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Well I could give you an academic answer as to which way the . . . the things are going. But let me give you an answer from the point of view the . . . the fact that economics is a social science. It’s about society. Therefore it’s about amelioration of the human condition. So to me it . . . that is the central focus of where economics ought to be. It’s more or less the English focus which I learned. It’s also the focus I learned at MIT, which is where I came and spent a little time. Because that’s the most English school in the United States actually, in terms of its orientation towards solving problems; which matter rather than doing mathematical, you know, pyrotechnics and so on. Now the most important challenge facing us today, I think, is globalization. In the sense that I think things have changed very dramatically in the . . . in the system and the world economy. Because the . . . Part of it is, of course, what is sometimes called the death of distance . . . things . . . People are much closer. A lot of economies have gotten much more integrated into the world economy as a result. We have reduced a lot of barriers to transactions. That’s manmade. We have also improves technology. That is manmade too; but on the other hand it’s something which . . . which is not . . . which is not policy. It is in fact technology, right, which is really changing the conditions under which we live. So today you can . . . I mean imagine in the 19th century. I read somewhere there were 12 deliveries of . . . of the mail in London. On horseback, of course. Then it got steadily less. And then we had, what two I think was the last when I was studying in England. There were two. And then I think now there is one. Now we’ve got e-mails. We’ve got delivery every second, right? As often . . . In fact one of the most distracting things in the world is to have your Blackberry with you, because it’s very hard to control your impulse to see if somebody sent you something. So what we now have is a tremendous growth of technology, under which transactions have become so much more easy, and more dramatic, and instantaneous and so on, that I think that has really led to basically a funda . . . This is really the way to do it. My student Paul Krugman, who is a major economist of the younger generation, and writes an interesting column in the New York Times . . . Paul Krugman has . . . His major work – for which I hope he will get the Nobel Prize one day – is on economic geography. Meaning people actually transacting face-to-face with one another, right? So people having to be in the same physiological space. And I often tease him because it’s a privilege of a professor to tease his students – particularly the ones he admires. And I say, “You know Paul, you’re just behind the curve. Geography has now become history.” It’s gone because today, very rarely do you really need people to be together in the same place. You look at a number of people writing papers together. Hardly anybody writes papers together with the people who are in the same department. Most of them are doing it with people who are skillions of miles away.

Now we take the political example, and that’s very clear in contrasting India with China for example. India is a robust, noisy democracy, right? ___________, the great author, he called it “a multitude of mutinies” – meaning each one is a law unto himself just like Americans are. That is a very noisy democracy. So we have IT sector taking off in a big way. Because there’s no . . . It’s a . . . In s democratic set up you can have as much software . . . I mean there’s no censorship and so forth. But you take China, they can’t do it. They have got hardware. They do very good hardware, because that’s manufacturers. But they can’t do software, because software means ___________, the ability to undercut the political system. So they haven’t developed software. They are way behind on that. And that in turn, of course, is repercussions for China’s growth and so forth. Because they have . . . a lot of modern growth is IT-dependent, or shooting out from IT. But there again, you have clear contrasts, right? So Tom . . . Tom actually . . . I don’t want to appear immodest, but Tom took an idea which I’d put out in the New Republic almost 13 years ago calling . . . It was a review article, a long one. And the question was, “A New Epoch?” with a question mark. And there I said today, competition has gotten quite fierce. Everybody talks about it. I have never met a CEO who is not worried about somebody stealing up on him or her from somewhere. But it is not necessarily India or China. It may be Poland. It may be Brazil. It may be even the . . . even France, or Germany, and so on. So I think what has happened is that today, multi-nationals slosh everywhere. People have access to __________ textbooks and so on. Interest rates, because of the flows of funds, have become closer to one another across the world. Given all of that, I didn’t use the word “flatness”. I said competition is now more intense. I called it kaleidoscopic in the sense that today, I have an advantage . . . Like I am Boeing and I have an advantage over airbus. But tomorrow airbus might get advantage over me. They are sort of neck-to-neck close to take one example; which is, you know, Boeing is getting an advantage over airbus because airbus came up with this crazy idea of creating . . . which is what, a gigantic ship flowing . . . Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth going through the sky. Can you imagine two of those landing at Rome Airport? I mean you know already right now you’ve gotta wait for four hours to clear the customs. I mean if two, three landed at Rome Airport, you’ll be eating pizzas in the queue for two days running before you get into Rome. (Laughter) and so I think the key today is volatility. That is really . . . And I think Tom misses that out. Tom is thinking of we have lost comparative advantage. It doesn’t mean anything. No, no, no. We haven’t done that. There are reasons why the people coming in . . . I mean the analogy is not Russell Crowe and the Gladiator, but it’s more like Braveheart. There are people coming in for all kinds of diff . . . you know Mel Gibson when he is on the ropes. I mean he’s collecting all the different clans and so on. But think of clans which are . . . the enemy is getting the clans, you see. So there are all kinds of people from different directions coming in, and we really have to be on our toes all the time. And that has major repercussions about the way they gain from trade, and the way we have to cope with these consequences. And I think that is really the important aspect of globalization which I am worried about – that there is volatility. If there’s volatility, labor has to worry because our traditional conception was once you’ve got a job, you’ve kind of got it for life. Hopefully right? I mean many people did have long tenures. I remember in Cambridge, England when we were all graduating, all my . . . I mean I had no interest in an English job. But all my English friends, the first question they asked, you know, ____________, “What’s your pension plan like?”

Recorded On: 8/14/07

Transcript:

Recorded On: 8/14/07

Transcript:

I say, “Look.  Are you with Jeffrey Sachs on Africa, where you . . . you raise the aid immediately to very high levels – 0.5 percent of GNP or something from its current 0.1 or something?”  So it’s a four to fivefold increase.  And then you keep it at a plateau.  Or I said, “Do you think that if you raise it that fast, that it will lead to a lot of corruption and counterproductive things?”  And then of course people who stop giving aid say it will go down like that.  So that’s another possibility if you follow the Sachs approach of raising it immediately.  And I said the third possible part is where you steadily . . . you identify projects and so on, and programs.  And it is possible to do that if you put a lot of work into it and systematically do it.  And you gradually raise the thing to 0.5 percent.  Maybe it will take 15 years, but you know it is building on itself.  And I . . . But 75 percent of the kids in a class of over 150 people chose the gradualist one.  All of them said Sachs was going to go this way.  And the most vocal critics were African students.  They had seen a lot of corruption.  They didn’t want aid.  I said, “Look.  Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” you know.  But the point is this is . . .  Why did this happen?  Because we rush in with monies without looking at how exactly it will be used.  We want to throw money at the problem.  We become a lot smarter, and I think the . . .  There is a reason why I think some people like Jeffrey Sachs are such a big danger, is become when Africans . . . real good Africans who have dedicate their lives to Africa and studying it, you know, many of them in Europe and so on, they are all aghast at this notion that you can just throw money like that.  And the kids, you know, the people there are.  And so I think the . . . the real danger today in the west is that in our enthusiasm and our, you know, reawakened conscious to do things for Africa – which is where the major development problem today is – we may fall for these sort of pseudo-solutions which are going to be extremely expensive. 

