AAP, Sen and others

"Yet if liberals are to create common ground with socialists and Marxists in the AAP, Sen and Dreze offer a promising blueprint, despite some shortcomings. It would be silly for the liberals to cite Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek as appropriate gurus for the AAP Committee. Even Bhagwati will be unacceptable. Amartya Sen, in his latest avataar, fits the bill. Klitgaard is a good supplement." More here.

"I have an aim, I have a clear aim in my mind and the aim is that I do not like what I see in Indian politics, it is something that is inside my heart. It is like in our mythology when they talk about Arjun, he only sees one thing, he does not see anything else, you asked me about Mr. Modi you ask me about anything and the thing that I see is that the system in this country needs to change, I don't see anything else and I am blind to everything else. I am blind because I saw people I love destroyed by the system. I am blind because the system everyday is unfair to our people, I ask you today, you come from Assam and I am sure that you also in your work feel the unfairness of the system". More here. 

"Few countries in the world have been blessed with all the resources needed to create prosperity on a mass scale, but India has remained incapable of providing even drinking water to its people because of bad economic policies and a stunted, shabby idea of our place in the world." More here.

Goodbye 2013

Thank you all for your kind support and being part of the Hayek Order blog. 

I will try and post more and more blog posts often in 2014.

It’s time, to say goodbye to the year 2013, as always, the year 2013 was both good and bad to me both personally and professionally. But personally, the year was more bad than good! Professionally it is actually other way around. Anyway, it’s ending finally.

Wish you all happy new year, may the almighty and the nature give you a good health, peace and prosperity in new year.

I sincerely hope to do some good work in 2014. Some new and interesting assignments have already landed!

Looking at the prevailing politico economics of India at the moment, its really disturbing in many ways. The hardcore liberals are once again disintegrating themselves and moving apart to join other parties hands. And others are in silence as usual in the past. These are bad signal for youth in India who have seen the fruits of economic reforms and globalization etc. I will try my best and do good works in my own way.

Here are my major publications in 2013:

English articles

1.State, Democracy and Development: Institutional Perspectives, Yojana Magazine (Web Exclusives), August, 2013

2.  Aspirations of emerging giants,Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review, June, 2013

3. History of Indian economic thought: the forgotten subject, Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review, March, 2013

Tamil Articles (on National Food Security Act, Amartya Sen vs Bhagwati, free market economic thoughts of B R Ambedkar, Manmohan Singh's UPA in line with Indire Gandhi govt.):

1.   உணவு பாதுகாப்பு மசோதா நோக்கம் நிறைவேறுமா?

2.   அமர்த்தியா சென் Vs. ஜகதிஷ் பகவதி

3.   அறியப்படாத பொருளாதாரக் கருத்துகள் 

4.   இந்திரா காந்தி பாதையில் மன்மோகன் சிங்

Other unedited blog post articles at CPPR.

• Factious Polity over Prosperity
• All Bucks Stops at Skilling
• Same Old Centralized Planning

Interesting reading

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay on Real roads to the future-Don't debate distractions, look at real changes on the ground

 Ramachandra Guha on Himalayan heroines

Jagdish Bhagwati on One cannot discuss policy differences without citing opponents' writings

Modi’s BJP blues

Can Bhagwati-Sen debate bring the same change as Hayek-Keynes duel in the US in 1932

Confronting Amartya Sen's view: Why WHO's methodology on malnutrition is hopelessly flawed for India

Timely articles, must read

Secular smokescreen by Nirmala Sitharaman

Beyond the Muslim quota By Tufail Ahmad 

India’s cocooned intellectual elite by Rajeev Mantri  and  Harsh Gupta 

Dollar’s taking us for a spin by S. GURUMURTHY

S vs B "For us Indians, it’s getting a bit too much. So, some questions."

Subbarao's tenure 'worst era of performance by RBI governor'

Interview Mania!

The print as well as electronic media is full of interviews with persons of eminent. By the way, the debate on poverty definition and the vulture of Committee is yet again back on the headline!!

