Weekend Reading, Watching and Listening Recommendations (July 17)
The Genius of Supermarkets, the Chinese Reassessment of Interdependence, John Bates Clark Medal winner Melissa Dell, The Future of Global Supply Chains, Vaclav Smil on Climate Change etc.
1. Read:
a. The Pandemic Shows Us the Genius of Supermarkets. A short history of the stores that—even now—keep us supplied with an abundance of choices [from the Atlantic Magazine]
b. The Chinese Reassessment of Interdependence Julian Gewirtz of Harvard analyzes trends in Chinese views of U.S.-China interdependence from Xi Jinping’s rise to the COVID-19 pandemic.
c. How the Dutch Invented Everything
2. Watch:
a. Bill Gates’ favorite author, Vaclav Smil, on Reconciling Slow Transition & Fast Climate Change. WIRED magazine described Smil as “an ambitious and astonishing polymath who swings for fences”
b. The Future of Global Supply Chains (Council on Foreign Relations)
3. Listen:
a. Melissa Dell is the winner of the 2020 John Bates Clark medal, which is given by the American Economic Association to an economist under 40. The Economist has a nice profile of her work. Her research looks primarily at growth over the very long run, what causes it and what hinders it. One of her papers on Climate Change and Economic Growth found a 1 degree increase in temperature tended to reduce growth by about 1.3%.
Her conversation with Tyler Cowen is just fantastic looking at, among other things, how colonial extractive institutions for silver in Peru and sugar in Indonesia have very different outcomes, how centuries old traditions of a strong Northern Vietnamese state has a bearing on Vietnam’s excellent COVID-19 response.
b. Diego Saez Gil is the founder of Pachama, a startup that uses LIDAR, satellite and drone imagery coupled with machine learning algorithms to rapidly calculate the carbon offsets from afforestation programs