore why things happened, and define the change we want, we can plot a way forward to a more prosperous future.”  

Driven to examine the economic, political, and social dynamics shaping his homeland and to fulfill his childhood promise, Wesley moved back to Africa in 2013. Over the next 10 years, he merged his interests in entrepreneurship, software development, and economics to better Liberia. He designed a forestry management platform that preserves Liberia’s natural resources, built an online queue for government hospitals to triage patients more effectively, and engineered data visualization tools to support renewable energy initiatives. Yet, to create the impact Wesley wanted, he needed to do more than collect data. He had to analyze and act on it in meaningful ways.

“I couldn’t connect the dots on why things are the way they are,” Wesley says.

“It wasn’t just an academic experience for me”

Wesley knew he needed to dive deeper into data science, and looked to the MicroMasters in DEDP program to help him connect the dots. Established in 2017 by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and MIT Open Learning, the MicroMasters in DEDP program is based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of MIT faculty members Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, and Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics. Duflo and Banerjee’s research provided an entirely new approach to designing, implementing, and evaluating antipoverty initiatives throughout the world.

The MicroMasters in DEDP program provided the framework Wesley had sought nearly 20 years ago as an undergraduate student. He learned about novel economic incentives that stymied corruption and promoted education.

“It wasn’t just an academic experience for me,” Wesley says. “The classes gave me the tools and the frameworks to analyze my own personal experiences.”

Wesley initially stumbled with the quantitative coursework. Having a demanding career, taking extension courses at another university, and being several years removed from college calculus courses took a toll on him. He had to retake some classes, especially Data Analysis for Social Scientists, several times before he could pass the proctored exam. His persistence paid off. Wesley earned his MicroMasters in DEDP credential in June 2023 and was also admitted into the MIT DEDP master’s program.

“The class twisted my brain in so many different ways,” Wesley says. “The fourth time taking Data Analysis, I began to understand it. I appreciate that MIT did not care that I did poorly on my first try. They cared that over time I understood the material.”

The program’s rigorous mathematics and statistics classes sparked in Wesley a passion for artificial intelligence, especially machine learning and natural language processing. Both provide more powerful ways to extract and interpret data, and Wesley has a special interest in mining qualitative sources for information. He plans to use these tools to compare national development plans over time and among different countries to determine if policymakers are recycling the same words and goals.

Once Wesley earns his master’s degree, he plans to return to Liberia and focus on international development. In the future, he hopes to lead a data-focused organization committed to improving the lives of people in Liberia and the United States.

“Thanks to MIT, I have the knowledge and tools to tackle real-world challenges that traditional economic models often overlook,” Wesley says.

[tfgadgets]

Abhijit Banerjee among 23 economists who endorsed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump

Kamala Harris reacted to Donald Trump’s ‘I am the father of IVF’ comment Twenty three Nobel Prize winning economists on Wednesday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump for the upcoming US Presidential elections.In a joint letter, the economists said that Trump’s plan to enforce hardline tariff proposals and a slate of aggressive tax cuts, would “lead to higher…

[chrisabraham]

Who's paying for this?

> [Future Tense] Nobel-Prize laureate Abhijit Banerjee on the world's largest UBI experiment

[gravitascivics]

WHAT SOCIAL SCIENTISTS CAN OFFER

In the last posting, this blog reviewed the general shortcomings of the social sciences, as an information source.  But it also pointed out that they are better at providing needed information and analysis than most other sources.[1]  To make that report, the blog focused on economics and the work of the Nobel prize winners, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo.[2]  This posting wants to focus on how the social sciences, as exemplified by economics, can be more amenable to federalist governance and politics – as promoted in this blog.

          To do that, this posting will share with readers two quotes from these economists’ book, Good Economics for Hard Times.  The first quote is:

It is important that this project [to establish a dialogue with the general public that] we be guided by an expansive notion of what human beings want and what constitutes the good life.  Economists have a tendency to adopt a notion of well-being that is often too narrow, some version of income or material consumption.  And yet, all of us need much more than that to have a fulfilling life:  the respect of the community, the comforts of family and friends, dignity, lightness, pleasure.  The focus on income alone is not just a convenient shortcut.  It is distorting lens that often has led the smartest economists down the wrong path, policy makers to the wrong decisions, and all too many of us to wrong obsessions.[3]

Here, this blogger thinks, is a call for a more communal, as opposed to individualistic, mindset when considering what economists and social scientists in general should focus upon.  Of course, the more individual view – the one that prevails today – simply reflects the dominance of the natural rights view. 

