[Music]
[Applause]
like most economists I’m fascinated by
the complex problems the discipline
tries to solve as a researcher I study
how these seemingly abstract concepts
are used to drive development yet as the
daughter of the literature professor I
grew up listening to lots of stories I
often find myself making friends with
the characters I read about all the
Fenian Blyton’s characters made me long
for adventures in magic lands mommy from
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was
like a warm aren’t on rainy days and mr.
Darcy from Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice with my literary heartthrob I
slowly began observing these two diverse
fields economics and literature in
relation to each other and I realized
there’s no reality to imagination than
what meets the eye so what is this
reality in literature writers make up a
lot of stories they invent people and
situations but they do this over a
bedrock of real experiences these real
experiences have social in economic
dimensions which are central and
peripheral to the story to charge
Dickens for example he showed the impact
of the Industrial Revolution through his
writings we impact on the working class
in the for a century earlier in the 18th
century Samuel Richardson conceived the
idea of a novel as a kind of self-help
book that would help the middle class
how to behave in society
similarly in fantasy literature Harry
Potter has economic elements marginal
gains and opportunity costs of
exchanging stickers for chocolate frogs
and being in Gryffindor versus Slytherin
this is what literary critics called the
theory of materialism they observe
literature in a wider socio eco
political framework
is a different history economics is
about the production consumption and
distribution of wealth in 1898 the
economist Thorstein that then argued to
the economics is not in evolutionary
science and that it needs to break out
if it’s insular mold today and
especially after the 2008 financial
crisis his warnings are receiving
attention economics is biggest gap lies
in assumptions like perfect
information and rationality which is not
always the case
in such situations we turn to other
elements to other fields behavioral
economics is understanding that there is
no e equals mc-squared the human
behavior which is constantly changing
and so it looks at sociology and
psychology to understand the psyche of
economic agents together with their
whims and fancies don’t get me wrong I’m
not saying that economics doesn’t
contain important information it does
and it is certainly vital for growth but
maybe there isn’t need to look towards
other fields that’s why I think if
literature books plays in poetry at as
magnifying glasses made up of words
revealing the underlying dynamics of
their time in place as Albert Camus
eloquently put it fiction is the light
through which we tell the truth and
literature is not just fiction but also
nonfiction like the writings of
journalist Seneca and anthropologists
which are written in a story like
fashion and like fiction they buttress
our understanding of the unseen with
this brief theoretical framework let’s
go back to the relationship between
literature and economics I like to look
at it in something I call plot
people-centered ladder of trade so in
the bottom layer individual and cultural
beliefs this is the attitudes of people
in groups among other things they
contain philosophical and cultural
customs look at Jane Austen and Adam
Smith in the wealth of nations
Smith claims man is an animal that makes
bargains no other animal does this no
dog exchanges bones with another and
Smith also said that this bargaining
power stems from self-interested actions
it’s not from the benevolence of the
butcher the brewer or the Baker that we
expect our dinner but from their regard
to their own self-interest
Austin understands this her books are
economic theory in action she gives us a
glimpse into the complex and often
contradictory nature of human beings all
our characters seem to be making deals
in their heads and with each other to
achieve what is in their best interest
Austin’s world is full of young women
who don’t have their own fortunes so
that puts them at a disadvantage in the
marriage market they end up making
compromises between social acceptances
and individual preferences the best
example of this is Charlotte Lucas in
Pride and Prejudice who chooses to marry
in out of a foon because it allows her
to be a mistress in her own home rather
than an old maid in her brother’s
similarly we can retool story and
mahasweta devi whose work also has
strong economic basis looking at culture
the 19th century idea of economic
prosperity in America was epitomized by
the figure of Horatio Alger and the idea
was if you work hard enough you can make
it big in the 20th century this idea was
in the form of the American dream was
challenged and endorsed by Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby Arthur Miller’s Death
of a Salesman Tennessee Williams The
Glass Menagerie and in stark contrast
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Roth acts
as the Anatomy for crisis and shows how
the Great Depression played out across
America moving to the second layer of
the pyramid social systems these are the
norms of the society the institutions
through which they operate take the
example of urbanization from Blake in
the late 18th century to
in French symbolist poets to modernist
poets like Eliot and Orden they all
built up the city is a theme in poetry
similarly memoir is like Oren comics
Istanbul and Suki to metas maximum City
provide a bird’s-eye view of the
economic activities in cities when
thumb-up describes bustling streets
leading to the Bosphorus and the
thousands of ships passing on one of the
busiest maritime lanes in the world
he is indirectly talking about better
forms of infrastructure and new avenues
for employment in maximum City we see
another angle urban growth the
