The Quizzical Economist

Evolutionary musicologist, Joseph Jordania, observes in his book,  ` Who asked the first question ?’ , that our closest ancestors i.e. apes, don’t have the capacity to formulate questions. While they have abundant natural curiosity, they lack the ability to articulate it as a question. Jordania further explains that a question is “materialised curiosity” and it galvanises other members of the community to become involved in settling the problem. Thus, the ability to ask questions marks a step in human cognitive evolution. Mike Vaughn, speaking on the matter of asking better questions in a TEDx talk,  underlines its importance. Today, we are at a stage of development, where computers are continuously getting better at answering questions and solving problems. Thus, our ability to ask questions will be the only way in which we stay relevant and shape our future. As a researcher in the field of economics, I ask myself if one could learn ways to formulate better questions. Some mi...

A paper in last year's edition of Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) by Fajgelbaum and Gaubert (2020) caught my eye (and brought me my first blog post!). The paper asks if the existing distribution of productive activities and workers within countries is optimal. By optimal, economists are usually referring to Pareto efficiency, a state where no individual can be made better off without making someone else worse off. Spatial concentration of economic activity and regional divergence has been the norm in the 21 st century. Agglomeration literature within economics emphasize the benefits of firms producing similar or complementary goods locating close to each other and this is the standard justification for the spatial concentration seen within large economies. Some within this literature have expressed the view that agglomeration gains in some areas have come at the expense of agglomeration losses in other areas (see Kline and Moretti, 2014 ). India itself seems to have witnes...