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Showing posts with the label racism

Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

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  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra
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Some Thoughts on the US Presidential Elections 2020

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  The US presidential election is just over a month away. The early voting has started. There are already accusations of fraud in mail-in voting. While Democrats want to exercise mail-in voting, the Republicans are not. The latter smell some dirty fish in the exercise of postal ballots. Not too long ago there was talk of US Post deliberately delaying delivery of postal ballots so as to not reach on time to the counting centres. There is no doubt, legal battles are shaping up over the postal ballot and their validity. With the conservatives having upper hand in the Supreme Court, it seems they might enjoy some advantage. If Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed before the elections, it might lead to a 6-3 advantage for the conservatives in the Supreme Court.   Nightmarish scenarios are being worked for both Democrats and Republicans. Widespread reports suggest better than expected performance from Joe Biden in the first Presidential candidate debate. Yet, the reaction of Democrats sy
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Path Dependency and Inequities of History

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There is an interesting podcast on Freakonomics about the inequality and compensating inequality. The link for the podcast can be found here . It is a two part podcast, the second of which is being awaited. But given the trajectory and the points of view expressed in the first of the series, some points could be discerned and can be discussed at some length in this post.   There is no doubt about the deeply embedded racial and class inequality that persists not just in the US but also across Europe, Australia and Canada among other countries. These inequalities have not arisen out of recent events but are deeply interlinked to the historical trajectories. In Australia, the inequalities are linked to the White treatment of the Aborigines while in New Zealand, the Maoris have suffered historical injustices. The White Man’s Burden might have been formulated by Kipling but was in practice for decades before. In fact Karl Marx advocated his own version of White Man’s Burden when he soug
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