Recorded On: 8/14/07

Transcript:

Recorded On: 8/14/07

Transcript:

The strongest argument for globalization is that it enables you to profit from specialization.  Now by that I don’t mean that there’s a static specialization.  Like I’m going to be the ___________ water or ___________.  Because endowments, technology, everything is changing all the time.  What I mean is that at any one point of time, you have a certain set of endowments which you have accumulated, you have shaped and so on, which then define what you’re good at, right?  But once you do that, then we economists say – and this goes back to Adam Smith at its very essence over 200 years ago – that if . . . “Maybe I can do everything better than you can.”  Like I can maybe (15:15) interview better than you do.  I can teach better than you do.  But clearly my great advantage . . . my greatest advantage over you certainly is in teaching, certainly not in . . .  I may be a little bit better than you at interviewing.

You know there’s this joke about . . . this Jewish joke about someone asks somebody, “Can you play the violin?”  And the answer by this Jewish wit is that, “Well maybe I can, but I’ve never tried.”  So maybe I’m a better interviewer, but I’ve never tried it, so . . . (Laughter)  But let’s grant it for arguments’ sake what economics teaches you – international economics – is that what _________ pointed out, was that if I specialize in where my advantage over you is greater, and therefore teach and leave you to do the interviewing, we’ll both be better off.  Because we’ll have more of each . . . each of these two activities.  And if each activity or each good is actually a good, not a bad like __________, then you are going to be better off.  So that’s the fundamental case.

Now today people are worried about this case, and we can come back to that later in the discussion and try and see how the modern world looks.  But the greatest argument against it today is that there are two sets of arguments.  And let me just say one is the social criticisms.  There are many young people who are altruistic and empathetic, and they worry about the effects of globalization on women’s rights; on democracy; on poverty in the poorer countries; on indigenous cultures.  Like Eva Morales, you know that globalizing is going to wipe it out.  Then Monsieur __________ in France worries about mainstream culture – that the French culture will be wiped out.  And also French agriculture for that matter.  So it’s a double jeopardy for the French.  And so there are a variety of such things.  And those . . . those I will say are mainly the concerns of the young and idealistic people.  And they . . . they really form the most important part of the world in my view.  Then there are the fears and self-interest driven critics of globalization.  Those are the AFL-CIO, or the presidential candidates today in the United States who, of course, reflect AFL-CIO fears and so on.  They are worried about how trading with the outside world, having multi-national corporations, you know, investing abroad and so on . . . how all of that is going to really undermine our wages of our unskilled workers; maybe even of the middle class in some cases.  There are some people who worry about that.  But I would say that ties up with my original worry of, you know, what’s going to happen with the bottom 30 percent?

I’m a Democrat in the U.S. political configuration.  I have always worried about the bottom 30 percent.  If this is true, it’s a . . . it’s a serious downside.  But I don’t believe it is true.  But this is something which a lot of people feel, and that’s the biggest challenge of globalization today in the rich countries.

Recorded On: 8/14/07

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Well I could give you an academic answer as to which way the . . . the things are going.  But let me give you an answer from the point of view the . . . the fact that economics is a social science.  It’s about society.  Therefore it’s about amelioration of the human condition.  So to me it . . . that is the central focus of where economics ought to be.  It’s more or less the English focus which I learned.  It’s also the focus I learned at MIT, which is where I came and spent a little time.  Because that’s the most English school in the United States actually, in terms of its orientation towards solving problems; which matter rather than doing mathematical, you know, pyrotechnics and so on.  Now the most important challenge facing us today, I think, is globalization.  In the sense that I think things have changed very dramatically in the . . . in the system and the world economy.  Because the . . .  Part of it is, of course, what is sometimes called the death of distance  . . . things . . .  People are much closer.  A lot of economies have gotten much more integrated into the world economy as a result.  We have reduced a lot of barriers to transactions.  That’s manmade. We have also improves technology.  That is manmade too; but on the other hand it’s something which . . . which is not . . . which is not policy.  It is in fact technology, right, which is really changing the conditions under which we live.  So today you can . . .  I mean imagine in the 19th century.  I read somewhere there were 12 deliveries of . . . of the mail in London.  On horseback, of course.  Then it got steadily less.  And then we had, what two I think was the last when I was studying in England.  There were two.  And then I think now there is one.  Now we’ve got e-mails.  We’ve got delivery every second, right?  As often . . .  In fact one of the most distracting things in the world is to have your Blackberry with you, because it’s very hard to control your impulse to see if somebody sent you something.  So what we now have is a tremendous growth of technology, under which transactions have become so much more easy, and more dramatic, and instantaneous and so on, that I think that has really led to basically a funda . . .  This is really the way to do it.  My student Paul Krugman, who is a major economist of the younger generation, and writes an interesting column in the New York Times . . .  Paul Krugman has . . .  His major work – for which I hope he will get the Nobel Prize one day – is on economic geography.   Meaning people actually transacting face-to-face with one another, right?  So people having to be in the same physiological space.  And I often tease him because it’s a privilege of a professor to tease his students – particularly the ones he admires.  And I say, “You know Paul, you’re just behind the curve.  Geography has now become history.”  It’s gone because today, very rarely do you really need people to be together in the same place.  You look at a number of people writing papers together.  Hardly anybody writes papers together with the people who are in the same department.  Most of them are doing it with people who are skillions of miles away.

