Professionalism and the Academic Division of Labor
In my work, I have tried to avoid revealing anything about my personal political beliefs and even worked to obfuscate as necessary. When my father was visible in national politics as a Democrat, it was helpful to have a letterhead appointment at the Hoover Institution. Although I stay away from the battles of national politics, in my role as an advocate for science as the greatest human institution, I am now drawn into the battles of academic politics.
Blogging and Tweeting
Why do I go back and forth between periods of active blogging/tweeting and periods of silence? Sometimes I have an idea I want to explore. Digital media can be a good way to start a conversation akin to those that we used to have only in the physical space of the seminar room. But in these conversations, one has an obligation to listen to what others say and be ready to respond.
My New Position as Chief Economist at the World Bank
I’m pleased to report that President Jim Yong Kim has asked me to join the World Bank as Chief Economist and I have agreed to accept his offer. This may surprise you. It surprises me. I have often said to myself that the intersection of the set of jobs in Washington DC that I would find intellectually exciting and the set of jobs that I would accept is empty. Intellectual excitement depends on the chance to learn.
The Deep Structure of Economic Growth
When I was working on growth in the 1990s, I wrote an article on the economic growth for an encyclopedia of economics. (The links here take you to a version of this article that I updated in 2016.) My goal was to provide an accessible introduction to our understanding of growth without shying away from its deep conceptual foundations.
- We can share discoveries with others.
- There are incomprehensibly many discoveries yet to be found.
The jargon for the is the "nonrivalry of knowledge;" for the second, "combinatorial explosion."
I've been pleasantly surprised about how well it seems to have served its intended purpose. Non-economists have said that it helped them understand why unlimited growth is possible in a world with finite resources. Professional colleagues have been intrigued by the discussion of combinatorial explosion its interaction with nonrivalry. Specialists and non-specialists have latched onto its discussion of meta-ideas; ideas about the discovery of ideas.
And by the way, it shows that if we treated Shenzhen as a city state analogous to Singapore, it would have the fastest rate of GDP growth ever observed. It takes sustained growth at a rate of more than 20% per year to increase output by 1000 fold in 30 years.
Martha Derthick and Policymaking for Social Security
Martha Derthick died recently at the age of 81. I never met her, but I became intimately acquainted with her book Policymaking for Social Security. I stumbled when I was collecting raw material for a paper I wanted to write to illustrate the importance of what political scientists call “expressive” voting. The book turned out to be a gold mine. It has more page markers than any other book I own.