Here are some list:

Need to re-define poverty: C Rangarajan

Father of poverty line takes estimates with a pinch of salt

There is nothing to panic about growth: Amartya Sen

‘Nutritional planning could have been better in food security bill’

7 things you should know in the Bhagwati vs Sen slugfest

Senist antinomies-'Honour Amartya Sen but keep him out of public policy'

Debate: Bhagwati vs Sen

"Sen is not simply wrong; he also poses a serious danger to economic policy in India."

What Hindus can and should be proud of

Read, well

Whether you like it or not, I strongly believe that one has to read between the lines to do things different in musings of once own. I simply follow as a matter of fact that unless you have something different to say or argue its better to keep mum and watch what's going around you. There are very good articles in today's newspaper/blogs etc. Here are some list:

Access to loos: Amartya Sen’s views fail the smell test

Let’s Shake Up the Social Sciences

Narendra Modi may end up making the Congress scion look less ineffective

Can China change course?

Barking up the wrong tree

The untold farm rebound story

"I said I too loved Hindi, which is my mother tongue, but that did not mean I should behave like a fool."

Poverty by polity

"Poverty cannot be removed even if gold coins are given to the poor. Giving cash under NREGA or free foodgrains as per the Food Security Bill would be perpetuating poverty. The poor would be made permanently dependent on government alms."

Beyond bootstraps

Amartya refers to Bhagwati ‘attacks’. Also see here and here.

Bhagwati vs Sen

"The solutions also differ. Bhagwati has been a strong votary of free markets, and was a critic of Indian economic policy as far back as 1969. Sen is more statist in comparison. Bhagwati argues that India needs reforms to push growth. Sen believes growth is meaningless without government spending on human capabilities."

"If there is a tension, even contradiction, between Sen, the academic and Sen, the advocate, this government might, in the twilight of its tenure, do well to ask itself: did we draw our inspiration from, and put faith in, the wrong Sen?"

Some interesting links

"After a day’s work on the farm or in the factory, ambitious young villagers might spend a night in the virtual stacks—becoming 21st century Abe Lincolns or Bhimrao Ambedkars."

 Arvind Panagariya, who let fly in a subsequent interview. "I often say in jest that serious economists are handicapped in policy debates in India because their opponents feel entitled not only to their arguments but their own facts as well! And here I was facing the same from Sen!

"I think it's a stupid argument of not selling the stock wheat at a discounted price. You have already bought the stuff, if you don't sell it, you will have to pay for stocking it and that stocking cost itself is Rs 3-5 per kg so if you don't pay the Rs 3-5 kg discount you are a stupid chap."

Amartya Sen on Hayek's The Road To Serfdom

For record, I reproduce the full review article by Professor Amartya Sen on Professor F A Hayek's one of the greatest book The Road To Serfdom. This article was first published in The Financial Times on September 20, 2004.

"An insight into the purpose of prosperity" By Amartya Sen

Friedrich Hayek's combative monograph The Road to Serfdom had a profound impact on political, economic and social thinking in the decades that followed its publication 60 years ago, serving as an intellectual manifesto against socialist planning and state intervention. But are Hayek's ideas and arguments of any interest today, after the downfall of communism and the emergence of neo-liberalism as the dominant ideology of contemporary capitalism? I would argue that they remain extremely important.

Consider Hayek's insistence that any institution, including the market, be judged by the extent to which it promotes human liberty and freedom. This is different from the more common praise of the market as a promoter of economic prosperity. A huge part of economic theory is concerned with the prosperity argument, going back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo. That connection is indeed important, and it is not surprising that so much attention has been devoted to seeing the market mechanism from this perspective - defending its achievements as well as disputing particular claims and proposing qualified endorsements. Yet Hayek was surely right to insist on clarity regarding the purpose of seeking prosperity. Markets have to be judged, he argued, by their role in advancing freedoms, not just in generating more income (as Hayek once said: making money can be of interest only to the miser). This integrative perspective demands that we be concerned both with the outcome of market processes (including the economic prosperity it may generate and the extent to which that would advance human freedom) and with the processes through which these results are brought about (including the liberty of action that people have in an institutional system).

