Quah, Danny -- Professor of Economics

OTHER PLACES I UPDATE:

I blog on WordPress

and Blog.Sina

, and I tweet on Twitter

and Weibo

MY MOST RECENT ACTIVITY:

2012.01.24 Blog: Journals serving as Tombstones 学术期刊只是墓碑
“... how does the new generation get validation when the old people, apart from those like Krugman, don't "get" the new tools? That inner group with the yellow jackets isn't going to just roll over without a fight”
(Also Social Science Space 24 January 2012; 学术期刊只是墓碑, 24 January 2012; LSE Impact of Social Sciences 30 January 2012)

2011.12.28 Blog: A small proposal to rebalance the global economy: Just let China grow 28 December 2011
“Rich Chinese consumers have no difficulty increasing consumption.”
(Also EconoMonitor 30 December 2011; China.org.cn 02 January 2012; The Edge Malaysia 09 January 2012; 让中国尽快变得富有, 12 January 2012; Rebalancing the global economy needn't be painful – just let China grow, The Guardian, 17 January 2012)

2011.12.23 Blog: Prof M. E. Cox on “A new world economic order? Views from the LSE” 23 December 2011
“Has the US been robbed of its unipolar moment?”
(Also LSE Comment and Opinion January 2012)

2011.12.13 Blog: Clash at ERC: The UK and the Eurozone in the Shifting Global Economy 13 December 2011.
“Why do UK exports, apart from higher education, head so much only to slow-growing economies?”
(Also Our exports now go mostly to the slow-growing economies, at British Politics and Policy 13 December 2011; The UK and the Eurozone in the shifting global economy, at China.org.cn and The Edge Malaysia 19 December 2011; EconoMonitor 21 December 2011; The Guardian 13 January 2012; 英国与欧元区：其在变动的世界经济中的位置, 15 January 2012)

2011.12.12 Blog: The LSE Big Questions Lecture: Organized Common Sense 12 December 2011
“I don’t mumble into my beard so that the audience has no idea what I just said [I’m ethnic Chinese and we don’t grow beards easily].”
(Also Social Science Space 29 December 2011; “Engaging young people in big ideas” LSE Impact of Social Sciences 14 December 2011)

2011.12.10 BBC World Service - The Forum. Steps for economic recovery: Redrawing the map of the global economy. Discussion with Robert Skidelsky and Timur Kuran; chaired by Bridget Kendall.
Broadcast Saturday 10 December 2011 2305h, Sunday 11 December 0205h, Sunday 11 Dec 2011 0905h GMT.
Facebook discussion page

2011.12.08 Blog: The Great Shift East: The World According to Americans 08 December 2011
“People say the darndest things.”

2011.12.06 Inaugural LSE Big Questions Lecture: East beats West? Is the East taking over the world?
Big questions for young minds: LSE launches new economics lecture for young people online
Recorded Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE. London. 30 June 2011

2011.12.06 Economic Research Council: Clash of the Titans

Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, 06 December 2011

2011.11.20 Blog: Model and supermodel 20 November 2011
‘Who among us wouldn’t prefer that no one giggle in lecture when we say “Victoria’s Secret supermodel”, as we illustrate a point in analyzing demand and supply curves?’

2011.11.11 Blog: Is UK social science following a broken model? 11 November 2011.
(Also A model US researchers are already rejecting for being outdated, on LSE Impact of Social Sciences, 23 November 2011; Social Science Space, 21 December 2011)

2011.10.29 The Changing World Economic Order
Lecture at Second Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Forum. Beijing, 29 October 2011

2011.10.28 China and the Global Public Good
Lecture at Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, Peking University, and Tsinghua University. Beijing, 28 October 2011.

2011.10.14 Blog: Causal Global Imbalances 14 October 2011
“The problem is not that of a bilateral exchange rate against the RMB but instead of US excess consumption swarming over pretty much all the rest of the global economy.”

2011.10.11 Confucius Institute for Business London Annual Public Lecture: 627 Million Chinese Brought Out Of Poverty: Where Did It All Go Wrong?
From 1981 to 2005 China, on a population base of a billion, succeeded in lifting over 600 million of its citizens out of grinding poverty - this is transformation on a scale never before experienced in all of human history, and larger than total poverty reduction on the entire planet. World poverty reduction has taken place on the back of China's poverty reduction. What other evidence bears out the great shift east in the global economy? What barriers might disrupt further such displacement? Where does the good of the world lie?
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, LSE. London. 1830h Tuesday 12 October 2011
[Youtube] [Video+Podcast] [Slides PDF] [Beaver writeup, 17 Oct 2011]

2011.06.30 The LSE Big Questions Lecture: East beats West?
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, LSE. London. 1300h Thursday 30 June 2011
Subsequent writeup, youtube videos.

