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Kenneth Arrow, 1921-2017

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Arrow in 2009 at the San Francisco AEA. For him, the environment was the world's biggest problem. For me it was conflict. We called it quits after a while, and I took this photograph. Professor Kenneth Arrow died on February 21, 2017, at the age of 95. He was widely regarded (along with Paul Samuelson, John Hicks and possibly --- depending on tastes --- John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Gary Becker) as one of the greatest economists of the 20th century. He also happened to be my favorite economist of all time.     Professor Dipak Banerjee, my teacher, introduced me to Kenneth Arrow in 1974, who appeared (much in the manner of Hindu god[desse]s for whom my mother has special reverence ) in the form of a small yellow paperback. I acquired Social Choice and Individual Values from Dasgupta and Co. of College Street , and still have it. I was a first year undergraduate. That little book was a repository of the most profound logical thought. I had never seen anyone distill wh

Where's the Dirt?

From an email conversation on demonetization with a reporter from the Calcutta Telegraph (Devadeep Purohit) December 28. His story ran January 1 here . There are divergent views on when the impact of demonetization would be over. Are you looking at any timeline?  Well, there are some obvious timelines: Short-run : December 30. I predict that there will be no last-minute  extensions for deposits, simply because an embarrassingly large  fraction of the estimated Rs 16 tr outstanding appears to have come  back, well over Rs 14 tr (and I am sure the number will be far  higher as we get the updated figures).  [Backdrop: The rupee is about 68 to the dollar, and Indian GDP is around Rs 130 tr.]  It's embarrassing because I am sure the government did not want so  much of the outstanding money to obediently come back! Either the  share of black wealth held in cash is small, or people have been very  efficient in using money mules of various kinds to launder their black  money (pr