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Abhijit Banerjee

lines on the record: 77
first: 2019-12-30
most recent: 2019-12-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, there is this extremely successful culture out there, whether it's good or bad, we don't know. And people are saying that. They're writing. We need to know what these bastards are up to or whatever. They have their own, they're often quite negative, but they're saying, how could we not, they are successful? They're like ruling the world. We really need to know what they're doing. So they start reading up on all this stuff and they're writing about it. There's actually by 1820s, even before the 1820s, Ramon Roy, who was the first, I think, great Bengali intellectual who's not, I would say not left-leaning, I think is very”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In eighteen seventeen, what now is called Presidency University was set up as Hindu College, but the Hindu College was never for Hindus because the first famous professor there was Dirozio, who was a Christian. He was the first and perhaps the most visible sign. And it was funded by the Hindu community. And the idea was each community will fund one, but in fact that didn't happen. So Hindus, Muslims, Christians, everybody went there. This is 1817. Jefferson was very proud of having set up Virginia as a liberal arts university with a library is the center point. That's in 1825. So this is eight years before that. They already set this up. I think this is a moment in history which seems to me comes at the encounter with the British, the sense that...”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think contact with the British created this. I mean, this is very controversial, and I'll get killed by many people who have strong views on this. But I think that it's very hard to imagine exactly what happened then. Maybe something else could have happened that was wonderful. I don't know the counterfactual. English 18th century liberal and conservative discourses using them, this very nice historical, there's a bunch of historians who study this period, the 1800 to 1840 in Bengal. And it's a really fascinating period. up in arms, they're fighting the Brahminical traditions, the Brahminical tradition is fighting back. The first, one fact that is I like to emphasize is the first, I think, purely secular institution of higher education in the world is in Kolkata.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess why Bengalis? I think again it goes back to the fact that Bengalis were the first group of people, maybe a little bit with the Parsis, as being the comprador class, as we Marxists one day once upon the time used to call them, of the British, the people who worked for the British with the British and made a good living. And I think that class very quickly started absorbing English writers and Scottish writers. They read, you know, by 1800 already, this is just 25 years after. You're starting to see people who are writing in Bangla about Hume and about Rousseau. They're reading European writers mostly in English, but they've mastered English. They're reading all these things. So I think the reason.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Counting Pakistan or Bangladesh, the UK Absolutely. No question. I mean, these days, the best Indian restaurants in the world happen to be in Bangkok. And I have not tried Bangkok Indian food because when I go to Bangkok, I want to eat Thai food, which is excellent too. But, I mean, the UK has excellent, excellent Indian food and trashy and horrible and kind of gloppy. The whole range, but including the high end, which is really quite excellent.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sustain them? No, no, actually, they're not more labor intensive. I cook a lot. I actually can make a fair amount of them. They're not, in a sense, they're somewhat more forgiving than French sweets, which require, if you're making a meal foy or something, those are extremely labor intensive and they require extremely mindful labor. Indian sweets are actually relatively slow cooked. They don't involve baking, which is the thing that goes wrong because once you stick it in the oven, it's like, God is your only guide. Whereas I think Indian sweets are relatively forgiving. I prefer much, prefer to make Indian sweets than French sweets, so I love cooking and I will make anything if I have the time and mostly because I'm greedy.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Boston, that I would go to. I think just the average quality of what they produce is so wonderful. No name. There are two bakeries. One is cheaper and less good, the high-end bakery, you pay 10 cents more for a baguette. Instead of 95 pence, whatever cents, you pay one euro and five cents for a baguette or something. And the baguettes are always excellent and the cakes are excellent. I actually think that it's an interesting question why US is so exceptional in this. Italy is the same. I mean, I don't love the bread, but the pastry is excellent in Spain. It's the same.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“France has fabulous. I think the US is exceptional in quality of the, let me say, the fact that you don't get actually excellent sweets in most places. Hardly anywhere and you pay through your nose. We spend lots of time in a small village in Provence. It's a really small village, not one of these villages where whatever Albert Camus used to live. It's like a no-name village at the edge of the Lubedo. And the sweet shop there produces better sweets of different kinds than any place”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A place where you actually don't just get switched, you get savories as well. And the savories are excellent in Kolkata. If you go out for the day, the safest place to eat is in a sweet shop. It's always freshly made savouries available. You eat freshly made savouries and you get some sweets at the end.