widespread proliferation of crime across
Bombay pollution the underworld mafia
dons bar dancers petty thieves and the
increasing inequalities between the rich
and the poor everyone wants to be close
to the arteries of the city and this
scarcity of resources creates its own
problems this predicament is aptly
summed up in a line from one of Javed
Akhtar’s couplets Hulka Mabus a key
kamila come here every house means just
one more room urbanization is just one
example the economic intricacies of
social systems are peppered across
literature in the writing of Indian
diaspora like Salman Rushdie and champa
Larry
they provide insights into migration in
George Orwell’s 1984 an animal farm
it’s almost prescient of various aspects
of political economy moving on to the
third rail income the daily activities
the way we spend our money what we buy
what we eat the material dimensions of
life Milton Friedman’s permanent income
hypothesis says that individuals
increase their consumption based on
increases in their permanent did come
say I am working a nine-to-five job
making ten thousand rupees a month I’ll
be inclined to save five thousand and
spend the other half now if I get a
bonus to sixteen thousand rupees a month
increase my saving to 8,000 and spending
to eight I have 30 years left to retire
if I win a lottery worth rupees 2
million which is it roughly the same
amount as my bonus multiplied by the
number here appears I have to retire I
won’t spend half I’ve been trying to
save more than half this is because the
win the lottery win was an increase in
my temporary income whereas the bonus is
an increase in my permanent income now
of course human beings aren’t always
rational and consider the indian economy
where 90 percent of employment falls in
the informal sector these people have no
sources of permanent income so how would
this theory explain their consumption
behavior at an extreme example dream
chance
Goffin or shroud is it is a story where
the protagonist rationalizes spending
his wife’s burial money on food and
drink for himself his consumption
behavior is dominated by an immediate
gratification of needs rather than a
confidence in the future and similar
conflicts of spending money are seen in
Chekhov’s the lottery ticket or are than
the digas the white tiger in other areas
of trade and commerce shakespeare’s
merchant of venice his lessons to
today’s banking system are and the great
indian epic the Mahabharata accurately
captures the essence of game theory and
the conflict and cooperation dimensions
of decision-making in all these examples
the writers and the economists are
essentially saying the same thing but in
different languages while economics
tends to be more technical and adopts
cause-effect analysis at the aggregate
level literature tends to focus on the
particular it tells a story it puts the
face to various growth challenges and
gives the data of voice this is why I
think the that literature in economics
can be mutually
forcing and provide new perspectives on
growth to think about this relationship
I like to look at this framework in a
kind of gradation the bottom layer
individual and cultural beliefs are
strongly embedded in people they’re
abstract a step above social systems
begin to merge the philosophical in the
practical and upon this foundation which
is different from place to place comes
trade and commerce the material
dimensions is life the way Society
sustains itself economics would form a
part of this third layer and while
economic succeeds in providing answers
to a specific set of problems it isn’t
entirely predictive when the variables
are unique this is why some economic
tools work in some places and not in
others economic reality is shot with
contingency and resorting the context
independent analysis provides only a
part of the picture this is where
literature comes in it provides a
structure the first two layers of the
pyramid which we can then plug the
economics into and this context based
narrative approach will provide a more
nuanced understanding of human behavior
and makes us more empathetic to
different circumstances and once we can
relate to something once we can
understand the motivations behind the
people who are trying to help the
quicker and better we can address them
imagine a world where economists from
the IMF and World Bank policymakers from
different government organizations and
researchers and academics read the
literature of the place before making
recommendations of course one phone find
answers to developing problems like well
problems of developing countries in
Africa or India by reading kamila Shan
see who’s in Pakistan or Arundhati Roy
or Xinhua TV but this literature good
provide a fresh perspective to the
economists questions and then this
narrative economics can make policy is
more robust and effective as they’ll
directly correlate to the people that
are intended to serve economics and
literature are highly complex fields and
all that I have said is only one aspect
of the to this relationship will require
further research it’s also not a one-way
street
literature do can benefit greatly from
the rigorous approach economists fake in
the in the pursuit of answers but when
each discipline gets boiled into its own
realm it falls short of its potential
and this is why I believe the poetic
symmetry of economics and the material
dimensions of literary text needs to be
interdependent to understand human behavior
[Applause]
like most economists I’m fascinated by
the complex problems the discipline
tries to solve as a researcher I study
how these seemingly abstract concepts
are used to drive development yet as the
daughter of the literature professor I
grew up listening to lots of stories I
often find myself making friends with
the characters I read about all the
Fenian Blyton’s characters made me long
for adventures in magic lands mommy from
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was
like a warm aren’t on rainy days and mr.
