The grrr factor

Read an interesting concept today in context of a 76 year nobel economics prize winner's work. There is empirical data to indicate that economic growth and progress (not necessarily the same thing) is driven not just by basic economic metrics like infrastructure, debt as % of GDP or an efficient public sector. The discriminator is the passion, innovation mindedness, work ethic and the "grrr" factor of the people in the geography. Which explains why France, Italy etc. are falling behind while the US has moved ahead.

Linking cultural factors to overall GDP was something we don't see too often, especially after I finished reading another article by Ruchir sharma in newsweek just now which said that Brazil should not do what Spain did in the 1960s to reach a high GDP per capita ($5000 to $26000 over 20 years). The prescriptions were all economic in nature!

I quite buy the cultural factors theory / data - one sees it all around, including why certain ethnic communities do better than others in business. So what can a government do? The article goes on to talk about building a "culture of competition" or "culture of competence" in the country - sort of like what the Singaporean leaders tried to do in the early parts of it's history. When folks are lazy, one's gotta use the stick as well as the carrot.

40 winks in 10 minutes

Whirlwind of early morning to office with visitors from abroad, late evening to multiple places for domestic work and little sleep at night due to sick spouse. Now I know what I can expect in a month! completely zoned out and I was lucky to get several hours of sleep more than I expect to get in a few weeks time! So if you don't see me on the blog for a few months, you know what has happened. I'm just using those extra 10 minutes to catch a few winks!