Danny Quah
Economics Department LSE

CONTACT BY EMAIL

(For different reasons, ranging from the volume of incoming email to a very aggressive email/spam filter - say if you write me from certain email domains, or from an address that my filter does not recognize, or your Subject line is empty or says just "Hi" - it might be difficult to reach me quickly.)

12 May 2009
The future belongs to India, not China (Intelligence Squared Debate)
Speaking for the motion: Gurcharan Das, Mark Tully, Deepak Lal
Speaking against the motion: with Parag Khanna and Sir David Tang
Royal Geographical Society, Ondaatje Theatre, London

14 January 2009
World Economy Asia Lecture
"Will Asia save the world?"
Leverhulme Centre for Globalisation and Economic Policy
Kuala Lumpur

13 January 2009
Goh Keng Swee Lecture
"China and Global Imbalance"
East Asia Institute, National University of Singapore
Singapore

21 November 2008
Where in the world is Asian Thrift and the Global Savings Glut?
Entries on [ Personal blog | RGE Monitor Global Macro | Asia ]

11 November 2008
Part of 2-day LSE macroeconomics seminar on the Credit Crunch
Global imbalance, global savings glut
The global economic crisis and the (non) role of Asian thrift - in 3 slides.
(The third slide is an animation.)
Blog [2008.11.16] entry: "Where in the world is Asian Thrift and the Global Savings Glut?"
LSE, London

21 October 2008
Khazanah Megatrends Forum 2008
Shifting sands: The real side longer term
DQ Presentation: PDF [3/page]
Mandarin Oriental, KL Malaysia

14 October 2008
Life in unequal growing economies. (Technical manuscript) Incomplete, very rough draft PDF (49 pages, 1.27Mb)
Interview, September 2007, Knowledge @ Singapore Management University: Measuring the tradeoffs between economic growth and unequal distribution
Conference presentations: Cambridge University 2007 May | Brown University Watson Institute Conference 2007 April
Abstract: This paper characterizes the dynamic welfare implications of varying patterns of growth and inequality. In their impact on poverty, historically observed changes in aggregate growth overwhelm those in inequality. However, their welfare implications are more nuanced. For a reasonable range of utility functions the average person on earth is certainly better off living in the faster-growing more unequal economies, given historical patterns of growth and inequality. However, the relative benefits to that experience differs across countries, even within just the fast-growing ones. While the welfare impact of aggregate growth continues to be the most significant, that of inequality overwhelms that of business cycles.

13 October 2008
Post-1990s East Asian Economic Growth PDF (29 pages, 616Kb)
Abstract: Immediately after 1997 the Asian economies were viewed to be catastrophes of financial excess, corporate and political misgovernance, and diminishing returns to over-investment. But they are now freshly restored as the world's economic powerhouses, just as before the 1997 financial crises they were the growth miracles and poster children of a then-emerging consensus on managed economic development. From the perspective of global growth and income distribution, the economic successes of East and Southeast Asia are striking: Poverty alleviation in China alone has recently accounted for 100% of that for all of humanity. Even if still relatively small in size, the current contribution to world economic growth already matches that of economies many times larger. When the rest of the world economy has temporarily slowed, East and Southeast Asia have provided a stabilizing force in world business cycles. How have underlying fundamentals for economic growth changed since 1997? Is the current growth path sustainable; and if so, what has brought that about? What role has the rise of China played in driving economic growth throughout East and Southeast Asia? Have patterns of trade changed towards greater global balance? This paper finds that in the main productivity growth has improved since 1997. Increasing inequality is no obstacle to poverty reduction provided economic growth is sufficiently rapid. Finally, international trade patterns have shifted towards greater exchange within just the region itself.

11 October 2008
LSE Asia Forum 2008 video (recorded 11 April 2008) With Lee Hsien Loong, Conor Gearty, Nik Rose, John Sidel, and Nick Stern
Friday 11 April 2008, Singapore

26 September 2008 Hay Festival Segovia
The global crisis: Is the world economy out of control?
Friday 26 September 2008 12pm, Caja de Segovia

19 September 2008 World poverty dynamics movie [GIF animation, 172Kb]
The horizontal axis is per capita GDP measured in thousands of PPP constant (year-2005) US$, from World Development Indicators Online April 2008. The vertical axis is millions of people living at less than PPP constant (year-2005) US$1.25 a day, from the World Bank August 2008. Each bubble is scaled according to population; each bubble grows over time when population increases. The bubbles refer, respectively, to China; East Asia and the Pacific outside of China; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Middle East and North Africa; India; South Asia outside of India; and Sub-Saharan Africa. (Thanks to Delger Enkhbayar.)