The strongest argument for globalization is that it enables you to profit from specialization.  Now by that I don’t mean that there’s a static specialization.  Like I’m going to be the ___________ water or ___________.  Because endowments, technology, everything is changing all the time.  What I mean is that at any one point of time, you have a certain set of endowments which you have accumulated, you have shaped and so on, which then define what you’re good at, right?  But once you do that, then we economists say – and this goes back to Adam Smith at its very essence over 200 years ago – that if . . . “Maybe I can do everything better than you can.”  Like I can maybe (15:15) interview better than you do.  I can teach better than you do.  But clearly my great advantage . . . my greatest advantage over you certainly is in teaching, certainly not in . . .  I may be a little bit better than you at interviewing.

You know there’s this joke about . . . this Jewish joke about someone asks somebody, “Can you play the violin?”  And the answer by this Jewish wit is that, “Well maybe I can, but I’ve never tried.”  So maybe I’m a better interviewer, but I’ve never tried it, so . . . (Laughter)  But let’s grant it for arguments’ sake what economics teaches you – international economics – is that what _________ pointed out, was that if I specialize in where my advantage over you is greater, and therefore teach and leave you to do the interviewing, we’ll both be better off.  Because we’ll have more of each . . . each of these two activities.  And if each activity or each good is actually a good, not a bad like __________, then you are going to be better off.  So that’s the fundamental case.

I’m a Democrat in the U.S. political configuration.  I have always worried about the bottom 30 percent.  If this is true, it’s a . . . it’s a serious downside.  But I don’t believe it is true.  But this is something which a lot of people feel, and that’s the biggest challenge of globalization today in the rich countries.

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They would have to be radically redone in some respects.  Like take the World Bank.  It . . .  It . . . Particularly now with Robert ________, who is a trade guy, running in – trade is something which they push, they endorse right?  I mean but what have they done in order to . . . to . . . to help say     . . .  Now let me talk about the poor countries which lack funds, okay?  They finally . . .  They __________ come around; not their NGOs necessarily, right?  Because they also have people who, you know . . . some of the old leftists, and some populists, and some generally misguided NGOs.  And people are inflecting their own little experience; objecting to this and saying it will lead to unemployment.  It will lead to all kinds of problems.  What have they done to help the poor countries build up the institutional system from which they can now proceed from an earlier attitude of anti-globalization to a current attitude of pro-globalization. 

So we have . . .  We are now trying to __________ like the Soviet system which was broken up from a completely controlled system with a little bit of, you know, black market activity into a modern system where suddenly you didn’t have the institutional support for it.  So my . . . my friend Jeffrey Sachs, you know, who is a technocrat and who writes . . .  I’m afraid he’s going to do for Africa what he did for Russia.  Because technocracy is the big bane of many economists who simply feel, you know, they don’t understand the reality . . . the context within which . . . the institutional context within which you want to place these things.  So even advocated shock therapy.  And of course it cost Russia quite a bit.  And the reason why you could not go straight into markets like that that fast was, you know as he was advocating, was because the whole system was built up around everything education, security, etc. being around enterprises – big enterprise.  Now you say big enterprise is going to be allowed to fail like in a market system of the United States type.  You don’t have a Chapter 11 there, which is the bankruptcy law.  You don’t have ___________ people getting into unemployment.  They don’t have educational support.  They don’t have medical support because they revolve around the factories.  So that was a case where you really . . . it’s a most dramatic example of how a system which had not even . . . which was . . . which went very much too rapidly into . . . into . . . from the traditional “no change” system to a modern, “change all the time” system, right?  So they didn’t evolve.  So in the same way the developing countries were readily-sheltered.  They were not going . . . getting into international trade in a big way.  Now they want to because they are . . . they . . . they buy the idea which people like, you know, myself and others have propagated – that trade is good for them.  They’ve seen it actually work for many countries like the far eastern countries and so on.  So they want to join in but they’re afraid.  It’s like asking . . . because they don’t have any of the institutional systems.  Do you know that we (38:52) in the United States in 1962 had our first adjustment assistance program?  That’s 45 years ago.  And that was during the time of the President Kennedy’s regime.  And Kennedy __________ trade negotiations under ____________ auspices.  And George ______ of the AFL-CIO and he, President Kennedy, jointly ____________ to buy the support of the unions and the . . . and the working class – the adjustment assistance program.  So as . . . as you got into this system of international trade and more . . . more intensively, you had to put up an institutional system to assist people who might be laid off, right?  Now we don’t have that in the developing countries.  So the World Bank should have been . . .  I have been writing for years, and you know those guys would never listen.  Finally they are beginning to think in terms of providing the technical assistance and the funds to be able to get people to come out and to venture forth, because otherwise they hesitate.  They hesitate.

I think one of the remarkable things which, you know, which just happened in the 20th century is really the growth of the NGOs or the civil society.  And you see that particularly in . . . in democratic countries.  Like in India there are three million non-governmental organizations, many of them mom and pop.  We have 45,000, I’m told, in Russia itself.  So while they __________ throw our Carnegie and Ford Foundation and so on, you know the big guys, which doesn’t bother me very much, their own indigenous people are very important like they are in our own country.  To me good governance is really essential for prosperity, for a sense of belonging to the community and so on.  You can belong to . . . to a community which is led by a corrupt government for example and so on.  So I think for all of that, it is very important that we have this civil society.  Because it is really . . .  Even if the government (01:12:23) wants to do good things, it has no way of knowing what the problems at the ground level are.  And the NGOs . . . a civil society provides you with the eyes and ears of good governance.  You may have, you know . . .  You can’t pull your . . .  You have to pay a tax.  But if you don’t know that evolution is occurring, you know . . . your law is sitting on the books in New Delhi where the . . . you know, the capital of the country.  And it’s happening somewhere in, you know, 50 miles from Bangalore.  How are we going to find it out unless there is a little NGO or, you know, a democratic system where this is allowed to function ___________ and so on.  So I think the civil society is so important.  And we often make this point in relation to . . . on the right wing . . . on the, you know, right would say don’t . . .  Leave things to the private sector because they are close to the ground, and they have a profit motive.  So they will . . .  They really should be left to do things . . .  Bureaucrats don’t ever have that.  So I’m making a similar point on the side of the left as it were, which is to say they have the altruistic motive to do good, which is to correspond to the profit motive and the right wing argument for . . . for not intervening.  And they have the political . . . to work with local knowledge.  So I . . .  I think the most important thing for us is to encourage the civil society, and to support it everywhere.  But this doesn’t mean that we must have Oxfam and . . .  I mean these are gigantic businesses today.  You know it’s worth billions of dollars being spent.  I mean Oxfam is half the size of the World Bank, believe it or not.  And it’s just . . .  They get into everything.  They should just stick to famines and, you know, flood relief and so on.  But they’re fantastic.  But this is the trouble.  I would say I’m against big size, let me put it this way.  Both in NGOs and, you know, people getting too big and leading to monopolistic practices and so on.  And I think, you know, strengthening media, democracies, and so on – that’s the only way to get good governance.  And I think this is where we ought to encourage . . . increase activity by our system.  And preferably through NGOs themselves and through . . .  Because if governments get involved, immediately it creates problems.

