Recent research takes a productive approach than in the past when economists focused on simple indicators COMMENT | DANI RODRIK, REKA JUHASZ & NATHAN LANE | As policymakers around the world embrace industrial policy in pursuit of a wide variety of objectives supply-chain resilience, green technologies, geopolitical advantage, good jobs the …
Read More »Economists misunderstand a key indicator
This big problem shows we must not allow economics to advise society with flawed theories and indicators COMMENT | Tiago Cardao-Pito | In studies, forecasts and recommendations to governments, markets are seen as capable of processing so-called rational information. Economists claim that firms’ market prices result from rational expectation about their future …
Read More »Economists want gov’t to review social welfare financing
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Economists have called for a review of the different social welfare programmes designed by the government to ensure that they transform the targeted beneficiaries. Some of the programmes highlighted for a possible review include the Youth Livelihood Program, Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment and the …
Read More »Govt must lead Uganda’s Industrialisation – Economists
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Researchers Ramadhan Ggoobi and Prof Julius Kiiza say for Uganda’s economy to transform into an industrial one the government must take the lead by intervening and investing in strategic areas like manufacturing. The duo were dialoguing with editors and journalists in Kampala under the theme …
Read More »COMMENT: Economists vs. scientists on growth
What to expect when, someday, thinking machines become so sophisticated that they will invent other machines COMMENT | KENNETH ROGOFF | Most economic forecasters have largely shrugged off recent advances in artificial intelligence (for example, the quantum leap demonstrated by DeepMind’s self-learning chess program last December), seeing little impact on longer-term …
Read More »COMMENT: Economic populism and political populism
Why one is almost always harmful, but the other can sometimes be justified in exceptional times COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | Populists in power have one thing in common: they regard limits on their power as undermining the will of the people. For many, this aversion to institutional constraints extends to …
Read More »COMMENT: Evidence-based policy mistakes
It is important to recognise that data alone are not enough, common sense matters COMMENT | KAUSHIK BASU | After years of stressing the importance of evidence-based policymaking, economists have clearly had some influence on politicians. What economists now need to do is to impress upon those same politicians that citing …
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