Alain Bertaud on Order Without Design

Ideas of India | 2 March 2023 | 1h 34m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Alain Bertaud about his book Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities. Discusses how Indian cities have evolved, utilities pricing, land use restrictions such as floor area ratio and floor space index, slums, charter cities, urbanization in Africa, and more.

See also the episodes Alain Bertaud on Cities, Planning, and Order Without Design and Housing Affordability: Top-Down Design and Spontaneous Order.

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Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin on How the World Became Rich

Ideas of India | 18 August 2022 | 1h 34m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin about their book How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth. Discusses the link between technological innovation and growth, the importance of global market competition, positive and negative effects of colonialism, the methodology of economic history and more.

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Ashwini Deshpande on Discrimination and Affirmative Action

Ideas of India | 21 July 2022 | 1h 33m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Ashwini Deshpande about the economics of discrimination and affirmative action with a focus on caste and gender in India’s labour markets. Includes the reservation system and its critiques, education of women, caste discrimination, and how endogamy perpetuates caste. Draws from her books The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India and Affirmative Action in India.

For those of us outside of India this provides perspective on the effectiveness of affirmative action programmes worldwide.

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Naushad Forbes on Building Innovation in Industry

Ideas of India | 12 May 2022 | 1h 21m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Naushad Forbes about his book The Struggle and the Promise: Restoring India’s Potential. Discusses why Indian companies spend so little on R&D, how companies learn and innovate, protectionism versus open markets, cronyism, Parsi exceptionalism, higher education reforms and more.

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Lant Pritchett on Where Did Development Economics Go Wrong?

Ideas of India | 17 March 2022 | 1h 37m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Lant Pritchett about economic convergence, academic scepticism about growth, problems with randomised control trials, flawed methodologies in development economics, the shortcomings of India’s educational system and much more.

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Shrayana Bhattacharya on Women and the Indian Economy

Ideas of India | 3 February 2022 | 1h 34m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Shrayana Bhattacharya about her book Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence. Insights on India’s economic and social liberalisation from the lives of ten Indian women, all fans of Hindi film idol Shah Rukh Khan, a post-liberalisation icon. Discusses the impediments to Indian women’s economic and social progress.

I’ve devoured this book since listening to this episode. It is extraordinarily good, with rich insights on life in India; its economy; and the frustrations of women wanting love, appreciation and equality from men.

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Alice Evans on The Great Gender Divergence

Ideas of India | 13 May 2021 | 1h 31m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Alice Evans about ideas from her upcoming book The Great Gender Divergence. Discusses issues affecting women in India, including drivers of women’s labour force participation, urbanization and social change, single-gender education, son preference, social media, pro-worker reforms, what drives support for gender equality, and more.

If you enjoy this then I highly recommend Alice Evans’ blogpost Why are North and South India So Different on Gender? This reviews the literature on poverty, colonialism, matriliny, cousin marriage, conquests and purdah, labour-intensive cultivation, and ancestral crop yields to assess the roots of India’s regional gender differences.

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