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But you see it . . . that depends on what you came out of, what you had to unwind. I would say that India . . . India had too much knee-jerk intervention. I mean you saw a problem and you said the government had to solve it. Now as a result, it led to so much governmental intervention that we allow licensing of all kinds of things and so on. Once you have that . . . we . . . We were a bit naïve. I myself was on that bus actually when I first went back from England. But I got off the bus rather fast after seeing what was happening. The bureaucrats love the power that they got as a result of handing out licenses. It’s not that they became particularly corrupt; but they . . . they . . . they enjoyed the power. And the politicians, of course, made money out of it and so on. So we have . . . And some bureaucrats did get corrupt. As a result, the policy . . . the bad ideas we have led to a set of institutions like licensing which led to their own lobbies and interests and so on; which then gelled into a very unproductive, counterproductive machine. When we came in and said, “Look we gotta dismantle it,” it’s very hard. And now we have managed to dismantle a fair amount of it, but there’s still some ways to go. Now the lesson from this I would say is that when you think about things like corruption, for example which, you know, all World Bank presidents have been worried about, and ___________ is worried about and so on, and we ourselves are worried about actually to the point where I must tell you is in my classroom, when I teach foreign aid because it’s come back into . . . as a topic. I ___________ 30 years ago, 20 years ago. I put it aside, and now it’s back into . . .

I say, “Look. Are you with Jeffrey Sachs on Africa, where you . . . you raise the aid immediately to very high levels – 0.5 percent of GNP or something from its current 0.1 or something?” So it’s a four to fivefold increase. And then you keep it at a plateau. Or I said, “Do you think that if you raise it that fast, that it will lead to a lot of corruption and counterproductive things?” And then of course people who stop giving aid say it will go down like that. So that’s another possibility if you follow the Sachs approach of raising it immediately. And I said the third possible part is where you steadily . . . you identify projects and so on, and programs. And it is possible to do that if you put a lot of work into it and systematically do it. And you gradually raise the thing to 0.5 percent. Maybe it will take 15 years, but you know it is building on itself. And I . . . But 75 percent of the kids in a class of over 150 people chose the gradualist one. All of them said Sachs was going to go this way. And the most vocal critics were African students. They had seen a lot of corruption. They didn’t want aid. I said, “Look. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” you know. But the point is this is . . . Why did this happen? Because we rush in with monies without looking at how exactly it will be used. We want to throw money at the problem. We become a lot smarter, and I think the . . . There is a reason why I think some people like Jeffrey Sachs are such a big danger, is become when Africans . . . real good Africans who have dedicate their lives to Africa and studying it, you know, many of them in Europe and so on, they are all aghast at this notion that you can just throw money like that. And the kids, you know, the people there are. And so I think the . . . the real danger today in the west is that in our enthusiasm and our, you know, reawakened conscious to do things for Africa – which is where the major development problem today is – we may fall for these sort of pseudo-solutions which are going to be extremely expensive.

What I like about someone like Bill Gates on the other hand, is that he really . . . You see he has an advantage over people like ___________, because __________ made money just by making money. I mean you know . . . you know by betting against the currency and things like that. He’s made some money on the Stock Market, but not as much as he claims. He doesn’t have any magic formula about making money on the stock market. But he’s had some lucky breaks and so on. Nobody respects that kind of money that I know of, right? (Laughter) I tell him frequently, “Don’t ________ your money on politics because, you know, when money which is not respected is spent on politics, people tend to get socialistic __________.” But Bill Gates is adored, because he’s . . . he has invented things, right? And so there is always this _________ notion that those who build things and do things are better than those who just speculate. (Laughter) So Bill Gates is exactly the man who is doing . . . has been going along this path in my judgment. So I think the best thing that Warren Buffet did was to identify Bill Gates as a guy who really knows how to build, because that’s what we need – the partnership with people like Bill Gates. Because we can’t just throw money away. And we professors are not particularly good at doing . . . I mean if I said I was going to do it, I mean you should laugh me out of court. Though I can identify certain problems, but I can’t . . . I can’t do what Bill Gates is doing. So I think we need . . . there is . . .

So for Africa, we need less flamboyance, less sort of recklessness of this kind, less tendency to dismiss people who raise questions as sort or reactionary Republicans or something. I think that that’s not really a correct thing. I think we need increasingly very steady Bill Gates-like involvement involving, you know, businesses which really know how to listen . . . of the type of ________ . . . not hedge-fund types or ________ types, because that’s a . . . They make money. I don’t know how they do it, but (laughter) but this is not really (laughter) . . . I know there is something like what we call in economics “good and stabilizing speculation”. But I teach it in the classroom, but don’t feel it in my bones as much. (Laughter)

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I don’t think so, because I think the . . .  China I think is . . . is a big problematic area right now for itself in the sense that its capitalist economics is okay; but its communist politics is . . . is a big question mark.  First it’s exp . . . A lot of its growth is export oriented.  When you run a communist system with lack of human rights in all sorts of areas, you become immediately vulnerable to people saying, “This is not kosher,” alright?  So to . . .  Because it’s a communist system, it exaggerates the . . . the occurrence of things like we have seen recently, namely __________ of all possible safety and other requirements.  Because there is no countervailing power in the system at all.  There are four elements of a democracy which really help countries like India, and whose absence really hurts China in things like environment damage, safety conditions . . . I mean all of the things which really are necessary for good governance and growth.  One, to have NGOs who take up your cause when something is going on.  Two, you could have opposition parties who can also, you know, bring things simply because they ____________.  Three, an independent judiciary.  And fourth, an independent media.  They don’t have anything like that.  So anytime any dissent occurs, which is beginning to happen in China, they just take to the streets.  And how it’s going to develop is very, very problematic.  I talked to a very important CEO who is in both India and China, and he said . . .  He was being asked the usual question.  I can’t identify him, but you know . . . because I . . .  Or maybe I can.  It was Jeffrey Immelt of GE.  And he said of General Electric – I’ve heard this from so many CEOs – that for the next 10 years, China is a great opportunity.  After that India.  So the reason being exactly that you’ve got rule of law.  You’ve got all these different elements for democracy.  Maybe it goes slower in terms of change and so on.  It’ll have its ups and downs, but nothing quite so dramatic.  This huge question mark of what China’s going to do. 

