Some 3-4 days back, I wrote a post in the Indian Economy Blog with a conjecture as to why India never got an overwhelming "gentleman class" in the way that European countries did. I forgot to cross post it here back then, so I'm doing it now.

Actually, when I posted this I wasn't even sure if it would be appropriate for the IEB. I'm not sure even ( Read more... )

Yesterday I gave my old bike for servicing. It was in such bad shape that for a while I was worried that the cost of servicing would be greater than the salvage value of the bike. This morning, when I went to pick it up, I was pleased to see that the bill came up to Rs. 445 only. The first thing I did after that was to ask the mechanic how much I ( Read more... )

A few minutes back I finished reading Richard McKenzie's Why popcorn costs so much at the movies and other pricing puzzles. Since the book is not available in India, I managed to procure an online pirated version through a friend. And since the book isn't released in India, I didn't feel guilty about reading the pirated version.

Coming to the point ( Read more... )

Left-wing economics is idealistic, and the basic assumption is that everyone is a good guy, and he will work in the best interests of the system ( Read more... )

When I got my house painted three months back, the head painter suggested a new method of calculating his fees. Instead of charging by the man hour, which is how usually painters are charged, this guy proposed that we pay him by the square foot. Once all the work was done, he and I together measured up our house, and calculated his fee based on ( Read more... )

The latest podcast on Econtalk has Duke economist Mike Munger talking about public transport, and how things have changed for the worse in Santiago after public transport was nationalized.

One of the points mentioned in the podcast talks about homogeneity in services after nationalization. Munger talks about how usage of the public transport system ( Read more... )

Can Country A do something to Country B at the WTO because the latter is not passing on full fuel price to the customer, leading to no decline in supply  demand and consequently high prices of oil for Country A?

How do these kind of things work? Is it possible for one country to destroy market in another by controlling prices within the first ( Read more... )

Blame the Bangarappa government of 1993, which took a decision to stop issuing more liquor licenses, a decision that still continues today.  According to
( Read more... )

For the last one year or so, I've been relying on bloggers such as Tyler Cowen for my books recommendations. Basically I read about a book on a blog, or say Marginal Revolution does a book forum on the book, and I soon get interested in the book, and go out to buy it. And the fact that I've been fairly regularly winning book coupons at quizzes ( Read more... )

I first wrote about water privatization on this blog back in 2006. I had written that bit as part of a term paper for an infrastructure course at IIMB, and it seemed like we didn't do too well as far as the term paper went.

I revisited the topic sometime last year when i talked about water privatization in Kundapur. I cross posted that on the ( Read more... )