Pakistan Monument, Islamabad. The past two months of the end of this year have been incredibly busy and kept my mind and heart way too occupied from any writing or even "unwritten" moments of self-reflections. But no amounts of exhaustion or other circumstances shall prevent me from penning down anything about my latest overseas trip …
Author: cnguyen
Learning from a rare friend
Before writing this, I had already received the permission from a colleague of mine, a native of the capital Pyongyang of North Korea, to write about my experience with her. In general, it would be strange to comment on your colleague in a public post, both on professional and personal grounds. But instead, my aim …
The return of development economics?
The news of this year's Nobel laureate(s) in Economic Sciences was just an hour ago announced to be the economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their work to alleviate global poverty, the official announcement said. Hopefully, this will bring development economics back on the radar of mainstream economics and make the field …
China and inequality
In many developing countries with a deeply rooted legacy of socialism and egalitarianism, debates about choosing between the policy preferences of economic growth, equality and social justice remain as contentious as ever. Within economics, unanimity is really never meant to be achieved when studying the following questions: What is the optimal tax rate? What is …
Social mobility in democracies
The past 4-6 weeks have been incredibly hectic, as I've recently been embroiled in many weeks (and weekends) of busy work, online studies and field missions to the border areas of Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Now that I am fully back in Jakarta, it's only from this weekend that I've been able to take a deep …
Economics is useful
It's always refreshing to keep being reminded about the reasons why I remain optimistic about what's actually going on in economics research. A recent podcast episode by VoxEU, which featured this year's Yrjö Jahnsson Award winners, Oriana Bandiera and Imran Rasul, proved to be just one of those reminders. Generally speaking, the interview was aimed …
Fasting and Indonesian elections
For several weeks now, I've been slowly adopting to life in Jakarta in conjuncture with many important events taking place in Indonesia. Two events have personally left me with significant impressions: the first being the hotly contested 2019 presidential elections, in which over 190 million were eligible to cast their votes on 17 April, and …
Empirical macroeconomics
On 2 May, it was announced that the economist, Emi Nakamura (Berkeley), had earned the John Bates Clark Medal, an annually-awarded prize which enjoys similar prestige among young American economists as the Yrjö Jahnsson Award does among young European economists. While myself being an enthusiastic follower of the "credibility revolution" within microeconomics - which can …
Parenthood and data
https://nyti.ms/2vecHgC A recent piece on the New York Times by the economist, Emily Oster (Brown), briefly introduces her upcoming book about how common feelings of guilt among young parents - often transferred down by society and its gold standards of ideal parenthood - are refutable by new data-driven evidence suggesting that the feelings of guilt …
Economics and “the market”
“Economics Now Points Away From the Laissez-Faire Approach”: A recent interview featuring the economist, Sureish Naidu, briefly summarized all the reasons why economics these days has a lot more to contribute to the policy world. Here's a few quotes to which I could directly relate to my own reflections and past experience with economics, being …
