I write about long run economic growth, cool companies and a variety of miscellaneous economic ideas. I also run a podcast on the same topics.

What you should read

Economic growth

I’ve a four part series on Chinese economic growth.

Post #1: What went right in China? About Chinese agricultural reforms and the slow opening of the market to small businesses

Post #2: What went right in China (Part 2)? About small business formation in the early reform days and battle of ideas about the Special Economic Zones

Post #3: How do you govern an new country? About how governance in quickly growing countries is hard and about local governments making industrial parks

Post #4: Ideology, mistakes and Tiananmen About the large switch in the Chinese government’s ideology from communism to state led capitalism and the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Gambling on Development Review: I also have a book review on Stefan Dercon’s book Gambling on Development which talks about the elite bargains that lead to rapid growth in developing countries

Indian climate change policy. About why political economy constraints make it hard for India to have a rapid green transition

International finance

Why is the US Dollar a reserve currency?

Bitcoin is a risk asset, not a reserve currency

Economic crises

Russian crisis of 1998 - About whom to blame for the default and currency crisis of 1998

Pakistan’s economic crisis in 2021 - Why Pakistan has repeated economic crises

Alternative financing arrangements

GDP linked bonds: I proposed that governments should issue bonds whose payments are linked to their GDP.

Companies

A Tale of Three Billionaires: My book review of Joe Studwell’s Asian Godfathers talks about how the nature of billionaires in South East Asia have changed from the 19th century to today

Voda-gone: I chronicle the rise and fall of Vodafone in India

What was Shkreli’s Crime?: My analysis of Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Bitcoin and the Macroeconomy

You should not run your country on Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a risk asset, not a reserve currency

Uncategorized

The Cultural Superpowers of 2072: An essay on how the world’s culture will be different in 2022

Some book recommendations: A short summary of two books about semiconductors and the Napoleonic Wars, and some musings about the Great Man Theory of history

Supporters

A very big thank you to supporters of this blog and the related podcast

Visakan Veerasamy

Dinesh Raju

Emergent Ventures

Subscribe to Bretton Goods

I write about economic growth, international finance and other econ stuff

People

Pradyumna Prasad

Writes at brettongoods.substack.com