T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Economics' smileys

Kitabkhana

Early in 2004, at the Neemrana conference on economics, one of the deputy governors of the Reserve Bank of India asked me if I would like to help edit and rewrite Volume Three of the RBI's history. I eagerly agreed to what looked like being a marvellous learning experience.

When the project was nearing its end in 2006, I told the RBI that it might be a good idea to record the recollections of some senior RBI officers for use in Volume Four. The RBI agreed and along with Dr T K Chakraborty of the RBI, I recorded 40 or so audio and video tapes, which are available in the RBI archives in Pune. They can be RTI'd if the governor does not give permission to hear or view them.

Then in 2010, I was once again invited to help with Volume Four but quit after a year. The chairman of the Advisory Committee and I had a very strong difference of opinion over the style of the Volume and the treatment of its subject matter.

That episode set me thinking and I have been wondering ever since why so many clever - even if not particularly accomplished - economists attach such a high premium to the dull and boring style of writing in which complex, jargon-ridden sentences, that too in the passive voice, are the norm. It is almost as if they don't want to be read.

Having written around 600 articles in this newspaper on economics research and, therefore, having read or riffled through more than 3,000 research papers in 10 years, I can state with complete confidence that there seems to be an inverse relationship between writing ability and how good the economist is.

It does not follow, however, that if you are a good writer, you are a good economist. Substance can replace style, but the opposite is not true.

Easy does it
My introduction to good writing in economics came in 1967 in my first year in college when I chanced upon an article written by an unsung economist called R A Radford. He described how markets functioned in prisoner-of-warcamps and how the currency used was cigarettes. The theory of markets and bargaining came alive in that paper in a most remarkable way.

Another superb example of great writing in economics that I found in the same year was Robert Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers. He made economic history and philosophy dance like Hrithik Roshan. It remains the best introduction to economics. Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit is also very nicely written.

Another extraordinarily well-written book was by J D Williams on game theory. Then there were John Kenneth Galbraith and the Labour Lord Tommy Balogh, who could keep you glued to the pages with their narrative skills. Both were able to convey that much of economics was not a stand-alone subject in the way, say, quantum physics was.

More recently, Avinash Dixit's Economics of Lawlessness and Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance are superbly crafted and a real pleasure to read. Robert Skidelsky's biography of Keynes, despite its length (three volumes), provides a superb overview of macroeconomics.

There are several other younger writers like Tim Harford, Steven Levitt and others who have made economics fun by simply writing well. Even Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman pass muster when they are not looking over their shoulder for applause.

Among Indian writers on economics, even when they are writing some arcane stuff, Amartya Sen and Kaushik Basu stand out, as do Y V Reddy and Bibek Debroy. The youngsters Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya are pretty good, too, but they would do well to sharpen their skills in microeconomics.

There are others as well who are very good, but the exigencies of space force me to leave them out.

Say cheese, please
So what makes the crucial difference? I would put it down primarily to their attitude to economics. Their genuine love for it makes it a passion rather than just a vocation and this is clearly reflected in the way they write. Above all, they recognise that friendly writing doesn't indicate the absence of seriousness.

The purpose of economics writing should surely be to lighten up and to stop pretending that economics is as complex as the tools that it uses, either from advanced mathematics or econometrics - and even those can be written about very gracefully, as Simon Singh has shown.

When asked about this, most economists tend to wrinkle their noses as if turgid, lugubrious prolixity is somehow critical for peer approval. In that terrible, templating American way, perhaps it is.

But you know what? The smile is missing from their writing about the behaviour of people, firms and governments who together make up the stuff of economics.

That's not good.