Yesterday, Feb 8, in the afternoon I attended a dialogue with Nobel Laureate for Economics Finn E. Kydland at the University of San Carlos. The place was the auditorium of the new Law and Business School of USC. Nice place, clean men's room (do I need to point that out?).
Prof. Kydland's hour-long presentation was entitled "Peace & Economic Development in the Era of Globalization". I like his sparse Powerpoint presentation because it did not distract from his speech. The foundation of his speech was of course the idea that won him and Ed Prescott the Nobel in 2004. This idea is that time consistency of policy will result in development. His comparison between what happened in Ireland (from very poor to being rich) and Argentina (previously rich and now poor) was very interesting.
One thing I don't like about open forums is that some people preface their questions with long presentation about themselves before shooting their question. It eats into the time. Yesterday was no different. Only seven persons dominated the forum. One professor wanted the speaker to explain some topics not in his presentation.
The briefest question was from a man who said he lived in Ireland when it was very poor and in Argentina when it was still rich. Then he asked whether it was the EU subsidy that propped up Ireland. Prof. Kydland in effect said that any subsidy going to Argentina wold have evaporated in no time at all. It is the time consistency of policies that can make a difference.
Kydland and Prescott's winning paper on "Rules rather than discretion" is available here .
Prof. Kydland concluded his presentation with a quote from the book "Barriers to Riches". It would be nice to have a copy of the book. But the original paper is available here.