2011.06.24 BBC World Service. One Planet. Asia - From Saver to Spender
"China and India have shown that [even] exceptionally large economies can enjoy high rates of economic growth"
Malaysia's guidebook to prosperity

2011.05.30 The Global Herald - The Great Shift East
"As the East continues to rise, everyone must now be asking out loud not just what is good for the West but what is good for the world. You would think.
Yet, practically without challenge, ever greater policy discussion today turns on the West (or the US) retaining international economic dominance: “Is the West history? What must we do to respond?”"
Blog

2011.04.25 8th SER Distinguished Public Lecture: The Shifting Global Balance of Power
NEC, Nanyang Technological University. Singapore. 1730h Monday 25 April 2011

2011.04.25 Malaysia's Position as the Global Economy Moves East
The Edge Malaysia
25 April 2011

2011.04.18 The Shifting Balance of Global Power, China.org
"As the economic center of gravity shifts East, the question should not be what is good for the West, but what is good for the world as a whole."
18 April 2011

2011.04.07 CNN Global Public Square - "World's center of economic gravity shifts east"
[...] is desolate and miserable: it is cold, wet, and hundreds of miles beneath the waves of the Atlantic. If you were to rise straight up to the surface from that depth, there would be absolutely nothing around except thousands of miles of water in every direction.
07 April 2011
[Also, New York Times Catherine Rampell 2011.03.24 | Wall Street Journal Christopher Shea's Ideas Market Blog 2011.03.19 | Financial Times Alphaville 2011.03.23 | John Gapper 2011.03.23 | Economist 2011.03.22.]

2011.03.03 BBC World Service Business Daily - "A Sputnik moment for the US?"
When the Soviet Union beat the USA with the launch of the satellite Sputnik it was a defining moment in the Cold War. America felt it was being eclipsed by the technological might of the communist bloc. So does the rise of the new economies, particularly China, represent another Sputnik moment? Justin Rowlatt discusses this with Will Hutton, author of The Writing On The Wall which examines Western concerns and responses to the rise of China, and Danny Quah, Professor of Economics at London School of Economics.
BBC World Service 0832h Thursday 03 March 2011

2011.01.17 Ralph Milliband Series on the Restructuring of World Power
The tensions of international power restructuring in a shifting global economy
Does economic strength determine global power? How long can under-performing economies continue to claim world political leadership? What pressures arise from such ongoing mismatch? D. Quah presents the arguments and evaluates the evidence on an ongoing world power restructuring now driven by economics unseemly steaming ahead of graceful transition.
LSE, 1830h Monday 17 January 2011
[Podcast (40Mb)] | [3/p handout] | Nottingham University China Policy Institute 01 February 2011

2010.09.27 LSE Research magazine
Power shift: Myth and Reality
Two great tectonic plates are on the move – China and the US – and the rest of the world is struggling to adjust to new realities and new relationships. This historic power shift, its repercussions, and indeed the myths surrounding it are the cover subjects of the Autumn 2010 issue of LSE Research, which brings together four of the most eminent thinkers on the subject: Arne Westad, Michael Cox, Danny Quah, and Niall Ferguson. Additionally, in a special report, Justin Gest, Mina Al-Lami and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen bring us some disturbing news from the front lines of what used to be called the war on terror.

2010.09.13 World Economic Forum 2010 Annual Meeting of the New Champions
Workspace: Sustaining Asia's Economic Leadership
Tianjin China, 0915h Monday 13 September 2010

2010.07.10 LSE Alumni 2000-2004 Reunion Lecture
Will the world belong to Asia in the 21st Century?
In 2001, Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, coined the term BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), arguing that by 2050 their combined economies would overtake that of the world's richest countries. The rise and rise of China has led to talk of the G2, while the continuing emergence of Asia, has led some to predict the predominance of 'Asian values' in the 21st century. Professor Danny Quah, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, LSE Global Governance, examines Asia's phenomenal rise and her impact on the global stage.
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, NAB LSE. London. 1615h Saturday 10 July 2010
[Podcast (42Mb)] | [Slides] | [3/p handout] | Animations: [World economic centre of gravity] | [Global economic growth and poverty dynamics]

2010.06.08 Beijing Alumni Lecture
China in the Global Economy: The New Normal
[Announcement]
The British Embassy Residence, Beijing. 1900h (Advance registration required)
[Runup: China Economic Review 2010.06.11 | China Daily 2010.06.02]

2010.05.28 Shanghai Futures Exchange
The New Global Economic Landscape
Seventh Shanghai Derivatives Market Forum | [First 3 pages... (in Chinese)] [Finance Sina 2010.05.28]
Pudong Shanghai, 1100h 28 May 2010

