Paul Bali
@paulbali
My views only
Why hasnt this happened yet? This seems like the most exciting frontier in behavioral economics rn
If you look at China the most competitive auto manufacturers werent the result of a project where the govt simply went "okay now you have to become competitive." They came forth from a bottom-up consensus in a fiercely nationalistic society that wanted to catch up with the West out of national pride
Alluded to some of the flaws in the thinking of the pro-trade war camp here chipsgunsandmoney.substack.com/p/chinas-res...
The origins of state capacity and economic competitiveness are... complicated
Checked out some thalers irl to see what all the fuss was about. But have to admit, if I were a 16th century Balkan merchant, I would’ve definitely exchanged these bad boys for some goods and services
You'd think that these are Greek or Roman works. But they're actually Afghan. When Alexander the Great crossed ancient Persia and reached what’s now Afghanistan, he introduced Greek art styles that interacted with local tradition to produce some of the earliest depictions of Buddha as a human
Haven't read Miller's book, but Vladislav Zubok's Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union makes a pretty strong case that everything else was manageable - apart from this fatal mistake:
After all, clandestine production doesn't show up in GDP figures or production indicators - which are also supposed to be used in performance evaluations - except for some secondary effects. Its the insider dealing between officials, banks, and firms - the kickbacks - that leads to these distortions
When you have a prompt ready but are waiting on the Claude usage limit to reset
Just look at some of the top ranked mineral processing / extractive metallurgy journals. Minerals Engineering, Hydrometallurgy, Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review. Or just the citations used in this state of the art literature review on cobalt processing...
If the goal is to reindustrialize, does it make sense to start a trade war with the world's largest exporter of refined commodities that are crucial for (clean energy) manufacturing? Investment holds the key to achieving the goals set out in the paper - but that point the paper leaves underdeveloped
Me checking to see if my suitcase is still where I put it in the rack at each eurostar stop