PakistanSome time ago, HEC introduced quantification of research output, and made a certain number of publications necessary for hiring and promotions. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Why? Because without any measurable standards for hiring and promotions, these decisions were being made subjectively. The feeling was that there is massive corruption in … Continue reading »
In a complex world, discovering causality is very difficult. Many things happen simultaneously, and post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning is a common fallacy that is hard to detect and critique. Here is how I understand Meltzer’s arguments. Meltzer defines Capitalism as private ownership of means of production, and free enterprise with minimal government regulations. … Continue reading »
RG10 (Some Myths About Money Creation): Previous post in this sequence is RG9 Who Should Create Money? In this post, we pause to explain the process of money creation by private banks, and the role of Central Banks in enabling and facilitating this money creation. This is necessary in order to understand the history of … Continue reading »
In this post, we will cover the remaining portion of Goodhart Ch2 Case for Free Banking It is worth noting that this chapter is a theoretical preliminary, and not part of the historical analysis which is the main strength of this book. The Central Question of importance, to which no solution is known currently, is … Continue reading »
My interview/talk on “How Do We Bring Growth Back to the Pakistan Economy?” was recently recorded by Mohammad Siddique of the Better Pakistan Institute. The video is linked below. Very briefly, the message can be summarized as follows. The question of “How we can create growth?” is too ambiguous. Generally speaking, we think the question … Continue reading »
About fifteen years ago, teaching a conventional statistics course, I started thinking about how I could teach it in a way that it would be an act of worship. How to teach the course so that the ink of the students would be rewarded like the blood of the martyrs? Since the worth of all … Continue reading »
This is the 7th Reader’s Guide in a sequence studying Goodhart’s book on the Evolution of Central Banks. For the previous post, see RG6: The Misleading Case for Free Markets. The key question under discussion here is: Do Central Banks provide a service to private commercial banks by supervising and regulating them, or do they use … Continue reading »
The Reagan-Thatcher revolution started an era of financial de-regulation, in adherence to free market ideology, which continues to this day. This is true despite the hundreds of major and minor financial crises which testify to the inherent instability of the financial system, and the necessity for effective regulation. Regulation and supervision of private commercial banks … Continue reading »
BACKGROUND: At the request of Minister Finance Ishaq Dar and Minister Planning Ahsan Iqbal, a conference on “Macro Models for Policy and Planning” was jointly organized by PIDE and NIBAF, on Oct 22, 2016, with wide participation from several ministries and academic institutions. Video Recordings of the day long seminar, papers presented, and related materials, … Continue reading »
This is a sequence of posts which goes through Charles Goodhart’s book on Evolution of Central Banking. The previous post is: RG5 Evolution of Economic Systems Chapter 2 opens with a discussion of the views of Walter Bagehot (pronounce as badge-it), author of Lombard Street, which has received a lot of recent acclaim as masterpiece on … Continue reading »