05 August 2008 Bank Negara Malaysia lecture
"Global growth and inflation"
Abstract: The nature and drivers of inflation worldwide now differ from when the entire world managed to reduce inflation so dramatically in the 1990s. A decade ago, the forces of globalization and de-regulation, rising productivity, improved fiscal positions, and central bank consensus worldwide drove a remarkable fall of global inflation. Now, global inflation is on the rise, driven by forces previously unimportant and therefore practically ignored. The appropriate response is likely increased flexibility while maintaining crediblity, but the stakes now are even higher.
[DQ presentation, 3.3Mb]
Bank Negara Malaysia, KL
[Some press coverage: Business Times Thu 2008.08.14 (temporary link)]

24 July 2008 LSE Japan evening (with DQ public lecture)
"Post-1990s East Asian economic growth"
Photos
Roppongi Hills Club, Tokyo

21 July 2008 KDI Conference: Growth and structural changes of the Korean economy after the crisis: Coping with the rise of China
"Post-1990s East Asian economic growth: The inexorable rise and influence of China"
Abstract: Right after 1997 the East Asian economies were viewed to be catastrophes of financial excess, corporate and political misgovernance, and diminishing returns to over-investment. But they are now freshly restored as the world's economic powerhouses, just as before the 1997 financial crises they were the growth miracles and poster children of a then-emerging consensus on managed economic development. Their current success is striking: Poverty alleviation in East Asia has recently accounted for 100% of that for all of humanity. And even if still relatively small in size, their current contribution to world economic growth already matches that of economies many times larger.

How have underlying fundamentals for economic growth changed since 1997? Is the current growth path sustainable; and if so, what has brought that about? What role has the relentless rise of China played in driving economic growth throughout East Asia, whether in Southeast Asia or even in Korea?
[DQ paper]
Korea Development Institute , Seoul

10 June 2008 LSE Gulf Breakfast Briefing
The Global Economy and the Gulf States - DQ presentation (together with Tim Besley and David Held)
Simpson's in the Strand, London

04 June 2008 Global Markets Institute Goldman Sachs Risks Conference 2008
Agenda | DQ lunchtime address
Goldman Sachs International, River Court, London

26 May 2008
LSE Malaysia Alumni public lecture: "The rise and fall of subsidies"
Lecture transcript, including graphics (soon).
Ng Wei-Li's photos
(including those of Datuk Dr Munir Majid, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad, and Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop)
[ Some press coverage: Bernama Mon 2008.05.26 | Thu 2008.05.29 | The Edge Mon 2008.05.26 | The Star Tues 2008.05.27 | New Straits Times Tue 2008.05.27 | Wed 2008.05.28 | 2008.05.30 | 2008.06.13 | 2008.06.27 | Sun 2008.07.20 | 2008.06.18 Rising prices hit Malaysia, World Socialist Weekly | ]
Shangri-La, Kuala Lumpur

06 May 2008
Chatham House
UN Foundation/Vodafone Group Foundation Partnership
Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile use by NGOs, by Sheila Kinkade and Katrin Verclas MobileActive.org
[Response: DQ; "Mobile technology's world-saving mission", ZDNet column, 2008.05.26; entry 2008.05.20 on Katrin Verclas's blog and on ZDNet. Earlier report]
Chatham House, London

11 April 2008
LSE Asia Forum, Singapore [ Video ] (posted 2008.10.11)
"Only a few minutes ago this morning, LSE's Director described how, during the tenure of jobs he and the Prime Minister had previously held, financial markets were calm and orderly. Indeed those were good times. By contrast ..."
Abstract: A decade ago the East Asian economies were viewed to be catastrophes of financial excess, corporate and political misgovernance, and diminishing returns to over-investment. But they are now freshly restored as the world's economic powerhouses, just as before the 1997 financial crises they were the growth miracles and poster children of a then-emerging consensus on managed economic development. Their current success is striking: Poverty alleviation in Emerging Asia has recently accounted for 100% of that for all of humanity. And even if still relatively small in size, Emerging Asia's contribution to world economic growth already matches that of economies many times larger.

