New School Economic Review

Visualize this

by Benjamin on January 30, 2010

Visualisation is the new vogue in economics – and I think it’s official. I’ve been going on about Hans Rosling, Gapminder and Edward Tufte in the past, and now Rosling’s even been named Foreign Policy’s #96 top global thinker. Going by the top ten, that might not be a very wonderful list to be on, although it has a big chunk of economists in general. But I digress.

Visualisation is the new ‘cool’ thing to do in economics. The World Bank has their own visualiser and has even splurged on direct developer tools and on-line data simulation (called iSimulate, so one might expect the odd R-rated joke, as with the iPad). Both the IMF and even Eurostat has  joined the bandwagon, and the UK government is promoting data visualisation for its civil servants to use in the public sector. This is following a private sector trend, admittedly started by the Gapminder project, which is still – I think – the best of the lot, which explains why Google bought it back in 2007. But google operates their own visualiser straight on the search engine, and the Guardian runs a big data storage and visualisation site, to which David McCandless, of the excellent Information is Beautiful Blog contributes and writes for.

So where does all this visualisation lead? Well… for the moment it is a lot of fun and data can be revealing. That said, it needs to be combined with insight and planning before it will be much use to the day-to-day economist I reckon. Davind McCandless’ new book The Visual Miscallaneum (which I got today) goes a long way to inspire our use of graphics. Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen books on Presentation and Design are good for helping us think about how to present (the first more so than the second I think). But the reality is that for the moment journals print graphs in black and white, with a bare minimum of design scope. And lets be honest, visualising the supply lines and bottlenecks in the confused and complicated Haitian (and similar) aid operations would probably be the most beneficial of all data visualisations – but that’s not being done, not yet at least.

Robert McNamara Passes Away

by Benjamin on July 8, 2009

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, head of the World Bank until 1981 and the Washington Consensus, President of Ford and WWII strategist passed away on the 6 July 2009. A controversial figure who had an incredible impact on both development economics and economics in general, he will probably always be remembered as the person who first carpet bombed Vietnam only to go back an try to rebuild it. The British Guardian Newspaper have written a very good Obituary for a person who was so influential and so controversial.

On 1 November 1967 he [McNamara] expressed his reservations [about the Vietnam War] in a confidential memorandum to President Johnson. “I never received a reply,” he recalled later. “Four weeks later President Johnson announced my election as president of the World Bank and my departure from the defence department at an unspecified date. I do not know to this day whether I quit or was fired.”

U.S. talks free trade and imposes new sanctions

by Benjamin on April 29, 2009

The new U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Ron Kirk, said that the U.S. will reject protectionism and pursue negotiated trade liberalisation, and saying the U.S. is committed to the Doha WTO round which is a “once-in-a generation opportunity to forge a strong framework for the future of global trade” according to Bridges Trade Digest and The Dallas Morning News. (Kirk  served as mayor in Dallas for seven years, which might account for the coverage).

On the same day, Robert B.  Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, warned that

In London, leaders committed not to repeat the historic mistakes of previous eras. Since that G-20 meeting less than 3 weeks ago, 9 G-20 countries have taken or are considering 23 measures that restrict trade at the expense of other countries.  That’s almost half the G-20 member states.

Of those nine countries, the U.S. features most prominently on a World Bank fact-sheet of Actions against Trade since 02 April 2009. Argentina, Brazil, the EU and the US have all imposed trade sanctions over the last three weeks, on top of which are the recent pork import sanctions. The U.S. is stacking up restrictions on Chinese tires; Carrier bags from Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan; Chinese seating valves; Chinese oil derivatives; Citric acid from China and Canada; Canadian lumber and some chemicals from India and China.

Zoellick said that “four G-20 countries have lifted restrictions and are to be commended, but some have lifted restrictions with one hand and imposed them with the other”, while the U.S. is imposing them with both…