It is the perspective of seeing markets and other institutions in terms of their role in advancing freedoms and liberties of individuals that Hayek brought into singular prominence. It may be pointed out, in contrast, that despite the title of Milton Friedman's famous book (with Rose Friedman), Free to Choose, the criteria by which Friedman tends to defend the market mechanism are not liberty and freedom, but prosperity and utility ("being free to choose" is seen as a good means - a fine instrument - rather than being valuable in itself). Even though a few other economists, James Buchanan in particular (and, to some extent, John Hicks), have presented insightful ideas on a freedom-centred line of reasoning, it is to Hayek we have to turn for the classic articulation of this way of seeing the merits of the market mechanism and what it gives to society.

I am not persuaded that Hayek got the substantive connections entirely right. He was too captivated by the enabling effects of the market system on human freedoms and tended to downplay - though he never fully ignored - the lack of freedom for some that may result from a complete reliance on the market system, with its exclusions and imperfections, and the social effects of big disparities in the ownership of assets. But it would be hard to deny Hayek's immense contribution to our understanding of the importance of judging institutions by the criterion of freedom.

A second contribution of Hayek is of particular relevance to thinkers on the right of the political spectrum. In The Road to Serfdom, he gave powerful reason to indicate why explicit provision has to be made by the state and the society for the deprived and the dispossessed. While Hayek is often taken to be uncompromisingly hostile to any economic role of the state (other than what is needed to support the market mechanism), and certainly late in his life he gave grounds for thinking that this could indeed be his view, nevertheless in The Road to Serfdom Hayek's position is much broader and inclusive than that. Now that the welfare state is often under such attack, it is worth recollecting that the pioneering manifesto that championed the market mechanism on grounds of freedom did not reject the need for a welfare state and provided a reasoned defence of it as an institutional necessity.

A third contribution of Hayek is of particular interest to those on the left of the political spectrum. Hayek's critique of state planning is mainly based on a subtle psychological argument. He was particularly concerned with the way centralised state planning and the huge asymmetry of power that tends to accompany it may generate a psychology of indifference to individual liberty. As Hayek put it: "I have never accused the socialist parties of deliberately aiming at a totalitarian regime or even suspected that the leaders of the old socialist movements might ever show such inclination." One of Hayek's central points was that "socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialists disapprove".

We can hardly ignore the massive accumulation of evidence - before and after publication of The Road to Serfdom - of tyrannical use of bureaucratic power and privilege, and the political and economic corruption that tends to go with it. Hayek's central point here was to note that even though socialism has a strongly ethical quality, that is not in itself adequate to guarantee that the results of trying to implement it will be in line with its ethics, rather than being deflected and debased by the psychology of power and the influence of administrative arbitrariness.

Hayek was insightful in drawing attention to a basic vulnerability that goes with unrestrained administrative authority, and in explaining why social psychology and institutional incentives are extraordinarily important. To take the massive evidence in socialist practice of departures from expected behaviour to be no more than easily avoided individual aberrations would be comparable to blaming the "few bad apples" to whom the leaders of the coalition forces point in Iraq when they refuse to consider the systematic corruptibility underlying the torture and brutality of an unrestrained system of imprisonment. Incidentally, Hayek's psychological insights into administration also tell us something about the genesis of those terrible contemporary events.

Our debt to Hayek is very substantial. He helped to establish a freedom-based approach of evaluation through which economic systems can be judged (no matter what substantive judgments we arrive at). He pointed to the importance of identifying those services that the state can perform well and has a social duty to undertake. Finally, he showed why administrative psychology and propensities to corruptibility have to be considered in determining how states can, or cannot, work and how the world can, or cannot, be run.

As someone whose economics (as well as politics) is very different from Hayek's, I would like to use the 60th anniversary of The Road to Serfdom to say how greatly indebted we are to his writings in general and to this book in particular. Dialectics is critically important for the pursuit of understanding, and Hayek made outstanding contributions to the dialectics of contemporary economics.

The writer, Lamont university professor at Harvard University, was awarded the Nobel prize for economics in 1998.

Professor Amartya Sen is wrong, again

10 reasons why Amartya Sen is wrong about food security bill

Stuck record: Why Amartya Sen is wrong on food security again

"A report by lined to a very senior journalist said that on August 31, Manmohan met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and told her that his office had cleared the questionable coal allotments on the recommendation of her political secretary Ahmed Patel, thus washing his hands of the tainted allotments and telling Sonia  that he had no role or interest in determining who the  beneficiaries should be. And laying the blame close at the party’s door, the PM said that his then principal secretary T K A Nair had merely coordinated  the allotments as desired by Patel. No Pundit is needed to say that Patel means Sonia herself. But who will investigate Manmohan  when he is the Prime Minister? And who will investigate Patel when Sonia is the president of the party which runs the government." More here.

