Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Quote of the Day


I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them as possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia or Egypt's? If so, what exactly? If not, what is it about the ``nature of India" that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.
Robert E. Lucas, Jr., Nobel Laureate

This has certainly been true for me...

1 comment:

jeremy h. said...

From a footnote in Barro and Sala-i-Martin's text on growth:

"Thus it is ironic (and rarely mentioned) that, even while Lucas was writing his ideas [1988], India had already begun to grow faster than Indonesia and Egypt. The growth rates of GDP per person from 1960 to 1980 were 3.2% per year in Egypt, 3.9% in Indonesia, and 1.5% in India. In contrast, from 1980 to 2000, the growth rates... were 1.8%... in Egypt, 3.5% in Indonesia, and 3.6% in India."