Chris Blattman

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Update on China vs India

The Srinivasan presentation mentioned in the last post (China and India, past and future) is here.

And here is a similar take on the future of each nation by Tarun Khanna at HBS:

Our concerns for China are these: how will China give political voice to the public, if at all, along with increasing economic autonomy? We are also concerned about instability caused by migration to cities and the large (though decreasing) role of bankrupt, state-owned enterprises that continue to play a Social Security-like role in China. But the biggest source of worry is the state of China’s banking sector, which is technically insolvent. The banking problem is one of the biggest costs of the delay associated with developing a vibrant, domestic private sector.

Here are our concerns for India. How will India rein in its fiscal deficit? How will India discipline its political class? One challenge India faces is deregulation. India is also quite over-regulated compared to other countries at its level of per capita income.

It is based on an article of his with MIT’s Yasheng Huang.

For those who enjoy other cross-continental comparisons, here is another paper I love: three giants of global economic history–Jeff Williamson, John Coatsworth, and Bob Bates–compare and contrast Latin America in the 19th century to Africa in the 20th.

2 Responses

  1. My problem with these kind of papers is that they don’t cite local history classics.
    And sometimes, they even conclude what these classics said a long time ago!
    I am a brasilian and we we used to learn at school almost exactly the Acemoglu’s thesis, but a long time before he published his papers!
    But, who knows that? Almost no one read papers or books in portuguese.
    I understand that, but if you will speak about Latin America, then I expect you read spanish and portuguese!

    regards,
    Manoel

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