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mid 19th century on what you can eat out, what is eating out, what can you buy in a shop, etc. And I think the late 19th century, you see that basically sweet shops are actually provide not just sweets, but for travelers, you can actually eat a lunch there for 50 cents even now, and excellent lunch. some savories and a suite and maybe for 40 rupees you get all of that and it was actually the core mechanism for reconciling raminical cultures of different kinds with a certain amount of you know social mobility people came from outside they were working calcut was a big city in india so all the immigrants came what would they eat so i think a lot of these sweet shops”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah I think largely because Elkuta actually also which is less known has I absolutely amazing food. In general the food is amazing had a very I mean, relative to the rest of India, Kolkata had a very large middle class with fair amount of surplus and who were willing to spend money on, they didn't, so restaurants were not, I think they were cast and other reasons why restaurants didn't flourish. That's sort of like, you know, is it not an accident that a lot of Indian restaurants were born out of truck stops? These are called Habas and that caste has a lot to do with. But, you know, sweets are just too difficult to make at home. So even though lots of people used to make some of them. And I think there was some line that was just permitted that you can have sweets made out of in these specific places made by these castes. There was all kinds of conversations about this in the early to...”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Iraq less so, I think Iran and Saudi Arabia probably are two big countries with lots of rich people who need a playground. I don't know that that's replicable at any scale.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Alas, no, I think that you have these tiny, tiny, tiny countries basically, with, I would say, very specific political configurations. I think Li Quinu knew very well that if he didn't deliver a very specific set of environmental conditions and was if he were falling behind Malaysia around Singapore was a very, very, very fragile project in 1960 and one that I think they were lucky to have him as the dictator. I think he was, I think, in the end committed to some things which were, but they could have easily had someone who had crazy views and there were plenty of people with crazy views. I think small cities at the edge of other Less liberal societies also are very strange examples to use. I would say Dubai is, you see so many people from Saudi Arabia,”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Essentially stopped for 20 years. Why do those kinds of things happen? That we don't understand. I think we are lousy at predicting growth.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They don't understand it. This is the point we make in the book that we really think we understand, I think very basic insights, one being, I think, the one that my colleague Bob Solo made very clear, which is that growth has a tendency to run out. Once you used up your best talent and your best capital and your best locations, there's going to be less and less so. And I think that's probably the only thing I think which has been pretty consistently borne out, that fast growth slows down. China is slowing now. And there's nothing tragic about it. It's a normal way of things. The thing that we don't understand is what makes that happen sooner or later, more or less, etc. Brazil grew for 20 years, extremely fast between 1960 and 1980.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“10 examples of very successful entrepreneurs or maybe 15 or 20. I don't know the history well enough to say that, but it's not that this is Venice for a long time was one and then it stopped, but is it that essentially your location is your ticket to success or is it something more than that? Can you build economies out of entrepose?”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we understand it at all well. And the reason partly we don't understand is because is it that Goa was just too near Bombay and that Hong Kong being at that absolutely wonderful spot between Japan, Korea and the north of China? India, a lot of opium traded, all of these things went through there. So it was like there's tons of, it's a great place to be an entrepreneur. And I don't know that the world can handle a certain number of successful entrepreneurs. Go up may have been too near to Bombay to be a successful entrepreneur. It's not clear that there was a great location. So again, do I know that that was the reason why Hong Kong was successful in God? Absolutely not. I mean, like they're only...”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is anything more than that? I think yes, if you could imagine a situation where the politics is exactly aligned right, where I would say that creating kind of the legal and physical infrastructure for enterprises would be excellent. But it's just the idea that this is a country which can't enforce its own laws and therefore outsiders can do it for them. There's something in that idea that seems to me to be odd because it's precisely the fact that this country can't enforce its own laws because there's something in this country which is making it hard to enforce those laws. And maybe it's competence, but it's not just competence. Politically, the opportunity is such these things offer are too tempting, it seems to me.