Why Amartya Sen likes Prof James Buchanan's theory of public reasoning?

Meeting different people is not all that bad even if some one is really thinking differently about them. I had brief opportunity to meet Prof Sen early this month. He had mentioned about one of his new article and that is the one I am citing here. It is worth to read the entire article for the below para alone.

• "Public reasoning is not only crucial for democratic legitimacy, it is essential for a better public epistemology that would allow the consideration of divergent perspectives. It is also required for more effective practical reasoning. It can bring out what particular demands and protests can be restrained in interactive public reasoning, in line with scrutinized priorities between a cluster of quite distinct demands. This involves a process of “give and take” which many political analysts, from Adam Smith and the Marquis de Condorcet in the eighteenth century to Frank Knight and James Buchanan in our time, have made us appreciate better."

Prof Amartya Sen: conflicts in liberalisation

On December 16th of this month, I had a great opportunity to listen to Prof Amartya Sen. This is the first time I got to see him closely and observe his actions in telling something about economics, politics and his friends like Dr Manmohan Singh. The session was chaired by Business Standard Chairman Mr T N Ninan.

The reader of this blog know that I came to know the fact that Prof Sen won 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics Science through my Tamil Language teacher.

Any way, Prof Sen delivered a lecture at Hotel Le Meridien, New Delhi and it was a part of 2011 Delhi Economics Conclave. Prof Sen's lecture was not on any specific topic. He briefly touched broadly on: (i) global financial crisis, (ii) the Euro crisis, (iii) implications on Indian economy and (iv) poor performance of social development indicators in India.

Prof Sen's understanding on 2008 financial crisis might be exceptional but given the ideological lean what he informed the hundred of industry member was not new at least in my view. So basically, he summarized by stating simply that the 2008 crisis erupted due to over confidence of banks (on lending, risks, etc), lack of rational confidence and inability of regulator. He also said that Adam Smith never used the word "capitalism" in his all works. According to Prof Sen Adam Smith only used the word "market" to analyse the players in the society.

On Bush and Obama: Prof Sen explained that Bush era saw the unrestrained capitalism, crisis of government and bailout to banks.

On Euro: Prof Sen said Euro is not worth having because there is no fiscal union in the political economy of EU. He also pointed out that the central problem of Euro crisis is epistemology and the crisis of government efficacy resulting from the fundamental like freedom and actions of key decision makers. He further went on to argue that the people who are reading the crisis in wrong side. He also talked about the 1943 EU movement of unity in Euro.

On Indian economy: Prof Sen's views are not new but some of his views expressed during this lecture is worth reading from the print media:

• "We [India] need to maintain economic growth as growth generates public revenue and with public revenue we need to do things such as health care, immunisation, education...The government has to do a lot more,"
• "I spent an hour with Manmohan Singh yesterday but I did not have any illusion that if I could convince him that everything will go fine, not because he is not a good Prime Minister, as I think he is, because that's not the way Indian democracy works".
• "In a democracy, you have to carry the party, the coalition and the political system, including the opposition with you."
• "I do not think that there is any conflict in liberalisation.... Each time you have to see if it is doing good for the people or not," 
• "What we need is economic reforms, but reforms are not just about doing enough to addressed issues which are of great importance to those relatively prosper...Reforms are right but the formula that works for the only 20 per cent people of the country is not right,"

I must record here that Prof Sen rejected the way in which the Team Anna is trying to do with fighting corruption in India. I consider fasting for corruption is age old wrong doing. And I agree with him when he said that:

• "What I had, in fact, said was that the judgement and penalty for corruption cannot be a matter for street justice, and must come through the democratic procedures that we cherish in India, including the courts and Parliament," he said in a communication.
• "we do not not have to tie accused people to trees to deliver summary justice to meet the demand of most Indians to extend the process of democratic accountability in a more full-blooded way to corruption."

How free are you in this age of corrupt kingdom of media in India?