 I mean I remember – my wife is a Russian expert – being asked way back on India and China comparison about 30 years ago or something just when Mao and ________ were both alive.  And she was asked, you know, what was going to happen to China.  And she said, “It depends on whether __________ dies first or Mao dies first.”  Now that’s _________ we are dealing with, much like in the Soviet Union, right?  Who was going to take over the Soviet Union after Stalin?  If ________ had taken over, it would have been far different than when Krushchev took over, right?  And so on.  So I think that is something we don’t have in our systems – democratic systems.  So I think the . . .  I’m betting on India for that reason.  If China manages to make the transition instead of erupt . . . erupting into authoritarianism, repression and so on as the destructions and demands develop, then of course they’ll . . . they’ll be tough competitors.  So . . .  But at the moment, I see nothing really to worry very much about it.

And the Chinese fundamentally are still into manufacturers.  They’re not into services in any big way.  Right now they’re going through exactly the kind of thing which the Japanese did with their huge accumulation of reserves.  They had started buying up things which are going kaput, just like the Japanese bought up Empire State and all sorts of things.  And they lost lots . . . tons of money.  And the investors in Hollywood (55:38) didn’t understand at all, and we took them for a ride on that one.  And the latest one in China, which was when they bought up Blackstone of Pete Peterson and so on.  So Pete Peterson turned into a billionaire from a millionaire, and the Chinese were left with, you know, a can of worms.  So they are worried about it now.  But this is going to be their problem, and not very much our problem in the sense that they will have to sort out what they are going to do with the reserves.  Because it would be foolish on the part of people accumulating those reserves, because it doesn’t produce anything very much for them.  And my suspicions will gradually wind down because they will spend their monies basically on building infrastructure and so on; building up, therefore, demands for all kinds of things from us – cement and construction contracts and so on and so forth.  They will . . .  The very fact of it accumulates so much __________ reserves, it serves as a guarantee that they can’t do anything with it except bring it down in ways which will build, you know . . . which their system requires ________ infrastructure and so on.  And who are the people who can really do great things like that – and including the better service sector and financial services and so on – except us, right?  So we have a very good state, provided we don’t panic.  Provided we don’t panic.  So I’m not worried about China.  And one other thing, you see.

Supposing . . .  Tom Freidman, etc. always said that the Chinese will take over even our . . .  They will start producing the sorts of things which you and I will produce, you know.  Because they’ll have more people like you and me, because they’ll produce more skills.  But this is a . . .  And therefore they’ll drive down the prices of what we are producing right now, right?  Because we’re exporting all sorts of stuff which they will start producing, and therefore push down our prices; and thereby put our, you know, economy . . .  What they forget that as countries grow more similar in an endowments – meaning they have more engineers.  They have more computer scientists.  They have more doctors.  They have more . . . you know, all sorts of people, you know, like us.  In that sense they are getting more like us, right?  In . . . The economists call it “endowments”.  So that . . .  Does that mean that is going to happen?  Our welfare is going to go down?  I would say no, because economics now has a new theory in international trade.  We talk of trade in similar products.  And if you just walk down . . . at least for those people who are going to watch this in the United States.  In New York you walk down Madison Avenue and you see all these men’s fashions.  You see Giorgio Armani.  You see Calvin Klein, right?  Our own indigenous guy.  You see Pierre Cardin, French.  You see __________, though he’s moved now to Chelsea.  But you used to see him.  Japanese settle in Paris.  You see all kinds of people as you go down.  They are all __________.  They’re all in the same industry, producing the same basic products like suits and jackets and so on.  But they compete.  So they’re specialized in similar products, each with little niche markets.  So what you get is a tremendous increase in variety – trade and variety.  So as countries get more similar, they become . . . they trade in similar products.  So one of my students, Robert Feenstra, has actually, you know, calculated using the new theory of trade in similar products.  The gains to trade . . . from trade in similar products in post-war . . . with a post-war rise of Europe . . . because we put Europe back on its feet and made it more similar to us.  We could have kept them down, right?  But we didn’t.  We didn’t do that with Japan.  And really, several billions of dollars annually of gain from trade in similar products.

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Well I think that three things we can learn from the – at least I’ve learned – in the post-war period.  Because we had about 50 years of experience, and I’ll focus more on the poorer countries.  The rich countries aren’t all that different anyway in terms of what I’m saying. 

 One is we . . .  We need to be less fearful of the external environ . . . of the international trade and investment.  We were so fearful.  I mean you know we . . . that we . . . a lot of poorer countries just turned off trade altogether.  India in ’91, this inward flow of equity and investment – meaning of multi-national equity – you won’t believe it was $10 million.  Unbelievable.  It didn’t make any sense, because ________ work.  That’s just making it difficult for people to bring things in.  That . . .  Sorry it was $100 million, not $10 million.  I lost a zero on that one.  But it’s still nothing when it’s one-third the size of our budget at Columbia University.  So it was really miserable.  We have learned that trade and investment are an opportunity and not a threat, right?  You can use them.  It doesn’t mean you throw yourself completely open, but you can use them much more than you . . . than many countries did.  I think that’s one important lesson.

The second is there was a fear of market __________, and that’s natural.  When there’s lots of scarcities and you’re behind the curve, your first reaction is to go and intervene; you know, try and __________ things.  And it’s a natural feeling.  __________ at Harvard, a great historian, wrote a whole book about economic backwardness in the historical perspective.  And when you’re behind the curve, you intervene.  But of course he wasn’t critical of it.  He was sort of describing it more or less.  And it’s very difficult to learn that markets can be used to achieve whatever objectives you want to, because that . . . that sounds totally counter to common sense.  So I mean like when I came to this country and started driving on the snow, and I was told if you get into a skid, you . . . you steer in the direction of the skid.  I said, “Are you trying to kill me?”  This sounds absurd, right?  Because your natural tendency, common sense is to go the other way.  So it’s that kind of thing.  We will learn that.  So even in the environment, now people are much more willing to _________ reduce CO2 emissions.  We can use tradable permits, right, rather than just quantity of controls.  So everywhere I think people move to the middle ground on that one too, not knee-jerk rejection of markets.  Again, more skepticism about just public sector per se.  I mean when I was growing up, everyone was for the public sector including myself.  You learned again that, you know, it can settle into a variety of problems.  The incentive structure becomes very difficult to handle.  It doesn’t mean no infra . . . no public sector.  It does mean that to try and use it judiciously.  Otherwise leave it to the private sector.

