Three interesting people

Yesterday, I met three interesting people.

The first was a retired professor and head of department at UBS, Dr SP Singh. I paraphrase approximately my questions and his answers:

Q: So where did you do your PhD?

A: I did my Ph.D. at Colorado University in USA. The area of research was asset management under uncertainty and it was quite a popular yet challenging topic during those days (1970’s). Many people like Hirschleifer, Tobin, Samuelson were researching in this area in the US. Before the PhD, I had studied at IIM Ahmedabad.

Q: So how did you find your experience in the United States?

A: That was a great time for learning and I had the opportunity to work as a Research Assistant.

Q: Did you enjoy doing research more or teaching?

A: Teaching. In teaching you get the results of your labor instantly, whereas in research you may never get them or get them after a long time.

Q: Why did you decide to return to India?

A: Family ties and the fact that I was quite patriotic.

Q: Do you regret coming back?

A: Yes and No. The respect and recognition that I got in US, I did not find here and I also lost out on the research that I used to do there.

Q.: Do you have any advice for me?

A: Do only that which interests you and if more than one topic interests you then choose the one that is more difficult.

Q: Are research and teaching complementary or substitutes?

A: They are both complementary and substitutes. Quality teaching brings out more questions that you can address in your thesis but both these activities compete with one another for the economist’s time.

Q: Should one’s research be based on reality or on theoretical models only?

A: My research was purely theoretical, and one needs to have theoretical models before we start applying economics to real life situations like Krugman or Friedman.

Q: Why did you not decide to go as a visiting professor to the schools in US?

A: I lost out on the competitive race once I came back to India. I got left behind.

Q: Why do you think teaching in economics in India is so dull and research so lagged?

A: The environment is such. Indians are at the forefront of economics, but India lags behind. The pay, the excitement, the recognition and the experience in US is much superior and economics as a discipline has not evolved in India.

The second was a short meeting with Mr Vivek Atray, Director – Public Relations and Chandigarh Tourism.

He said that a survey was being done on the details of travelers’ to Chandigarh by UBS. A possibility for my research could be something related to tourism in India. There are 5 million foreigners who come to India annually, but the potential is 40 million. In Chandigarh, there are 350000 tourists every year. These are people who come and stay in Chandigarh in a commercial establishment, e.g. guesthouses, hotels, etc. for atleast one night. There could be research done on the effect of expenditure on promoting tourism on tourism or the effect of growth of economy on tourism, where care would have to be taken to eliminate the reverse causality bias. Also, measurement errors – as people in India would be likely to host tourists at their homes and this would not augment the tourist numbers.

The third meeting was with Dr Karan Avtar Singh, Secretary, PWD, Punjab. He is a Ph.D. from University of Michigan Ann Arbor and was the Finance Secretary, Chandigarh prior to his current position. He had done his PhD in dynamic programming in Macroeconomics related to the premium puzzle. He said that tax evasion could be an interesting topic and he too said that teaching Econ 101 was a great learning experience at Michigan. Varian was one of the faculty members and he had the chance to interact with him. He said that the heterogeneous model in RBC’s was the future, after Eugene Fama had given an argument for self-fulfilling equilibria or sunspot dynamics with monetary shocks to the economy as opposed to real or technology shocks. I plan to have another meeting with him before I leave for London to further discuss possibilities of a paper on tax evasion.