Expository articles
For a while, every now and then I used to write short expository articles for the magazine Artha, published by the Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta). These were intended for a broad audience (with some exposure to economics) on topics that interested me.
The Rise of the Passive Brigade [link] Magazine Issue: Sep 2017
(For financial markets to function well, prices must reflect fundamental information. Yet, it is precisely when markets are functioning well that incentives to gather information completely disappear!)
What do Trading Algorithms Know? [link] Magazine Issue: Nov 2017
(How might market algorithms handle paradoxical situations: a case for more epistemology in finance!)
The Magic of Blockchain [link] Magazine Issue: Jan 2018
(Blockchain, the underlying scaffolding of bitcoins, is as much about solving age-old economic problems as about new technology)
Who Do We Blame? [link] Magazine Issue: Mar 2018
(If the algorithms running the market are black-boxes -- as they increasingly are -- how do we apportion blame when something goes wrong?)
Great Expectations [link] Magazine Issue: May 2018
(The fundamental importance of expectations in price-formation, and how we try to reason about prices despite not fully understanding expectation-formation in human beings)
Competition, Computation and Regulation [link] Magazine Issue: Jul 2018
(Big data and massive computational power at the disposal of firms seem to be changing the basic nature of market regulation -- which traditionally has been mostly about maintaining competition)
When a Computer Scientist Wins a Computer Science Award for Research in Economics [link] Magazine Issue: Sep 2018
(The importance for economics of the game theoretic computational hardness results which won MIT’s Constantinos Daskalakis the Nevanlinna Prize, the highest award for young computer scientists)
Rational Expectations and the Design of a Central Bank [link] Magazine Issue: Nov 2018
(What does economic theory say about balancing the independence versus democratic accountability of a Central Bank?)
Trading the No-Trade Theorems [link] Magazine Issue: Jan 2019
(How modern finance theory arises from paradoxes, especially the No-Trade Theorem)
Impossibilities in Collective Choice [link] Magazine Issue: Mar 2019
(Various Impossibilities in Voting and Collective Choice Theory -- like Arrow's famous impossibility result -- and likely links to market paradoxes)
Beauty Contests [link] Magazine Issue: May 2019
(The importance of Keynesian beauty contests in a wide range of contexts, from banking to financial markets)
Economic Allegory [link] Magazine Issue: July 2019
(Do we really need specialists to helm economic policy making?)
Portfolios Beyond Finance [link] Magazine Issue: Sep 2019
(The advantages and dangers of applying the precepts of Portfolio theory outside of Finance)
Designing Mechanisms for Policy [link] Magazine Issue: Nov 2019
(Why we need the theory of Mechanism Design to inform applied policy making)