This blog has dedicated a great deal of space to describe and explain this view, but in a few words, it promotes the claim that individuals have the right to do as they please as long as they do not prohibit others from the same rights.  One can readily see that with this basic belief, resulting study in economics will emphasize income, wealth, and securing material assets.  That is, what most economists highlight in their approach to the study of economics – as the quote indicates – and counters what Banerjee and Duflo are suggesting.

          This blog has also promoted a federalist view – the liberated federalism construct – and has argued that it should replace the natural rights view in guiding the development of civics curriculum in American schools.  In a few words, that would be a curriculum that establishes the fact that the nation’s governance is based on a compact – a sacred agreement that brings together its citizenry under the relationship of a partnership.  A meaningful step in that direction would be to adopt what these economists suggest for their discipline and, by implication, for all of the social sciences.

          And the other quote gives readers more substance to what Banerjee and Duflo suggest:

A better conversation must start by acknowledging the deep human desire for dignity and human contact, and to treat it not as a distraction, but as a better way to understand each other, and set ourselves free from what appear to be intractable oppositions.  Restoring human dignity to its central place … set off a profound rethinking of economic priorities and the ways in which societies care for their members, particularly when they are in need.[4]

Equally, if all the social sciences took this recommendation to heart, they would be a great deal more useful in reestablishing a federalist nation in thought, feeling, and action.

[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Should One Listen to Social Scientists?”, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, December 5, 2023, accessed December 8, 2023, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.  Use the archives link.

[2] Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times (New York, NY:  Public Affairs, 2019).

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] Ibid., 8.

[thenationaltv243]

Who is Indian-Origin Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee.docx

Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee on Monday won the Nobel Prize for Economics, joining the list of Indians and people of Indian origin to grab the world's most prestigious award in different fields. Banerjee shared the award with his French-American wife Esther Duflo and another American economist Michael Kremer for their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."

[bookclub4m]

Episode 174 - Economics

This episode we’re talking about the genre of Economics! We discuss economic philosophy, Excel spreadsheets, micro vs macro, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails by Yanis Varoufakis, translated by Jacob Moe

Other Media We Mentioned

Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa 

Adam Hochschild

The Colour of Magic by Terry Prachett

“Perhaps there is something in this reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits? It was a cumbersome phrase. Rincewind tried to get his tongue around the thick syllables that were the word in Twoflower's own language.

What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement by Vladimir Lenin (Wikipedia)

Links, Articles, and Things

If Books Could Kill - Freakonomics

Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek (YouTube)

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two

Peter Singer (Wikipedia)

Unspeakable Conversations: Harriet McBryde Johnson on debating Peter Singer

“He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was.”

If Books Could Kill - Rich Dad Poor Dad

Saltwater and freshwater economics (Wikipedia)

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (Wikipedia)

Another normal day of mining in Africa (Reddit)

Belt and Road Initiative (Wikipedia)

Report exposes solar panel industry Uyghur forced labour links

Ouija (Wikipedia)

Chinchilla (Wikipedia)

Social media is doomed to die (The Verge)

Reddit: Antiwork

Reddit: Late Stage Capitalism

25 Economics books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole by Tiffany Aliche

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—And How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy by Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson and Arthur Manuel

Wolf Hustle: A Black Woman on Wall Street by Cin Fabré

Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business If You're Not a Rich White Guy by Kathryn Finney

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

Indigenomics: Taking a Seat at the Economic Table by Carol Anne Hilton

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex edited by Incite! Women of Colour Against Violence

Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships: Nehiyawak Narratives by Shalene Wuttunee Jobin

How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That's Rigged by Kimberly Jones

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Can’t We Just Print More Money? Economics in Ten Simple Questions by Rupal Patel

The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America by Shawn D. Rochester

Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy by Kohei Saito

The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddist Economics for the 21st Century by Sulak Sivaraksa

Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus

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Join us again on Tuesday, May 16th we’ll be talking about some old genres we’ve covered and whether we’d read them again.

Then on Tuesday, June 6th we’ll be discussing the genre of Fantasy! 

[bongboyblog]

Bengali Nobel laureates:

Rabindranath Tagore রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর - Literature (1913) - British India

Amartya Sen অমর্ত্য সেন - Economics (1989) - India

Muhammad Yunus মুহাম্মদ ইউনুস - Economics (2006) - Bangladesh

Abhijit Banerjee অভিজিত ব্যানার্জি - Economics (2019) - United States (origin: India)

Congrats to Abhijit Banerjee for winning the Nobel prize for Economics. And thanks for making India, the Bengali community and the World as whole proud.