The fundamentals for sustained economic growth include, not just good governance and openness to trade, but also creativity and innovation in economic processes: Knowledge and technology. How are the Emerging Asian economies situated along these dimensions? What institutional structures are already in place or further needed for the economic success to continue? What has changed since the 1997 crises?
[Presentation handout (PDF, 744 Kb)] [Paper (PDF, 456 Kb)]
Media coverage (claim fair use):
Channel News Asia, 2230h 11 April 2008 [wmv] [mp4]
[938LiveBizNews, 0640h 12 April 2008]
[Straits Times, 12 April 2008]
Singapore

03, 05 March 2008
MSc Econ special lectures
I. Global Economy -- Growth and distribution
[Video] [PDF slides, 2/page (320Kb); the dynamic animations won't show in the PDF file but are available directly in your browser.]
II. Global Economy -- Trade imbalances and welfare analytics
[Video] [PDF slides, 2/page (296Kb)]
LSE, London

13 February 2008
Overseas Development Institute:
Pushing growth up the development agenda
The role of growth in development (including podcasts) (discussant Lord Adair Turner)
[PDF of Presentation handout 9 pages - 608Kb. The dynamic animations won't show in the PDF file but are available.]
London

11 February 2008
Public Lecture: Friends of the LSE in Ireland and Dublin City University Business School
Crunching globalisation
[PDF presentation handout - 11 pages, 848Kb. The dynamic animations won't show in the PDF file but are available.] [Abstract of talk - 1 page, 12 Kb] [Podcast] [Photo gallery]
Dublin

24 January 2008
LSE Public Lecture: Thinking like a social scientist - Economics (one in a series of LSE lectures in the social sciences)
[PDF presentation handout - 10 pages, 1525 Kb. The dynamic animations won't show in the PDF file but are available.] [How the talk began - 2 pages, 65 Kb] [Podcast 48 mins, 12394 Kb]
LSE Hong Kong Theatre

11 December 2007
Policy Network Breakfast meeting
Globalisation and income inequality presentation [Synthesis]
London

30 November 2007
The Money Programme - BBC2 1900h
How the super-rich just get richer
iPlayer broadcast available after the programme airs

28 November 2007
Queen Mary CGR Lecture: Global Imbalance, Global Inequality
(Public lecture) [ PDF flyer - 2 pages, 124Kb]
[Podcast] [PDF presentation handout - 10 pages, 861Kb. The dynamic animations won't show in the PDF file but are available at $1-poverty and $2-poverty]
1800h, Clinical Medical Lecture Theatre, Francis Bancroft Building, Queen Mary, University of London

14 November 2007
CIBL Lecture: Knowledge economies in China [Public lecture] [Podcast] [Presentation (PDF, 696Kb) The dynamic animation won't show in the PDF file but is available here.]
Hong Kong Theatre, LSE

14 November 2007
The problem with IPRs (Gurukul Chevening Senior Scholars) [Presentation (PDF, 610Kb) The dynamic animation won't show in the PDF file but is available here.]
LSE

09 August 2007
Global Imbalance, Global Inequality (Public lecture)
[Presentation (PDF, 1040Kb) This only looks like it has many pages: The bubble-chart sequence is a movie animation (gif, 144Kb), created using Excel, LaTeX, and ImageMagick. Thanks to Paul Krugman for data from his James Meade 2007 Lecture at LSE.]
British Council. KL, Malaysia
Abstract: Much discussion on present global patterns of trade focus on their effects on the rich advanced economies currently in deficit. Those economies confront two potential dangers: rising within-country income inequality from global competition; and risk of economic downturn from a contraction in aggregate consumption. Widely debated are the putative domestic benefits of different policies to counter these dangers. Much less discussed, however, are the risks from such policies for the other side of the world. Regardless of potential domestic benefits, the global impact can be large and deleterious, consigning to stagnation the currently surplus economies, ones that happen also to be relatively poor still. The result would then be a world with massively increased global inequality, arguably a steep price to pay for a bit more equality within those economies already rich.