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that if you could have charter cities, there may very well be great. The problem is more, can you believe that the country would honor the particular commitments that it requires? So a charter city is the idea that we are going to hand over the maintenance of our law and order to a different country. else will act as an enforcer. I think the democratic process doesn't really It's very easy to exploit that. You know, it's very easy to come and say, look, your government has been taken over by these enemy people or these foreign people and they're running, how could they be the people deciding what's legal and what's not, etc. Just seem politically extremely unstable, easy to attack, very visible target. It's not clear to me that”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enterprising was willing to work hard can get trained in English, speak like an American, say hello, this is John or whatever that you're supposed to say and carry on a conversation. And that training I don't see is any different from the upgrading of a steelworker to a line supervisor. I don't know enough about either of these things, but I would not, it's not obvious to me that a location or a small country could not get a lot of benefits out of services. The problem is more that services are also where automation is hitting.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Excellent question. I'm slightly out of my depth in all of this because it's not, this is sort of macro trade and macro trade is not exactly my specialization. Nonetheless, I would say that prima facie, no, I don't know that there is something that you a small country exporting lots of services, could it be or a location in even a big country like India, the software and after that the BPO boo brought in a lot of people who were actually relatively low skilled, who learned English and basically spend a lot of effort. There's lots of these classes all over India, in small towns, learn English work for a BPO. And that's exactly this idea that somebody with a high school education who's smart, who's”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A piece where I, it's not that I disbelieve it, it's not that I have studied it. It's just not clear to me that there's a reason to think that if the same options were available in services, they would not serve for the same purposes. I just don't know whether that either of that is about to happen.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know that it has to be manufactured. That's the part that I think Danny Roderick's view and something that, as I said, I'm quite willing to believe it, but I don't know why it has to be manufactured. It seems to me what was important was that it was a set of middle skilled people who could, the skill range in which you could move was still accessible to people who had a poor education. The key move was not so much for this manufacturing or not, but rather it was some skills involved and those skills can be learned and the skills were available to people who didn't start with having an excellent education. I don't know. It could be that manufacturing on top of that has additional benefits. That's the part I really don't know how to show or whether I actually believe or not.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reason why the petty entrepreneurs can get somewhere is because there's huge coordination by some brand named Beneton being the classic example. So it's not obvious to me that there is a, we are right now thinking, even thinking properly about a mechanism for getting the smallest entrepreneurs out of what they're doing and into the labor market.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't see a way for them to make a shift out. To be honest, I mean, this is why I think this whole literature on universal basic income and microcredit and all these ways of creating more entrepreneurs, in some ways, I think this literature is sort of stuck in this place where they're trying to get most of these petty entrepreneurs to become a little bigger. Right now, we don't see a way to do what I think what needs to be done, which is to pick the best among these people and make them much, much bigger. Because I think the way petty entrepreneurs have been absorbed into the economy historically have been by making some people being very successful, employing lots of people, and creating large enterprises. There's very little, I mean, people give the example of Italy, but if you study it carefully, even in Italy, a lot of the”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is extremely small part of the price of the good. So what we pay in the US for the toy, a tenth of that might be the cost, the labor cost and the capital cost of it. But that means that essentially the things that kind of generate large earnings for people are not happening anymore. Lots of this is just very, very well designed products of which brand naming, marketing, making sure that they are okay. All of these things are a huge part of the price and therefore essentially if you think of the rest of it, which is it's a small amount. So that means that if you're a worker, you're getting 40 cents for a $10 toy or something. And that's just not going to make a lot of rich people or even middle class people.”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's sort of beyond my competence, to be honest. It seems like reading lots of tea leaves, but my instincts are that he's right. And I think there's additional problems. One of them is just that the fact that there's so much inequality in the world means that the products that are being designed now, a lot of the new money is being spent on are products that are where the component of quality is extremely high. They tend to be products that are like, think of kids' toys. Most of kids' toys are a matter of checking and making sure that they have nothing dangerous about it. And the checking is often done actually in other places, in Germany, for example, or some of the things, the checking is done in Germany, even though the manufacturer is done in China. As a result, the cost part of manufacturing”
2019-12-30 · Conversations with Tyler · Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source