And the third one, of course, is democracy.  I think we discussed it on China.  And I think there, a lot of us are skeptical at the beginning.  Because again, the model they were using was . . . it was almost Marxist, which was blood, sweat, and tears would produce, you know, surplus which you would invest and grow faster, alright?  Now so similarly, a Draconian system, a communist system like China would be able to tax its citizens much more drastically, create a greater surplus and grow faster.  But we never allowed for the fact that it would also undermine people’s incentives and so on and so forth; that growth was not just a function of investment, but also for how much you got out of it.  And that has now come into the picture.  So democracy now is not just a value in itself, which it was when I was young; but it is also seen as being productive.  So it is good on both, you know . . . on grounds of sustainable development.

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You see fairness is a very funny concept in the sense that fairness, as we all say all the time, is in the eye of the beholder.  So when you look at fairness, take it in the context in which you __________, okay?  Now let me take the rich country context, and particularly the United States.  The United States, since I was . . .  I grew up in India, studied in England, and went back to India.  I have some . . .  I have studied European countries.  I have lived in the United States.  I would say there’s a difference between Europeans, for example, and the Americans; that the Americans worry more about fairness and less about justice because we think we have mobility.  So if we have a fair competition, we can get there.  So if somebody even in Harlem . . .  If you were to have Mr. _________ or Mr. Ruben, who was a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury . . . if their wealth doubles, it is conceivable that somebody in Harlem will think, “Aha!  The size of the lottery ticket has gone up because I have a shot at it, too.”  So if you believe in the mobility, whether it’s true or false, objectively, American mobility is not as dramatic as people think; but most Americans believe in it.  That being the case, they believe not in equal outcomes, but they believe in equality of opportunity.  You go to . . . to . . .  Take England.  England is more static, more structured, more futile in many respects.  This is why many Indians who come from a similar futile country take to England like a duck to water.  You know you feel perfectly happy there.  And America just challenges you.  (Laughter) I mean America is a country where you go to a . . . to a butcher shop and the guy will talk back to you.  I mean that’s never done in countries like United . . . in England and in India.  So there you find your chance of being able to make it to . . . to elite ranks is much, much less.  And that being the case, you want to use justice arguments rather than fairness arguments.  And I think . . .  So in America, fair trade has become a way of saying, “I really want protection.”  Because protection ________ fair trade arguments.  So I’m talking about contextualizing the notion of fair trade.  So in the . . .  Over here, when someone says, “I want fair trade,” and Mexico doesn’t . . . isn’t fairly trading with us because its . . . you know its democracy is not good enough; or its union rights are not good enough; or you can take any number of arguments and say, “That’s not good enough.”  And therefore if it is unfair trade, that is ________ fantastic political salience of this country; because how could you ever say, “I don’t want fair trade”?  Because fair trade is . . . is central to our psyche and personality.  Everything is around that.  So these protections are very smart. 

But there’s another sense in which fair trade is being used elsewhere.  And that is the one which Oxfam, etc. have been pushing.  Because they come from 19th century views of the . . . of fairness.  The Britain also had the same fairness as we do.  Because at the end of the 19th century, Britain had to compete with . . .  Britain was open, and U.S. and Germany were rising with protectionism in place.  So they thought protectionism was really making these countries grow.  And they said, “Ah, they are . . . they have . . . they have protection we have free trade, so that’s unfair trade.”  So there is a huge peril between what broke out in the United States under fair trade kind of protectionism when Japan was competing with us like . . . we were like a Rottweiler . . .  Seeing a Rottweiler coming down the road, we are petrified.  The Brits had the same thing at that . . . at the end of the 19th century.  But the . . . the current notion of fair trade outside the United States mainly propagated by Oxfam is on 19th century where Roundtree, who was also manufacturer of what we would call M&Ms today or something, Cabdury, _________.  These Quakers were into slavery, abolition, and a whole variety of good causes.  So Roundtree basically was behind the notion of paying people a fair wage when they were buying cocoa beans and so on and so forth.  So that’s what Oxfam, which knew nothing about the way fair trade was being used for protection’s purposes . . .  They used the term “fair trade”, so you’ll occasionally find fairness being treated as a way of saying, “Are people getting a fair shake for their . . . for whatever they’re producing?”

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I was born in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, in 1934. And I was deeply influenced by the fact that the people from the state of _________ . . . because the whole state _______ into _______ and _________ once, you know, we got independence and the people states reorganized along the linguistic lines. It used to be common that _______ Bombay presidency. Now it’s split into two. And I was part of the ________ faction. And _______ actually are traditionally very much oriented towards business. They are the ones who went all over into Africa and all over the world. And they’re the biggest community of Indians abroad. One thing which ________ have on top of that is a very powerful tradition of social work. And Gandhi, the great Gandhi, was himself a _______. He built on that tradition. He didn’t invent it. So he . . . What he did was to essentially harness this for social good in a very big way. So every family virtually is involved. And I came from legal family; but my father, you know, fought for independence. And my eldest brother became the Chief Justice of India and set up the entire legal assistance . . . legal aid program, and also public interest litigation. So there would be bridges built up for him, and villages named after him because he was a great, radical force for the . . . This ran in the family. So the reason why I got interested in economics was because when I started studying economics, I realized there was a . . . unlike law, which my parents wanted me to get into . . . At that time law was not seen the way it is today, as something where you can do public interest litigation. You can do pro bono work. You were just supposed to be, you know, X v. Y; Regina v. Brown. You know just case law and nothing really interesting. But I could see my teachers at Cambridge, England was the ones . . . where I first started doing economics seriously at the age of 19. That is where . . . They were all oriented towards social work. So I could see economics not just as a bunch of chess problems or mathematical problems as sometimes people do. But it’s simply an instrument for bringing about an uplift of people. And coming from India, and with this background, I was just a patsy for it. It became my vocation.