09 August 2007
Growing Human Capital in Rapidly-Developing Economies (Public lecture)
[Presentation (PDF, 668Kb) This only looks like it has many pages: The bubble-chart sequence is a movie animation (gif, 144Kb), created using Excel, LaTeX, and ImageMagick.]
British-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce. KL, Malaysia
Abstract: Play the game: If, after the dust has settled, science and technology are the only conceivable drivers for economic growth, just how well-placed are the East Asian emerging economies? The data point to [surprise!] an even better-performing China.

02 August 2007
Poverty and Growth Dynamics: Asian and International Perspectives. (Plenary Panel discussion, SERC)
[Presentation (PDF, 996Kb) This only looks like it has many pages: The bubble-chart sequence is a movie animation (gif, 144Kb), created using Excel, LaTeX, and ImageMagick.]
Singapore

April 2007
The Digital Divide. Incomplete, rough draft PDF (56 pages, 444Kb)
(How would I spend US\$50bn?) This paper presents dynamic welfare calculations to evaluate costs and benefits on the Digital Divide, the unequal distribution of digital technologies across countries and people. It provides, among other things, an explicit analytical model of technological dissemination, producing, from feedback and contagion effects across society and individuals, Verhulst-equation distribution dynamics in a logistic curve. Calibrating a range of models to recent data, the benefits to spending US\$50bn to close the Digital Divide range from US\$...

April 2007
Growth and distribution. Technical manuscript. Incomplete, very rough draft PDF (139 pages, 608Kb)
[Continually updated with most recent changes (2006.08.01 - Second order differential equation characterization for value when inequality is a diffusion process); (2006.07.31 - Discrete transition probability matrix calculations, so there's more of that now gradually appearing); (2005.11.04 - Begin - numerical calculations on the value in inequality and growth. Resolvents in 6.2.2. Discrete time calculations in own [Appendix] Section 8.); (2005.06.02 - Begin - section on decomposing world income inequality; (2005.05.11 - Begin - data section 2 new, summarizing what's known already (renumbered subsequent sections) - this is taking a long time to write; (2005.04.29 - Motivation and summary in Section 1); (2005.04.19 - Stochastic kernels section containing discussion of Markov chains, infinitesimal generators, and resolvent operators; explicit example of failure in the semigroup property Section 2)]

March 2007
Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies
Editor, together with Robin Mansell, Chrisanthi Avgerou, and Roger Silverstone
Oxford University Press, 648 pages, March 2007

March 2007
Foreword to Prices and Production: Works by Friedrich Hayek on Money, the Business Cycle, and the Gold Standard Collection edited by Toby Baxendale and the Ludwig von Mises Institute
[Hayek's Legacy (2008.10.17) | von Mises blog entry | EconomicPolicyJournal.com 2008.10.17]

01 March 2007
LSE China Development Society China Week. Speech Knowledge Economies in China
[Of course the embedded video will only play in a live presentation.]

22 February 2007
UNCTAD Conference Geneva. Keynote speech ICT for economic development and innovation.
[to be blogged soon]

17 February 2007
UK/Russia Roundtable Moscow. Presentation and Roundtable discussion: Knowledge Economies in Russia and the UK.

07 February 2007
BBC World Service broadcast, India Week. Development tensions mp3 recording. Plus Times of India December 2006

Sunday 22 October 2006
Conan the Librarian keynote speech at Internet Librarian International: Intellectual property rights and one global market for information [blog entry, including transcript of my talk, plus links to commentary and responses].

Friday 27 January 2006
A World Without Intellectual Property (Rights)
CEO Series Workshop, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
Davos

Tuesday 13 December 2005
EDS Innovation Conference
EDS Innovation Research Programme, LSE
LSE, London

Thursday 10 November 2005
World Science Forum
[Presentation: The production and consumption of knowledge.
(WMV format) video of session]
Budapest, Hungary

Friday 04 November 2005
The excess supply of knowledge [ascii text].
A condensed version appears in Newsweek's Special Edition Issues 2006 The Knowledge Revolution: Why Victory Will Go to the Smartest Nations and Companies (December 2005 - February 2006), p. 43.