Darcy from Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice with my literary heartthrob I
slowly began observing these two diverse
fields economics and literature in
relation to each other and I realized
there’s no reality to imagination than
what meets the eye so what is this
reality in literature writers make up a
lot of stories they invent people and
situations but they do this over a
bedrock of real experiences these real
experiences have social in economic
dimensions which are central and
peripheral to the story to charge
Dickens for example he showed the impact
of the Industrial Revolution through his
writings we impact on the working class
in the for a century earlier in the 18th
century Samuel Richardson conceived the
idea of a novel as a kind of self-help
book that would help the middle class
how to behave in society
similarly in fantasy literature Harry
Potter has economic elements marginal
gains and opportunity costs of
exchanging stickers for chocolate frogs
and being in Gryffindor versus Slytherin
this is what literary critics called the
theory of materialism they observe
literature in a wider socio eco
political framework
is a different history economics is
about the production consumption and
distribution of wealth in 1898 the
economist Thorstein that then argued to
the economics is not in evolutionary
science and that it needs to break out
if it’s insular mold today and
especially after the 2008 financial
crisis his warnings are receiving
attention economics is biggest gap lies
in assumptions like perfect
information and rationality which is not
always the case
in such situations we turn to other
elements to other fields behavioral
economics is understanding that there is
no e equals mc-squared the human
behavior which is constantly changing
and so it looks at sociology and
psychology to understand the psyche of
economic agents together with their
whims and fancies don’t get me wrong I’m
not saying that economics doesn’t
contain important information it does
and it is certainly vital for growth but
maybe there isn’t need to look towards
other fields that’s why I think if
literature books plays in poetry at as
magnifying glasses made up of words
revealing the underlying dynamics of
their time in place as Albert Camus
eloquently put it fiction is the light
through which we tell the truth and
literature is not just fiction but also
nonfiction like the writings of
journalist Seneca and anthropologists
which are written in a story like
fashion and like fiction they buttress
our understanding of the unseen with
this brief theoretical framework let’s
go back to the relationship between
literature and economics I like to look
at it in something I call plot
people-centered ladder of trade so in
the bottom layer individual and cultural
beliefs this is the attitudes of people
in groups among other things they
contain philosophical and cultural
customs look at Jane Austen and Adam
Smith in the wealth of nations
Smith claims man is an animal that makes
bargains no other animal does this no
dog exchanges bones with another and
Smith also said that this bargaining
power stems from self-interested actions
it’s not from the benevolence of the
butcher the brewer or the Baker that we
expect our dinner but from their regard
to their own self-interest
Austin understands this her books are
economic theory in action she gives us a
glimpse into the complex and often
contradictory nature of human beings all
our characters seem to be making deals
in their heads and with each other to
achieve what is in their best interest
Austin’s world is full of young women
who don’t have their own fortunes so
that puts them at a disadvantage in the
marriage market they end up making
compromises between social acceptances
and individual preferences the best
example of this is Charlotte Lucas in
Pride and Prejudice who chooses to marry
in out of a foon because it allows her
to be a mistress in her own home rather
than an old maid in her brother’s
similarly we can retool story and
mahasweta devi whose work also has
strong economic basis looking at culture
the 19th century idea of economic
prosperity in America was epitomized by
the figure of Horatio Alger and the idea
was if you work hard enough you can make
it big in the 20th century this idea was
in the form of the American dream was
challenged and endorsed by Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby Arthur Miller’s Death
of a Salesman Tennessee Williams The
Glass Menagerie and in stark contrast
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Roth acts
as the Anatomy for crisis and shows how
the Great Depression played out across
America moving to the second layer of
the pyramid social systems these are the
norms of the society the institutions
through which they operate take the
example of urbanization from Blake in
the late 18th century to
in French symbolist poets to modernist
poets like Eliot and Orden they all
built up the city is a theme in poetry
similarly memoir is like Oren comics
Istanbul and Suki to metas maximum City
provide a bird’s-eye view of the
economic activities in cities when
thumb-up describes bustling streets
leading to the Bosphorus and the
thousands of ships passing on one of the
busiest maritime lanes in the world
he is indirectly talking about better
forms of infrastructure and new avenues
for employment in maximum City we see
another angle urban growth the
widespread proliferation of crime across