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I think there’s nothing like a single magic bullet I’m afraid. I think if we had one, we would have found one by now. And I think the . . . We need a concerted attack on several dimensions, actually. Institutions are . . . We have always been aware of institutions in my opinion. As I said back in ’62, President Kennedy thought of this. As our systems have evolved, we are very different today in terms of institutions from 50 years ago in the west, for example. Russia is also moving into a different set of institutions and so on. And these tend to evolve. Part of the problem, of course, is trying to set up institutions more rapidly, you don’t know whether . . . It’s like you drop them from outside, will they take root? What life will they develop on their own? So these are complex questions. But that institutions are important, there’s no question about it. And policies are important. But there’s no . . . I think even when we were . . . I would say that one way to look at it is to say what can we at our end . . . because this is something which all the enlightened leadership of the rich countries is interested in. What can we do to help the poorer countries, right? This is the . . . you might call it the Bono problem, but it’s a much older problem than that. I mean of course Bono can sing, right? It’s nothing that appeals to me. I’m too old-fashioned. But the ___________ huge numbers of people. He can raise the money, but what is he . . . What he does with the money is really the question we are asking. So how do we spend the money, okay? Now that is where I . . . Let me put it this way. So far by offering trade opportunity, letting multinationals go more freely into some of these countries – and that’s their own country’s policies which have changed in this regard – I think on the whole, East Asia has managed to do pretty well. I don’t think we need to do anything for India, China, even the other parts of East Asia. Because they have grown rapidly, and there is enough evidence that that growth, as I hoped and recommended to my boss at the Indian Planning Commission . . . that has actually pulled people out of poverty both in India and China. It’s not the only thing, because there are other things also – the policies which are alongside this. So that, I think, contin . . . I think it’s taken care of. And the first thing which the World Bank should do is to stop lending to India, China, Brazil, I mean all these countries. I mean they’re big enough. And if they don’t grow, and if they don’t do good things, that’s their responsibility.

But you see it . . . that depends on what you came out of, what you had to unwind. I would say that India . . . India had too much knee-jerk intervention. I mean you saw a problem and you said the government had to solve it. Now as a result, it led to so much governmental intervention that we allow licensing of all kinds of things and so on. Once you have that . . . we . . . We were a bit naïve. I myself was on that bus actually when I first went back from England. But I got off the bus rather fast after seeing what was happening. The bureaucrats love the power that they got as a result of handing out licenses. It’s not that they became particularly corrupt; but they . . . they . . . they enjoyed the power. And the politicians, of course, made money out of it and so on. So we have . . . And some bureaucrats did get corrupt. As a result, the policy . . . the bad ideas we have led to a set of institutions like licensing which led to their own lobbies and interests and so on; which then gelled into a very unproductive, counterproductive machine. When we came in and said, “Look we gotta dismantle it,” it’s very hard. And now we have managed to dismantle a fair amount of it, but there’s still some ways to go. Now the lesson from this I would say is that when you think about things like corruption, for example which, you know, all World Bank presidents have been worried about, and ___________ is worried about and so on, and we ourselves are worried about actually to the point where I must tell you is in my classroom, when I teach foreign aid because it’s come back into . . . as a topic. I ___________ 30 years ago, 20 years ago. I put it aside, and now it’s back into . . . So I say, “Look. Are you with Jeffrey Sachs on Africa, where you . . . you raise the aid immediately to very high levels – 0.5 percent of GNP or something from its current 0.1 or something?” So it’s a four to fivefold increase. And then you keep it at a plateau. Or I said, “Do you think that if you raise it that fast, that it will lead to a lot of corruption and counterproductive things?” And then of course people who stop giving aid say it will go down like that. So that’s another possibility if you follow the Sachs approach of raising it immediately. And I said the third possible part is where you steadily . . . you identify projects and so on, and programs. And it is possible to do that if you put a lot of work into it and systematically do it. And you gradually raise the thing to 0.5 percent. Maybe it will take 15 years, but you know it is building on itself. And I . . . But 75 percent of the kids in a class of over 150 people chose the gradualist one. All of them said Sachs was going to go this way. And the most vocal critics were African students. They had seen a lot of corruption. They didn’t want aid. I said, “Look. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” you know. But the point is this is . . . Why did this happen? Because we rush in with monies without looking at how exactly it will be used. We want to throw money at the problem. We become a lot smarter, and I think the . . . There is a reason why I think some people like Jeffrey Sachs are such a big danger, is become when Africans . . . real good Africans who have dedicate their lives to Africa and studying it, you know, many of them in Europe and so on, they are all aghast at this notion that you can just throw money like that. And the kids, you know, the people there are. And so I think the . . . the real danger today in the west is that in our enthusiasm and our, you know, reawakened conscious to do things for Africa – which is where the major development problem today is – we may fall for these sort of pseudo-solutions which are going to be extremely expensive.

What I like about someone like Bill Gates on the other hand, is that he really . . . You see he has an advantage over people like ___________, because __________ made money just by making money. I mean you know . . . you know by betting against the currency and things like that. He’s made some money on the Stock Market, but not as much as he claims. He doesn’t have any magic formula about making money on the stock market. But he’s had some lucky breaks and so on. Nobody respects that kind of money that I know of, right? (Laughter) I tell him frequently, “Don’t ________ your money on politics because, you know, when money which is not respected is spent on politics, people tend to get socialistic __________.” But Bill Gates is adored, because he’s . . . he has invented things, right? And so there is always this _________ notion that those who build things and do things are better than those who just speculate. (Laughter) So Bill Gates is exactly the man who is doing . . . has been going along this path in my judgment. So I think the best thing that Warren Buffet did was to identify Bill Gates as a guy who really knows how to build, because that’s what we need – the partnership with people like Bill Gates. Because we can’t just throw money away. And we professors are not particularly good at doing . . . I mean if I said I was going to do it, I mean you should laugh me out of court. Though I can identify certain problems, but I can’t . . . I can’t do what Bill Gates is doing. So I think we need . . . there is . . .

