Category Archives: Economics
Democracy and its consolidation — thoughts from The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
My thoughts are based on the book The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. The book discusses how the economic conditions of countries affect their paths of political institutions. Here the word “democracy” is defined by Schumpeter to be The institutional arrangements for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire power …
Is Industrial Revolution an accident? Reflections on The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomeranz
The book is the main reading for my course Economic History of China. Pomeranz’s main argument is simple: Europe and China pursued divergent paths of economic development, one capital-intensive and the other labor-intensive, largely because Europe had the New World to supply them with adequate energy, resources, and labor. I found most parts of his reasoning convincing. In the following, I …
The Power of Exit
This might appear weird to you at first sight. People usually speak of “the power of entry” or “limited entry” in monopoly industries. And we know that the power of entry can give existing players exorbitant profits. The power of exit, however, seems to be rather counterfactual: Why do you need a power to exit? What does it apply …
Being late: a dominating strategy
Today I participated in a hiking trip. The organizers set the gathering time to be 9am, but we waited until nearly 10am to finally depart. Then I was thinking: why do people tend to come late? It is very common for my Hong Kong friends to be late (much less common among my mainland friends). When I asked …
Can good rules be replicated? — thoughts from the proposal of charter cities
My thoughts are from Paul Romer’s (bio) radical idea about charter cities (TED link). He talked about building cities with good rules (institutions) which drives people to move there and businesses to grow, finally accelerating urbanization process in underdeveloped areas around the world. According to Prof. Romer, we need rules which offer more choices to people and more choices to …
Notes on Deirdre McCloskey’s “Economical Writing”
This book is a great writing instruction for economics students. In the book McCloskey says: Rotten writing causes more papers and reports to fail than do rotten statistics or rotten research. You have to be read to be listened to. In economics, it is important for the author to present her reasoning in a readable way. But …
Notes on the China’s Ming Dynasty
I have been reading Ray Huang’s book China: A Macro History. Huang analyzed Chinese history with a macro economic and social perspective, pointing out the long-term effects of many seemingly trivial events. It is definitely worth reading, either for foreigners to get an idea of Chinese history or for Chinese readers to refresh their memory and …
Professor Wu Jinglian on the Comprehensive Plan of China’s Reforms
Professor Wu Jinglian (bio) is a renowned Chinese economist and one of the leading figures in China’s economic reform. He came to Hong Kong University yesterday and delivered a public lecture named “Comprehensive Plan and Top-Level Design for China’s Reforms”. The following points are what I found the most interesting in his speech: 1. The meaning of “comprehensive plan”. The term …
Capital flows in the changing world: notes from Dr. Min Zhu’s lecture
Dr. Min Zhu, the Deputy Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), gave an insightful speech on capital flows in the contemporary world and the respective policy implications at Hong Kong University. He began by talking about the increasing interconnectedness of the world we live in. It is fascinating to see how the world gets rearranged in …
Hong Kong Pre-Primary School Voucher System
maryandmusic ♦ April 3, 2012 ♦ Leave a Comment
This is an excerpt from my paper commenting the Hong Kong Financial Budget for 2012-2013, delivered by Mr. John Tsang on Feb 1, 2012. The Hong Kong government has launched the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS) since 2007/08 school year. The voucher can only be redeemed by local Non Profit-Making (NPM) kindergartens (KGs) charging an …
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