Bombay pollution the underworld mafia
dons bar dancers petty thieves and the
increasing inequalities between the rich
and the poor everyone wants to be close
to the arteries of the city and this
scarcity of resources creates its own
problems this predicament is aptly
summed up in a line from one of Javed
Akhtar’s couplets Hulka Mabus a key
kamila come here every house means just
one more room urbanization is just one
example the economic intricacies of
social systems are peppered across
literature in the writing of Indian
diaspora like Salman Rushdie and champa
Larry
they provide insights into migration in
George Orwell’s 1984 an animal farm
it’s almost prescient of various aspects
of political economy moving on to the
third rail income the daily activities
the way we spend our money what we buy
what we eat the material dimensions of
life Milton Friedman’s permanent income
hypothesis says that individuals
increase their consumption based on
increases in their permanent did come
say I am working a nine-to-five job
making ten thousand rupees a month I’ll
be inclined to save five thousand and
spend the other half now if I get a
bonus to sixteen thousand rupees a month
increase my saving to 8,000 and spending
to eight I have 30 years left to retire
if I win a lottery worth rupees 2
million which is it roughly the same
amount as my bonus multiplied by the
number here appears I have to retire I
won’t spend half I’ve been trying to
save more than half this is because the
win the lottery win was an increase in
my temporary income whereas the bonus is
an increase in my permanent income now
of course human beings aren’t always
rational and consider the indian economy
where 90 percent of employment falls in
the informal sector these people have no
sources of permanent income so how would
this theory explain their consumption
behavior at an extreme example dream
chance
Goffin or shroud is it is a story where
the protagonist rationalizes spending
his wife’s burial money on food and
drink for himself his consumption
behavior is dominated by an immediate
gratification of needs rather than a
confidence in the future and similar
conflicts of spending money are seen in
Chekhov’s the lottery ticket or are than
the digas the white tiger in other areas
of trade and commerce shakespeare’s
merchant of venice his lessons to
today’s banking system are and the great
indian epic the Mahabharata accurately
captures the essence of game theory and
the conflict and cooperation dimensions
of decision-making in all these examples
the writers and the economists are
essentially saying the same thing but in
different languages while economics
tends to be more technical and adopts
cause-effect analysis at the aggregate
level literature tends to focus on the
particular it tells a story it puts the
face to various growth challenges and
gives the data of voice this is why I
think the that literature in economics
can be mutually
forcing and provide new perspectives on
growth to think about this relationship
I like to look at this framework in a
kind of gradation the bottom layer
individual and cultural beliefs are
strongly embedded in people they’re
abstract a step above social systems
begin to merge the philosophical in the
practical and upon this foundation which
is different from place to place comes
trade and commerce the material
dimensions is life the way Society
sustains itself economics would form a
part of this third layer and while
economic succeeds in providing answers
to a specific set of problems it isn’t
entirely predictive when the variables
are unique this is why some economic
tools work in some places and not in
others economic reality is shot with
contingency and resorting the context
independent analysis provides only a
part of the picture this is where
literature comes in it provides a
structure the first two layers of the
pyramid which we can then plug the
economics into and this context based
narrative approach will provide a more
nuanced understanding of human behavior
and makes us more empathetic to
different circumstances and once we can
relate to something once we can
understand the motivations behind the
people who are trying to help the
quicker and better we can address them
imagine a world where economists from
the IMF and World Bank policymakers from
different government organizations and
researchers and academics read the
literature of the place before making
recommendations of course one phone find
answers to developing problems like well
problems of developing countries in
Africa or India by reading kamila Shan
see who’s in Pakistan or Arundhati Roy
or Xinhua TV but this literature good
provide a fresh perspective to the
economists questions and then this
narrative economics can make policy is
more robust and effective as they’ll
directly correlate to the people that
are intended to serve economics and
literature are highly complex fields and
all that I have said is only one aspect
of the to this relationship will require
further research it’s also not a one-way
street
literature do can benefit greatly from
the rigorous approach economists fake in
the in the pursuit of answers but when
each discipline gets boiled into its own
realm it falls short of its potential
and this is why I believe the poetic
symmetry of economics and the material
dimensions of literary text needs to be
interdependent to understand human behavior
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