Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

Among contemporary historians, I rate the American historian Stephen Kotkin (Ph.D, UC Berkeley) at the top of a very short list. He focuses on Russian and Soviet politics and history, communism, global history, authoritarianism, and geopolitics. I learned a lot from him on the Stalinist era, and the life of Joseph Stalin. I couldn’t possibly read his biography of Stalin (three volumes, each 1000+ pages) but fortunately his talks and conversations provide what we non-specialists should know.

Another historian I like happens to be a farmer and a scholar: the classicist Victor Davis Hanson. He’s a conversative and comments on contemporary politics. VDH is an expert on military history, ancient warfare, ancient agrarianism, and the classics. VDH divides his time between Stanford University and Fresno, a small town in the Central Valley of California. He works on his family farm which has been with them for six generations.

Continue reading “On Bullshit”

In general, everything everywhere is getting cheaper all the time. This claim is counter-intuitive because in our experience, with a few notable exceptions, we see prices going up all the time. Economists have a word for that: inflation. It’s a broad increase in the prices of goods and services, which decreases the purchasing power of money. While inflation is a reality, it is not the whole story.

It is useful to distinguish between the “real” and the “nominal.” The sticker price is the number of dollars you pay at the store. That’s the nominal price. Inflation is an increase in the nominal price level. Price level refers to the nominal prices of a very large collection of goods and services. Inflation is a universal phenomenon, although it varies greatly in time and place. 

 It is also true that on average, the real prices of most goods and services are falling all the time. Evidence for that is not hard to find. Continue reading “Cheaper All the Time”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” with one half to Mokyr “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress” and the other half jointly to Aghion and Howitt “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.” Source: The Nobel Prize on X.

I like Prof Mokyr’s work. He’s a wonderful teacher. His talks are excellent and he has a wicked sence of humor. I particularly like his book, “A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.”

A wonderful read but you can get the main points in a 90 minute talk. Here it is: Continue reading “The Economics “Nobel” Prize”

The question of how the United States, which will celebrate its 250th anniversary of its founding on July 4th, 2026, became the most powerful superpower the world has ever known has been asked and answered by many. The answers vary. Economists stress some aspects; geologists, historians and sociologists other aspects. In the end, we have to integrate their multiple views. We have to continue to walk around that elephant to get a sense of what that beast is.

Geography has to have been a major factor. I recommend this video. The title “America Will Be the Last Superpower” is somewhat wrong. I believe that it should have been why America will last (at least for the foreseeable future) as a superpower. But here goes. Continue reading “Why America, the Superpower, Will Last”

Dame Jane Morris Goodall (3 April 1934 – 1 October 2025), was an English primatologist and anthropologist. She was considered the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, having studied the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees for over 60 years. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960. (Source: wiki.) She passed away yesterday, 1st Oct., in Los Angeles, CA.

Her work with the chimps at the Gombe National Park was phenomenal. I first came to know about her work through a talk she gave at the National Press Club sometime in the late 1990s. I heard the talk on my local public radio station KQED 88.5. (Those were the days when NPR had not generated to the woke nonsense station it has become now.) Continue reading “Goodbye, Dr. Jane Goodall”

As you probably know that on the afternoon of Sept 10th (Mountain standard time), a 31-year old conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in a public event at the Utah Valley University in Utah.

A committed Christian, Charlie was extremely influential in the Republican camp. He was reasonable and always willing to engage in debate with his opponents. He graciously and consistently gave them the opportunity to argue their case to prove him wrong. As an American, he was committed to the freedom of speech that the US constitution protects (and most other “democracies” such as the UK, Australia, and India lack.)

Charlie Kirk was truly exceptional. Too much has been written about him for me to waste time on repeating his (sadly brief) life story. I have the same response to his passing as I have for the passing of any person famous or otherwise. Since he was a Christian, I recall the words of a Christian poet, John Donne. His meditation written in 1623 read in part: Continue reading “Gun Violence”

I am excited to announce that this Saturday, 16th August, Akshar Prabhudesai is hosting a zoom event on Indicforum.org with yours truly as the guest. We will talk about trade, tariffs and international trade. Hope you can join us.

The event is on Saturday at 9:30 PM IST (9:00 AM Pacific, 11:00 AM Central.)

Registration is required and free. Click on any link in this page to register. Talk to you on Saturday.

I enjoy US road trips immensely. I have driven across the continental United States twice so far: once from San Jose, CA to Newark, DE, via Chicago, IL; and once from Newark, DE to San Jose, CA via Dallas, TX.

Those were nearly 4,000 kms. They were solo trips. I generally drive around 12 to 14 hours, with a couple of gas station breaks. The most recent trip was from Phoenix, AZ to San Jose, CA.

Other important road trips have been to Death Valley National Park (five times), Yosemite National Park (about a dozen times), Grand Canyon (thrice), Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, etc. Most of them involved camping. I love camping, particularly in Death Valley because if you time it right — moonless night — then you can see the Milky Way. Continue reading “Road Trips in the US”

Trade, as we all know, is good for those who trade. If two parties freely choose to exchange stuff, we can be certain of this: that they expect to gain from that, else they would not do so. Free trade is what we call a win-win situation or a positive-sum game.

Trade involves two parties and only two parties. If a third party intervenes uninvited, then it is not free trade. In that case, instead of that win-win game, it could be win-lose or even lose-lose game. The world would be a lot better if it had universal unrestricted trade.

I have a particular interest in trade. That’s because I am an economist, and economics is the study of humans as they go about that peculiar business of exchanging stuff. Trading is as unique to humans as is reading and writing: no other animal does it.

In his 1776 book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith wrote about specialization and the division of labor. It is the division of labor that gives rise to “general opulence.” One of the causes of wealth is division of labor. Continue reading “International Trade and Food”