Economics is a Disgrace, One Virus, Two Countries and – Road Warriors, secret heroes of the world economy?

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck, welcome to this World Economic Forum newsletter.

This week... We’re back! Whatever back means exactly. Here’s a bumper brain box edition of links and food for thought to keep you going.

Remember newsletters are for sharing!

–––

1?? Economics? Burn it Down!

“Economics failed us.” Claudia Sahm delivers a must-read broadside against her profession.

Economics is a disgrace. The lack of diversity and inclusion degrades our knowledge and policy advice. We hurt economists from undergraduate classrooms to offices at the White House. We drive away talent; we mistreat those who stay; and we tolerate bad behavior.

Sahm’s key points:

• Economics destroys its students: predators target research assistants, graduate students, and early-career economists
• It promotes elitism over science, and elites punch down and attack those with different opinions
• Economists discourage under-represented groups, and hurt people outside economics with bad policy advice

Her post is a powerful indictment of an academic discipline that plays a critical role in helping us understand the world – it makes uncomfortable reading.

? It’s not just economics. Normal isn’t working – We need a Great Reset.

–––

2?? Why the World Needs Business Travel

Road warriors don’t just collect air miles. They’re also know-how sharers.

The George Clooney stereotype isn’t just a waste of a keycard.

A complete permanent shutdown of international business travel would shrink global GDP by over 17% of GDP, an order of magnitude larger than the 1.7% of GDP that was being spent in 2018, before the pandemic.

Click on the link in the quote to find out more from Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann.

? Here’s how global supply chains will change after COVID-19.

–––

3?? COVID–19. Two Countries, One Virus.

How China Controlled COVID–19: an essay from Peter Hessler, an American professor in China:

• “After President Xi Jinping came to power, in 2012, he set about strengthening Party structures, including a new emphasis on neighborhood committees. This process was accelerated by the pandemic... With new government funding, committees hired contract workers, some of whom were local shop owners who had been forced to close down. Neighborhood crews went door to door, giving out information, questioning residents to see if they had been to high-risk areas, and helping with contact tracing...
• [T]he lessons that a young Chinese drew from the crisis were likely very different from those of a young American. In my students’ last essays, many expressed a renewed faith in their government... For my last survey, I asked the students to rate their feelings about the future on a scale of one to ten, with one being the most pessimistic. After everything that had happened—the collapse of U.S.-China relations, the explosion of the pandemic, the death of half a million people worldwide—the average rating was 7.1.”

How the Pandemic Defeated America: science writer Ed Yong’s comprehensive and critical analysis of the US response.

• “COVID?19 is an assault on America’s body, and a referendum on the ideas that animate its culture. Recovery is possible, but it demands radical introspection. America would be wise to help reverse the ruination of the natural world, a process that continues to shunt animal diseases into human bodies. It should strive to prevent sickness instead of profiting from it. It should build a health-care system that prizes resilience over brittle efficiency, and an information system that favors light over heat. It should rebuild its international alliances, its social safety net, and its trust in empiricism. It should address the health inequities that flow from its history.”

The British version of this story, from Yong’s colleague Tom McTague also makes sorry reading: How the Pandemic Revealed Britain’s National Illness.

(How headline writers love using “How...”)

Everything else you need to know on scientific developments this week is here. Meanwhile, there are lessons from how we beat diseases in the past...

? Get more context with our COVID–19 Transformation Map.

–––

4?? The 21st Century’s Growth Dilemma

“The novel challenge we face is how to disarm economic growth as a planetary threat.”

Adam Tooze nails it:

“There is no way back to the 1990s, when economic growth under the sign of US hegemony could be treated as geopolitically neutral ... Instead we have learned, or relearned, that economic growth and trade determine the balance of power and generate tensions that ultimately require international political resolution.”

? Can there be a winner in the US-China tech war?

–––

5?? The Planet’s Northernmost Town Feels the Heat

? Nothing’s hotter than Robin, Linda, Max and the team at World vs Virus – plus it’s Apple recommended!

–––

6?? Ever Wanted a Cup of Tea with Two Nobel Prize-winners?

There’s a virtual equivalent: economics legends Angus Deaton and Amartya Sen talking about everything.

There’s lots of serious stuff, but here’s Sen on how his economics tutor Maurice Dobb, a notorious Marxist, got hired at Trinity College, Cambridge:

• Dennis Robertson offered Dobb a job... Maurice accepted it immediately ... He went home, and being a good Englishman, he wondered, “Shouldn’t I have mentioned that I’m a member of the Communist Party?” Then he wrote a letter of apology—a very English letter: “I was so overwhelmed with the prospect of becoming a teacher in Trinity that I overlooked to tell you, for which I apologize, that I’m a member of the British Communist Party, and if after knowing that, you decide that you want to withdraw your offer, I would like you to know that I would not hold that against you.” Robertson replied, “Dear Dobb, So long as you give us a fortnight’s notice before blowing up the chapel, it would be all right.”

Now there’s a LinkedIn recommendation. More seriously, Sen again on the greatest economist of all time, Adam Smith:

• [Smith] discussed why you have to think pragmatically about the different institutions to be combined together, paying close attention to how they respectively work. There’s a passage where he’s asking himself the question, Why do we strongly want a good political economy? Why is it important? One answer—not the only one—is that it will lead to high economic growth...
• But why is that important? He says it’s important for two distinct reasons. First, it gives the individual more income, which in turn helps people to do what they would value doing ... More income helps you to choose the kind of life that you’d like to lead. Second, it gives the state (which he greatly valued as an institution when properly used) more revenue, allowing it to do those things which only the state can do well. As an example, he talks about the state being able to provide free school education ... We see here the importance that Smith, often taken to be the guru of capitalism, attached to public services to be provided by the state.

? Explore the Future of Economic Progress.

–––

7?? In Memoriam

While we were away, one of the funniest, nicest, smartest of human beings left us suddenly. I’d just emailed him for a favour the night before he died, and characteristically he was quick to offer help.

We should all be so lucky to know people like Chris Dickey, and the world would undoubtedly be a better place had he hung around longer.

Sadly life doesn’t work that way.

Chris lived a life.

Onwards and upwards.

–––

If you like this newsletter – please share it with friends, family, and co-workers!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this artisan crafted content, enjoy your summer in peace and tranquillity,

Adrian

For more from the Forum, sign up for our weekly email.

With thanks to all those folks without whose encouragement and critical feedback this newsletter would never get written.