[tsmugiiii]

Current read.

Extremely proud of their work.

[sunaleisocial]

From refugee to MIT graduate student

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/from-refugee-to-mit-graduate-student/

From refugee to MIT graduate student

Mlen-Too Wesley has faded memories of his early childhood in Liberia, but the sharpest one has shaped his life.

Wesley was 4 years old when he and his family boarded a military airplane to flee the West African nation. At the time, the country was embroiled in a 14-year civil war that killed approximately 200,000 people, displaced about 750,000, and starved countless more. When Wesley’s grandmother told him he would enjoy a meal during his flight, Wesley knew his fortune had changed. Yet, his first instinct was to offer his food to the people he left behind.

“I made a decision right then to come back,” Wesley says. “Even as I grew older and spent more time in the United States, I knew I wanted to contribute to Liberia’s future.”

Today, the 38-year-old is committed to empowering Liberians through economic growth. Wesley looked to the MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP) to achieve that goal. He examined issues such as micro-lending, state capture, and investment in health care in courses such as Foundations of Development Policy, Good Economics for Hard Times, and The Challenges of Global Poverty. Through case studies and research, Wesley discovered that economic incentives can encourage desired behaviors, curb corruption, and empower people.

“I couldn’t connect the dots”

Liberia is marred by corruption. According to Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception Index for 2023, Liberia scored 25 out of 100, with zero signifying the highest level of corruption. Yet, Wesley grew tired of textbooks and undergraduate professors saying that the status of Liberia and other African nations could be blamed entirely on corruption. Even worse, these sources gave Wesley the impression that nothing could be done to improve his native country. The sentiment frustrated him, he says.

“It struck me as flippant to attribute the challenges faced by billions of people to backward behaviors,” says Wesley. “There are several forces, internal and external, that have contributed to Liberia’s condition. If we really examine them, explore why things happened, and define the change we want, we can plot a way forward to a more prosperous future.”  

Driven to examine the economic, political, and social dynamics shaping his homeland and to fulfill his childhood promise, Wesley moved back to Africa in 2013. Over the next 10 years, he merged his interests in entrepreneurship, software development, and economics to better Liberia. He designed a forestry management platform that preserves Liberia’s natural resources, built an online queue for government hospitals to triage patients more effectively, and engineered data visualization tools to support renewable energy initiatives. Yet, to create the impact Wesley wanted, he needed to do more than collect data. He had to analyze and act on it in meaningful ways.

“I couldn’t connect the dots on why things are the way they are,” Wesley says.

“It wasn’t just an academic experience for me”

Wesley knew he needed to dive deeper into data science, and looked to the MicroMasters in DEDP program to help him connect the dots. Established in 2017 by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and MIT Open Learning, the MicroMasters in DEDP program is based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of MIT faculty members Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, and Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics. Duflo and Banerjee’s research provided an entirely new approach to designing, implementing, and evaluating antipoverty initiatives throughout the world.

The MicroMasters in DEDP program provided the framework Wesley had sought nearly 20 years ago as an undergraduate student. He learned about novel economic incentives that stymied corruption and promoted education.

“It wasn’t just an academic experience for me,” Wesley says. “The classes gave me the tools and the frameworks to analyze my own personal experiences.”

Wesley initially stumbled with the quantitative coursework. Having a demanding career, taking extension courses at another university, and being several years removed from college calculus courses took a toll on him. He had to retake some classes, especially Data Analysis for Social Scientists, several times before he could pass the proctored exam. His persistence paid off. Wesley earned his MicroMasters in DEDP credential in June 2023 and was also admitted into the MIT DEDP master’s program.

“The class twisted my brain in so many different ways,” Wesley says. “The fourth time taking Data Analysis, I began to understand it. I appreciate that MIT did not care that I did poorly on my first try. They cared that over time I understood the material.”

The program’s rigorous mathematics and statistics classes sparked in Wesley a passion for artificial intelligence, especially machine learning and natural language processing. Both provide more powerful ways to extract and interpret data, and Wesley has a special interest in mining qualitative sources for information. He plans to use these tools to compare national development plans over time and among different countries to determine if policymakers are recycling the same words and goals.

Once Wesley earns his master’s degree, he plans to return to Liberia and focus on international development. In the future, he hopes to lead a data-focused organization committed to improving the lives of people in Liberia and the United States.

