New York Times.com
Are Superstar Firms and Amazon Effects reshaping the economy?
Two of the most important economic facts of the last few decades are that more industries are being dominated by a handful of extraordinarily successful companies and that wages, inflation and growth have remained stubbornly low. Many of the world’s most powerful economic policymakers are now taking seriously the possibility that the first of those facts is a cause of the second.
GQ.com
The Great Chinese Art Heist
Strange how it keeps happening, how the greatest works of Chinese art keep getting brazenly stolen from museums around the world. Is it a conspiracy? Vengeance for treasures plundered years ago? Is the Chinese government behind one of the boldest art-crime waves in history?
Economist.com
Against the Tyranny of the Majority
John Stuart Mill was an enthusiast for free trade (despite working for a long time for the East India Company, perhaps the world’s biggest-ever monopoly). He thought free trade increased productivity and criticised the Corn Laws, tariffs which largely benefited holders of agricultural land.
The Hindu.com
The larger picture on GDP numbers
The economy did grow faster under the UPA but due to wrong policies which have led to to non-performing assets, higher inflation and current account deficit. But the higher growth was on the back of a 38% rate of investment and a 36% rate of savings achieved by 2007-08. These are now down to 32% and 30%, respectively. The 2007-08 crisis was a global one, but the Indian economy continued to grow. The crisis of 2012-13 was due to the rise in petroleum prices and largely due to international factors.
Project Syndicate.org
The Western illusion of Chinese innovation
Many Western observers – in media, academia, and government – now portray China as a fierce competitor for global technological supremacy, with top-down industrial policies that are enabling it to stand virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with Europe and the US. This is a serious misrepresentation.
New York Times.com
Elon Musk on the personal toll of Tesla turmoil
The year has been intense for Musk, the chairman and chief executive of the electric-car maker Tesla. He now hopes to convert the publicly traded company into a private one. The episode kicked off a furor in the markets and within Tesla itself.