Thursday 01 September 2005
Creating the Information Commons for e-Science
[Proceedings] [abstract]
UNESCO, Paris

Monday 22 August 2005
Globalization and Economic Growth in China
First annual LSE-CCER conference
Beijing

Wednesday 22 June 2005
The world's leading economies in 2020 - Panel Debate
(Euromoney Global Borrowers and Investors Forum)
(with Hernando de Soto, Mary Dejevsky, Jose Gabrielli, and Albert Keidel).
London

Sunday 07 November 2004
BBC Panorama - Winner takes all Britain
BBC1 Sunday 07 November 2004 2215h
[including TAGB Taekwon-do footage]

Thursday 22 April 2004
The Julian Hodge Institute of Applied Macroeconomics 5th Annual Lecture
Cardiff event

Monday 24 November 2003
Almost efficient innovation by pricing ideas in Ross Anderson's Security Group Economics, Networks, and Security Seminar series
Keynes Room, DAE, Cambridge University

Thursday 13 November 2003
Clifford Barclay Memorial Lecture 2003: Creativity and Knowledge: Managing and Respecting Intellectual Assets in the 21st Century
[PDF: Lecture transcript | slides]
6pm LSE Old Theatre

13 - 14 June 2003 EEA/NBER/ISOM Conference - Barcelona
Conference program
Paper: Spatial cluster empirics (with Helen Simpson) [Draft posted 2003-06-30]

7 - 11 April 2003 Tinbergen Week Conference in honor of the 100th anniversary of Jan Tinbergen. Rotterdam. Paper: The value in inequality and growth

Monday 31 March 2003 Dissemination (nontechnical) paper
History matters: Trading technologies and the marketplace for ideas (March 2003) [PDF, 6 pages] Changing economic structure and the increasing need for well-functioning markets in ideas

Wednesday 26 March 2003 Global Governance and Human Well-Being: Which Partnership for Business, Government, and Civil Society, 100th anniversary of the Solvay Business School, ULB.
Panel discussion with Karel van Miert and Philippe Aghion, Competition versus regulation in markets. Brussels

Monday 17 March 2003 New (dissemination/semitechnical) paper
Digital goods and the New Economy (March 2003) CEPR DP3846 in ERN/CEPR March 2003. CEP DP563. [abstract and paper] The New Economy is supposed by some to have raised productivity to unprecedented heights, killed inflation, propelled stock prices to the stratosphere, and changed social relations forever. These claims have given skeptics a frighteningly easy target, so that even away teams with phasers set on stun have achieved high kill rates. Whether those amazing possibilities are real, now or in the near future, is not this Article's concern. Instead of beginning from ad hoc implicit economic frictions that the New Economy can purport to overcome, this Article approaches the analysis from the opposite direction. It adopts a perspective of markets in perfectly competitive (Arrow-Debreu) equilibrium, and asks, What is distinctive about the New Economy in general or digital goods in particular that might affect economic performance?

Wednesday 12 March 2003 City Alumni event: "The New Economy was a fraud perpetrated by a slick public-relations machine"
Panel: Diane Coyle, Stephen King, Vicky Pryce. Old Theatre, LSE. 6:30pm.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wiped off the value of telecom and tech stocks since March 2000. Government policymakers previously scrambling onto the New Economy bandwagon now dismiss it. But the reality is that everyone reading this has had their life transformed by a mobile telephone, the Internet, or some other new technology moment. Did the New Economy in fact change society while we weren't looking?
[Book]

Wednesday 12 March 2003 LSE Hayek Society Panel discussion on the Future of Economics, with John Moore, Chris Pissarides, and Linda Yueh. Hong Kong Theatre, LSE. 4PM--6PM

Tuesday 11 March 2003 i-Studio 5 seminar, part of LSE Information Systems' ESRC Transdisciplinary Research Seminar series, ICT in the Contemporary World. I-Studio 5, Tower One (5th floor), LSE. 3PM [video]

Wednesday 05 March 2003 The Washington Seminar --- Developing Futures. The LSE Foundation and Centennial Fund. Panel discussion on The Future of Markets with Robert Rubin, Donald Marron, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, chaired by Malcolm Knight. Washington DC.