Prof.Sen says: 

• Not only is access to the Internet and world opinion uncensored and unrestricted in India, a multitude of media present widely different points of view, often very critical of the government in office. India has a larger circulation of newspapers each day than any other country in the world. And the newspapers reflect contrasting political perspectives. Economic growth has helped—and this has certainly been a substantial gain—to expand the availability of radios and televisions across the country, including in rural areas, which very often are shared among many users. There are at least 360 independent television stations (and many are being established right now, judging from the licenses already issued) and their broadcasts reflect a remarkable variety of points of view. More than two hundred of these TV stations concentrate substantially or mainly on news, many of them around the clock. There is a sharp contrast here with the monolithic system of newscasting permitted by the state in China, with little variation of political perspectives on different channels. 

See Prof Ajay Shah post! here.

Amartya Sen’s nod to the licence-permit raj

Prof. Arvind Panagariya politely says that the acclaimed leftist economist Prof.Sen favours the growth killer "licence-permit raj" even now!!.

Some excerpt: 

• Sen leaves the impression that growth is at best a sideshow when it comes to the well- being of the poor. He essentially ignores the direct contribution growth makes to the creation of income and employment for the poor when he states: “The central point to seize is that while economic growth is an important boon for enhancing living conditions, its reach depends greatly on what we do with the fruits of growth. To be sure, there are large numbers of people for whom growth alone does just fine, since they are already privileged and need no social assistance.” Thus, contrary to the evidence that growth directly benefits the poor, Sen emphasises the accrual of such benefits only to those “already privileged” with the benefits to the poor depending principally on how what the government does with the “fruits of growth” . Why does it matter whether you choose to see growth as central to improving the wellbeing of the poor or as a sideshow ? Because the policies you would advocate critically depend on this choice. Bhagwati, who sees growth as central, has long advocated policy reforms that enhance growth prospects while also recommending increased expenditures on antipoverty programmes. 

• Sen, who sees growth as a sideshow, has rarely spoken in favour of promarket reforms, implicitly giving a nod to the licence-permit raj, which denied higher incomes and better employment opportunities to the poor. All politicians now recognise the centrality of growth in generating revenues to finance expenditures on health, education and employment programmes in a poor country like India. Because India started extremely poor at Independence and also grew very slowly for nearly four decades, successive governments failed to muster enough revenues to finance expenditures on these sectors. As a concrete example, Article 45 of the directive principles of state policy in the Constitution had required free compulsory primary education . But despite repeated attempts throughout, the goal remained unfulfilled until 2010 when accelerated growth finally yielded sufficient revenues to permit the implementation of the right to education as a fundamental right. 

The article published by Prof Sen in The Hindu is here.

Nalanda and Science

Prof.Amartya Sen says we have to think about the long run........talking on pursuit of science of Nalanda

Tips from Nobel laureate-Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Compilation of his words shared with students.

Top to bottom

• “There is no magic formula for winning the Nobel Prize” 
• “If India wins a single Nobel Prize it does not mean Indian science is okay” 
• “Don’t work on anything that you’re not interested in — day-to-day science is extremely tedious,” 
• “If you don’t gossip about the problem, then you’re not really interested in it. It’s (got to be) something you can’t help talking about. The problem has to be bugging you when you have a coffee” 
• “Also aim to go to the best place for your work,” 
• “You can change fields with humility, 
• “It’s a paradox that the biggest benefits of science to humanity have come from the fundamental science problems”

What one did not say has already been said about another Nobel Laureate in Economics science:

“And unlike that imposter Amartya Sen, this is the real deal. Ladies & Gentlemen, Professor Dixit”

More on “Peter Bauer and the Economics of Prosperity”

Peter Bauer and the Economics of Prosperity James A. Dorn, Barun S. Mitra (EDS.) Hard-bound Book (6¼" x 9¼") : Pages : 192 2009 Edition : ISBN - 978-81-7188-665-4 Price : INR 595 / US $ 16.95

ABOUT THE BOOK :

• Peter Bauer was an unlikely revolutionary, yet he inspired a revolution in development economics. In an environment dominated by a poverty of clear economic thought, Bauer built his theories of economic prosperity. He fought to free the poor from the tyranny of poverty. With the recent spread of anti-market, anti-trade, and anti-migration movements in many parts of the world, it is important that we take a fresh look at the way Bauer exposed the fallacies behind these protest movements. He showed them to be anti-poor and anti-people, and to be exacerbating global poverty. This volume is an attempt towards helping in introducing the ideas of Peter Bauer to a new generation of readers.