So for Africa, we need less flamboyance, less sort of recklessness of this kind, less tendency to dismiss people who raise questions as sort or reactionary Republicans or something. I think that that’s not really a correct thing. I think we need increasingly very steady Bill Gates-like involvement involving, you know, businesses which really know how to listen . . . of the type of ________ . . . not hedge-fund types or ________ types, because that’s a . . . They make money. I don’t know how they do it, but (laughter) but this is not really (laughter) . . . I know there is something like what we call in economics “good and stabilizing speculation”. But I teach it in the classroom, but don’t feel it in my bones as much. (Laughter)

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I think one of the remarkable things which, you know, which just happened in the 20th century is really the growth of the NGOs or the civil society. And you see that particularly in . . . in democratic countries. Like in India there are three million non-governmental organizations, many of them mom and pop. We have 45,000, I’m told, in Russia itself. So while they __________ throw our Carnegie and Ford Foundation and so on, you know the big guys, which doesn’t bother me very much, their own indigenous people are very important like they are in our own country. To me good governance is really essential for prosperity, for a sense of belonging to the community and so on. You can belong to . . . to a community which is led by a corrupt government for example and so on. So I think for all of that, it is very important that we have this civil society. Because it is really . . . Even if the government (01:12:23) wants to do good things, it has no way of knowing what the problems at the ground level are. And the NGOs . . . a civil society provides you with the eyes and ears of good governance. You may have, you know . . . You can’t pull your . . . You have to pay a tax. But if you don’t know that evolution is occurring, you know . . . your law is sitting on the books in New Delhi where the . . . you know, the capital of the country. And it’s happening somewhere in, you know, 50 miles from Bangalore. How are we going to find it out unless there is a little NGO or, you know, a democratic system where this is allowed to function ___________ and so on. So I think the civil society is so important. And we often make this point in relation to . . . on the right wing . . . on the, you know, right would say don’t . . . Leave things to the private sector because they are close to the ground, and they have a profit motive. So they will . . . They really should be left to do things . . . Bureaucrats don’t ever have that. So I’m making a similar point on the side of the left as it were, which is to say they have the altruistic motive to do good, which is to correspond to the profit motive and the right wing argument for . . . for not intervening. And they have the political . . . to work with local knowledge. So I . . . I think the most important thing for us is to encourage the civil society, and to support it everywhere. But this doesn’t mean that we must have Oxfam and . . . I mean these are gigantic businesses today. You know it’s worth billions of dollars being spent. I mean Oxfam is half the size of the World Bank, believe it or not. And it’s just . . . They get into everything. They should just stick to famines and, you know, flood relief and so on. But they’re fantastic. But this is the trouble. I would say I’m against big size, let me put it this way. Both in NGOs and, you know, people getting too big and leading to monopolistic practices and so on. And I think, you know, strengthening media, democracies, and so on – that’s the only way to get good governance. And I think this is where we ought to encourage . . . increase activity by our system. And preferably through NGOs themselves and through . . . Because if governments get involved, immediately it creates problems.

Recorded On: 8/14/07

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Well I could give you an academic answer as to which way the . . . the things are going.  But let me give you an answer from the point of view the . . . the fact that economics is a social science.  It’s about society.  Therefore it’s about amelioration of the human condition.  So to me it . . . that is the central focus of where economics ought to be.  It’s more or less the English focus which I learned.  It’s also the focus I learned at MIT, which is where I came and spent a little time.  Because that’s the most English school in the United States actually, in terms of its orientation towards solving problems; which matter rather than doing mathematical, you know, pyrotechnics and so on.  Now the most important challenge facing us today, I think, is globalization.  In the sense that I think things have changed very dramatically in the . . . in the system and the world economy.  Because the . . .  Part of it is, of course, what is sometimes called the death of distance  . . . things . . .  People are much closer.  A lot of economies have gotten much more integrated into the world economy as a result.  We have reduced a lot of barriers to transactions.  That’s manmade. We have also improves technology.  That is manmade too; but on the other hand it’s something which . . . which is not . . . which is not policy.  It is in fact technology, right, which is really changing the conditions under which we live.  So today you can . . .  I mean imagine in the 19th century.  I read somewhere there were 12 deliveries of . . . of the mail in London.  On horseback, of course.  Then it got steadily less.  And then we had, what two I think was the last when I was studying in England.  There were two.  And then I think now there is one.  Now we’ve got e-mails.  We’ve got delivery every second, right?  As often . . .  In fact one of the most distracting things in the world is to have your Blackberry with you, because it’s very hard to control your impulse to see if somebody sent you something.  So what we now have is a tremendous growth of technology, under which transactions have become so much more easy, and more dramatic, and instantaneous and so on, that I think that has really led to basically a funda . . .  This is really the way to do it.  My student Paul Krugman, who is a major economist of the younger generation, and writes an interesting column in the New York Times . . .  Paul Krugman has . . .  His major work – for which I hope he will get the Nobel Prize one day – is on economic geography.   Meaning people actually transacting face-to-face with one another, right?  So people having to be in the same physiological space.  And I often tease him because it’s a privilege of a professor to tease his students – particularly the ones he admires.  And I say, “You know Paul, you’re just behind the curve.  Geography has now become history.”  It’s gone because today, very rarely do you really need people to be together in the same place.  You look at a number of people writing papers together.  Hardly anybody writes papers together with the people who are in the same department.  Most of them are doing it with people who are skillions of miles away.

Recorded On: 8/14/07

Transcript:

Jagdish Bhagwati.

University Professor of Economics and Law at Columbia University.

I was born in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, in 1934. And I was deeply influenced by the fact that the people from the state of _________ . . . because the whole state _______ into _______ and _________ once, you know, we got independence and the people states reorganized along the linguistic lines. It used to be common that _______ Bombay presidency. Now it’s split into two. And I was part of the ________ faction. And _______ actually are traditionally very much oriented towards business. They are the ones who went all over into Africa and all over the world. And they’re the biggest community of Indians abroad. One thing which ________ have on top of that is a very powerful tradition of social work. And Gandhi, the great Gandhi, was himself a _______. He built on that tradition. He didn’t invent it. So he . . . What he did was to essentially harness this for social good in a very big way. So every family virtually is involved. And I came from legal family; but my father, you know, fought for independence. And my eldest brother became the Chief Justice of India and set up the entire legal assistance . . . legal aid program, and also public interest litigation. So there would be bridges built up for him, and villages named after him because he was a great, radical force for the . . . This ran in the family. So the reason why I got interested in economics was because when I started studying economics, I realized there was a . . . unlike law, which my parents wanted me to get into . . . At that time law was not seen the way it is today, as something where you can do public interest litigation. You can do pro bono work. You were just supposed to be, you know, X v. Y; Regina v. Brown. You know just case law and nothing really interesting. But I could see my teachers at Cambridge, England was the ones . . . where I first started doing economics seriously at the age of 19. That is where . . . They were all oriented towards social work. So I could see economics not just as a bunch of chess problems or mathematical problems as sometimes people do. But it’s simply an instrument for bringing about an uplift of people. And coming from India, and with this background, I was just a patsy for it. It became my vocation.