RECENT WRITING:

2011.01 The Global Economy's Shifting Centre of Gravity
This paper describes the dynamics of the global economy's centre of gravity, the average location of economic activity across geographies on Earth. The calculations here take into account all the GDP produced on this planet. The paper finds that in 1980 the global economy's centre of gravity was mid-Atlantic. By 2008, from the continuing rise of China and the rest of East Asia, that centre of gravity had drifted to a location east of Helsinki and Bucharest. Extrapolating growth in almost 700 locations across Earth, this paper projects the world's economic centre of gravity to locate by 2050 literally between India and China. Observed from Earth's surface, that economic centre of gravity will shift from its 1980 location 9300 km or 1.5 times the radius of the planet.
[PDF; 16 pages, 3 graphs, 1 table, animation, 1589 Kb. Published Global Policy, January 2011 online.
Also in LSE Research issue 2, Autumn 2010, The Independent 2010.09.15 and on my blog [2010.07.30] and Roubini Global Macro, Emerging Markets, and Asia EconoMonitors [2010.08.03].
Further writeups in Wall Street Journal 2011.03.19 | Bill Easterly's AidWatchers 2011.03.22 | The Economist Free Exchange blog 2011.03.22 | Financial Times Alphaville 2011.03.23, Business Blog 2011.03.23 | New York Times's Catherine Rampell Economix 2011.03.24 | 2point6billion.com 2011.03.25 | EconLife 2011.03.27.

2010.05 Post-1990s' East Asian Economic Growth Chapter 1, pp. 19-42, in Takatoshi Ito and Chin Hee Hahn (eds.), "The Rise of China and Structural Changes in Korea and Asia," Edward Elgar, Northampton MA, USA. Working paper version.

2010.05.05 "The Shifting Distribution of Global Economic Activity"
The configuration of economic activity across nations helps determine explicit and implicit systems of global governance: the international financial architecture, patterns of cross-country trade, global capital flows, and, not least, effective global policy-making. But what is known of the dynamics in that global landscape of economic activity? This paper provides an empirical assessment of the hypothesis that the world's spatial distribution of economic activity is secularly drifting from its 20th-century moorings. By considering a range of indicators---the shift in the world's economic centre of gravity, the dynamics of global poverty, decoupling and the emergence of cross-country trade clusters, and the cross-geography relative contribution to world economic growth---this paper quantifies a profound ongoing eastwards trend in global economic activity.
[Complete version available soon; only incomplete draft for now.]

2010.04.22 World Bank Blog: What should the NEM do?
Response to the World Bank's Malaysia Economic Monitor, April 2010

2010.04.14 Blog: Malaysia's new economic model: Making choices
Also in Roubini Global Macro, Emerging Markets, and Asia EconoMonitors; the Business Times, New Straits Times 14 April 2010; the Sin Chew Daily (Chinese language version) 14 April 2010.

2010.04 The Hydra-Headed Crisis (with David Held and Mary Kaldor) Global Policy Journal Online, April 2010

2010.04.02 Blog: Economics is a Martial Art
For many of us, our body language tells students and colleagues that "economic policy-making" is a dirty word. Is that convenient, or an assumption we constantly test?

2010.03.31 Business FM interview: At the launch of Malaysia's New Economic Model
Interview by Khoo Hsien Chun of BFM.
Other press coverage includes: BBC, NYT 2010.03.31, WSJ 2010.03.31, 2010.04.01; Malaysian Insider "political will", "shift from Bumi equity to participation", "tough questions".

2009.12.28 The Collapsed Global Economy 2009: A Year That Wasn't The EDGE Malaysia Issue 787, 28 December 2009 Special Focus

2009.07.17 Blog: Time to Save the World Economy through the Sheer Weight of Numbers
[also on 2009.08.01 RGE Monitor Global Macro, Emerging Markets, Asia EconoMonitor]

2009.05.28 Blog: One Quick Look at the World's Shifting Economic Centre of Gravity

2009.03 LSE IDEAS Special Report: The World Crisis
(with Michael Cox, Howard Davies, David Held, and Kevin Young)

2009.03.23 Rebalancing the global economy The EDGE Malaysia Issue 747 Economics Watch

2009.03.16 What should the G-20 do? The EDGE Malaysia Issue 746 Cover Story

2008.11.16 Blog: Where in the World is Asian Thrift and the Global Savings Glut?
[Also entries on RGE Monitor Global Macro and Asia; and 2008.12.03++ discussion FT Economists' Forum: "Global Imbalances threaten the Survival of Liberal Trade" (by Martin Wolf)]

[Earlier posts...]

Danny Quah Economics Department

Danny Quah
Economics Department