ABOUT THE EDITORS :

• James A. Dorn is Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Cato Institute and Editor of the Cato Journal. He is a China specialist and a regular contributor to Caijing (online), China’s leading business and finance magazine. His articles have also appeared in the Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, and Australian Financial Review. He has taught at Fudan University in Shanghai and is currently Professor of Economics at Towson University in Maryland.

• Barun S. Mitra is the Director of Liberty Institute, an independent think tank based in New Delhi, which is engaged in public policy research and advocacy with the aim of promoting economic and political freedoms. He is an engineer by training, and writes on a wide range of developmental, economic, environmental and technological issues. He has been published in a number of national and international newspapers and journals. He received the Julian L. Simon Award for his contribution in explaining the role of market economics in harnessing human ingenuity and creativity, leading to improvement in economic well-being and environmental quality. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
  

CONTENTS IN DETAIL :

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Editors/Contributors
Preface
Remembering Peter Bauer
— James A. Dorn
Peter T. Bauer: A Brief Biography
— Ralph Harris

Part 1 Development, Freedom and Prosperity
1. Reflection on Peter Bauer’s Contributions to Development Economics — Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell 37
2. Peter Bauer: An Unusual Applied Economist
— Basil Yamey
3. How Does Development Happen?
— Amartya Sen
4. P.T. Bauer’s Market-Liberal Vision
— James A. Dorn
5. The Market, Yes; Demos, No
— James M. Buchanan
6. Human Attitudes and Economic Growth
— Israel M. Kirzner

Part 2 Migration, Foreign Aid and Poverty
7. Migration, Globalisation and the Spirit of Peter Bauer
— Daniel T. Griswold
8. A Voice for the Poor
— The Economist
9. A Titan Passes Away
— Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
10. A True Friend of the World’s Poor
— Sauvik Chakraverti
11. Peter Bauer and the Third World
— Anthony Daniels
12. P.T. Bauer on the Population Question
— Nicholas Eberstadt

Part 3 Bauer on the Economics of Prosperity
13. Economic Control or Economic Development?
— P.T. Bauer
14. Indian Economy Policy and Development
— Peter T. Bauer
15. B.R. Shenoy: Stature and Impact
— Peter Bauer
16. The Disregard of Reality
— Peter Bauer

Index
CONTRIBUTORS:

• Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar is consulting editor of The Economic Times newspaper in India, and research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC. He writes the popular weekly column ‘Swaminomics’ in the Sunday Times, India.
• Peter T. Bauer was Professor Emeritus of Economics at the London School of Economics, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
• James M. Buchanan is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at George Mason University and the 1986 recipient of the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
• Sauvik Chakraverti is the senior assistant editor of The Economic Times newspaper in Delhi.
• Anthony Daniels is a medical doctor and is the author of From Zanzibar to Timbuktu. He writes for The Spectator, as Theodore Dalrymple, and is a contributing editor of The City Journal of New York. This article is adapted from his dinner address at “A Conference in Tribute to Peter Bauer” hosted by the James Madison Program, Princeton University, May 7, 2004
• Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. An earlier version of this article appeared in The Public Interest (Eber stadt 2005).
• Milton Friedman was a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the 1976 recipient of the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.
• Daniel T. Griswold is Associate Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington and author of the recent Cato study, ‘Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the USA.’ He has authored numerous studies on international trade and globalisation.
• Ralph Harris was the founder president of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London. He was made a life peer as Baron Harris of High Cross, of Tottenham in the County of Greater London.
• Israel M. Kirzner is Professor Emeritus of Economics at New York University.
• Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, former Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the 1998 recipient of the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA. He has published over two dozen books, among them Basic Economics: A common sense guide to economics (Third edition, 2007), Conflict of Vision (Revised edition, 2007), Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (2004), Conquests and Cultures: An International History (1998), and Ethnic America: A history (1981).
• Basil Yamey is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Economics will end up being treated as poor cousins

Sharad Joshi on “The less equal Nobel Laureates” of Economists.