“Thanks to MIT, I have the knowledge and tools to tackle real-world challenges that traditional economic models often overlook,” Wesley says.

[bhaskarhindinews]

India-origin Abhijit Banerjee among three to receive Economics Nobel

भारतीय मूल के अभिजीत समेत तीन को अर्थशास्त्र का नोबेल

हाईलाइट

अभिजीत बनर्जी, एस्थर डुफलो और ��ाइकल क्रेमर को अर्थशास्त्र का नोबेल पुरस्कार

यह पुरस्कार 'वैश्विक गरीबी खत्म करने के प्रयोग' के उनके शोध के लिए दिया गया है

अभिजीत बनर्जी भारतीय मूल के अमेरिकी अर्थशास्त्री है

अभिजीत बनर्जी, एस्थर डुफलो और माइकल क्रेमर ने सोमवार को 2019 का अर्थशास्त्र का नोबेल पुरस्कार जीता। तीनों को यह पुरस्कार 'वैश्विक गरीबी खत्म करने के प्रयोग' के उनके शोध के लिए दिया गया है। इकनॉमिक साइंसेज कैटिगरी के तहत यह सम्मान पाने वाले अभिजीत बनर्जी भारतीय मूल के अमेरिकी अर्थशास्त्री है।

[jcmarchi]

MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share Nobel Prize in economics

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-economists-daron-acemoglu-and-simon-johnson-share-nobel-prize-in-economics/

MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share Nobel Prize in economics

MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson PhD ’89, whose work has illuminated the relationship between political systems and economic growth, have been named winners of the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Political scientist James Robinson, with whom they have worked closely, also shares the award.

“Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” the Nobel academy stated in its citation. “The laureates’ research helps us understand why.”

“I am delighted. It is a real shock and amazing news,” Acemoglu told the committee by phone at the Nobel announcement.

His long-term research collaboration with Johnson has empirically supported the idea that government institutions that provide individual rights, especially democracies, have spurred greater economic activity over the last 500 years. In a related line of research, Acemoglu has helped build models to account for political changes in many countries.

Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT. He has also made notable contributions to labor economics by examining the relationship between skills and wages, and the effects of automation on employment and growth. Additionally, he has published influential papers on the characteristics of industrial networks and their large-scale implications for economies.

A native of Turkey, Acemoglu received his BA in 1989 from the University of York, in England. He earned his master’s degree in 1990 and his PhD in 1992, both from the London School of Economics. He joined the MIT faculty in 1993 and has remained at the Institute ever since. Acemoglu has authored or co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed papers and published four books. He has also advised over 60 PhD students at MIT.

Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has also written extensively about a broad range of additional topics, including development issues, the finance sector and regulation, fiscal policy, and the ways technology can either enhance or restrict broad prosperity.

A native of England, Johnson received his BA in economics and politics from Oxford University, an MA in economics from the University of Manchester, and his PhD in economics from MIT.  From 2007 to 2008, Johnson was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Acemoglu and Johnson are co-authors of the 2023 book “Power and Progress: Our 1,000-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity,” in which they examine AI in light of other historical battles for the economic benefits of technological innovation.

Acemoglu’s books include “Why Nations Fail” (2012), with political scientist and co-laureate James Robinson, which synthesized much of his research about political institutions and growth. His book “The Narrow Corridor” (2019), also with Robinson, examined the historical development of rights and liberties in nation-states.

Johnson is also co-author of “13 Bankers” (2010), with James Kwak, an examination of U.S. regulation of the finance sector, and “Jump-Starting America” (2021), co-authored with MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, a call for more investment in scientific research and innovation in the U.S.

Previously, eight people have won the award while serving on the MIT faculty: Paul Samuelson (1970), Franco Modigliani (1985), Robert Solow (1987), Peter Diamond (2010), Bengt Holmström (2016), Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (2019), and Josh Angrist (2021). Through 2022, 13 MIT alumni have won the Nobel Prize in economics; eight former faculty have also won the award.

This article will be updated later this morning.

[bharatmeraki]

Don’t Think I Would Have Won Nobel Prize if I Were in India, Says Economist Abhijit Banerjee https://ift.tt/37uiHUf #india #mumbai #indian #delhi #maharashtra #kerala #incredibleindia #rajasthan #pune #chennai #gujarat #jaipur #cricket #bangalore #hyderabad #kolkata #punjab #dubai #hindu #tamilnadu #bjp #navratri #indianarmy