John Stuart Mill assisted in the triumph of the idea of progress in the 19th Century but he also had concerns about the future that still seem relevant today. Richard Reeves comments: ‘Mill was not a knee-jerk critic of what Ruskin dismissed as the “steam whistle society”, but nor was he a blind advocate of [...]

A perennial debate rages in India, about the merits of the traditional family-run business versus the knowledge of the fancy-pants consultant or MBA. A remarkable paper by a group of economists sheds new light on this question. I wrote a column in Financial Express today titled Are Indian family businesses well run? where I describe [...]

In recent years, an empirical literature has begun to prise apart the management process of universities, seeking to identify the features which cater to excellence. In a previous blog post I summarised five useful ingredients that enable successful universities, from a working paper by Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, Caroline M. Hoxby, Andreu Mas-Colell [...]

This follows on from my last post: Do all well-being indicators tell similar stories about human flourishing? The indicators that I looked at did tend to tell similar stories – countries that have high average income levels also tend to have high rankings on other well-being indicators.
The purpose of this post is to extend the [...]

This question arose as I was thinking about the relationship between the determinants of happiness (i.e. survey measures of subjective well-being or SWB) and human flourishing at a national level.
Recent research has been able to explain around 90% of inter-country differences in average SWB in terms of average income levels, enough money for food, healthy [...]

In India, in the fields of health and education, an impressive rise of a private ecosystem has come about. In these fields, the State has tried hard to get back in the game, particularly after the UPA won power in 2004. But the unwillingness of the State to undertake deeper reforms has meant that ultimately, [...]

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced this week that it will grant one of the largest privately sponsored school improvement programs in recent memory — several teacher performance improvement initiatives in more than four states.
The program will focus on efforts to improve teacher’s results rather than simply compensate them on “educational qualifications.”
Announced on Thursday, [...]

The CMIE Consumer Pyramids data shows that in all their income categories, more than 50% of households have a mobile phone. It is only in their bottom category `Lower Middle Income – II’ that only 37.5% of households have mobile phones. From `Higher Middle Income – III’ upwards, the incidence is above 80%. If you [...]

There is no doubt that many were examining their careers this Labor Day. Some were just thankful to have a job. Many were reflecting on changes they’d like to make. And still others have already made those changes and are just now headed into new careers. Over the weekend I read an [...]

In my previous article on the bloated private sector, I failed to adequately explain my main point.

For the past 3 decades faith in the free market powers of the private sector have led to a massive misallocation of resources away from public sector investment. A careful reading of price signals reveal a severe [...]