Friday 13 December 2002 Breakfast forum: Capturing talent --- Creativity, knowledge, and digital goods An LSe-lab dialogue with Jeff Berg, CEO International Creative Management LSE 9am

Tuesday 10 September 2002 Cap Gemini Ernst and Young: Defy the Economy "The Jedi are keepers of the peace, not soldiers." (Mace Windu, High Council)
Guest speaker, along with Malcolm Gladwell, Lisa Jardine, Chris Meyer, and Rupert Sheldrake (video clips)

15 August 2002 BBC Radio 4 Analysis program: Follow the Leader? (Presenter Diane Coyle, together with Robert Brenner, Mark Cliffe, Nick Crafts, Bill Martin, Bob Shiller, and Peter Warburton) "Stock market falls often precede economic slowdowns. Now, with debt high and profits weak, the outlook is darker for many. But has the gloom been overdone?" Additional information

02--03 July 2002 The Sir Richard Stone Lectures: Growth and Distribution (Bank of England, Cambridge University Press, and NIESR)
The dynamics of economic growth and income distribution represent the two most important forces consistently affecting the welfare of humanity over any meaningful stretch of time. Economic growth is good, unambiguously for all, but especially for the poor. Inequality matters much, much less, whether positively or negatively. Gonzalo Vina's article, 21 August 2002 on the Dow Jones Newswire, reproduced here with permission.

10 June 2002 New (technical) paper
Almost efficient innovation by pricing ideas (June 2002) [abstract and paper] Competitive markets price ideas positively, even without the social contrivance of intellectual property rights. However, if ideas can only be instantiated in fixed minimum quantity, the competitive outcome inefficiently creates too few ideas ex ante, even though idea dissemination is efficient ex post. The inefficiency is not overcome by either economic growth or forming coalitions of entrepreneurs or by randomization (as in, e.g., a convexifying lottery). [David Warsh's 21 July 2002 column on economicprincipals.com discusses this and 24/7 Competitive Innovation, together with the Boldrin-Levine article. Similarly, Douglas Clement's Creation Myths: Does Innovation Require Intellectual Property Rights? March 2003 article in Reason Online.]

29 May 2002 New report (dissemination)
Getting the Measure of the New Economy (with Diane Coyle; iSociety at The Work Foundation) Press Release from The Work Foundation. The New Economy is not just about improving productivity on the factory shopfloor or a spiralling stock market. Why did we ever think it was? How to proceed.

23 April 2002 New (technical) paper
24/7 Competitive Innovation (April 2002) [abstract and paper] Open Source Software recovers social efficiency and Arrow-Debreu prices. Efficient innovation without IPRs.

April 2002 - Two CEPR DPs (technical)
Matching demand and supply in a weightless economy: Market-driven creativity with and without IPRs (March 2002) CEPR DP3317 in ERN/CEPR v. 2 no. 33, 16 May 2002 [abstract and paper] Simplest basic tradeoff for optimal IP protection in dynamic general equilibrium. Outline social inefficiencies

One third of the world's growth and inequality (March 2002) CEPR DP3316 in ERN/CEPR v. 2 no. 32, 14 May 2002 [abstract and paper] Rising average incomes dominate everything else (with thanks to Martin Wolf @ Financial Times). Hamish McRae puts this in context at the Independent on Sunday 14/04/2002.

March 2002 - Two CEPR DPs (technical)
Spatial agglomeration dynamics (February 2002) CEPR DP3208 in ERN/CEPR v. 2 no. 17, 12 March 2002 [abstract and paper] Why some models of clustering and agglomeration in economic geography don't actually have geography in them. What to do instead

Technology dissemination and economic growth: Some lessons for the New Economy (February 2002) CEPR DP3207 in ERN/CEPR v. 2 no. 16, 08 March 2002 [abstract and paper] A few more productivity puzzles. But why productivity is the wrong place to look for the New Economy anyway. Technical appendix analyzes why some models of human capital and growth produce economic growth and some don't.

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Thanks to Tom Sargent for help.