What Explains Pakistan's Economic Crisis and How to Solve it?

08/30/22 • 54 min

Asim Khwaja walks us through Pakistan's current economic crisis, and why the real solutions lie in long-term productivity increases. In the process, he also tells us what he learnt from a 5th grader during his recent visit to Pakistan, and on the important role that optimism plays both at a personal and structural level.
This episode was recorded before floods started wreaking havoc across the entire country. Here is a list of Pakistan and US-based charities involved in flood relief efforts. Please donate generously.
Asim Khwaja is the Director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP).
Some links to what we talked about:

Atif Mian's and Asim's own Twitter threads on the causes of the economic crisis.
Asim's Twitter thread about his field trip where he met the budding brain surgeon.
Asim mentioned my research on what politicians know about citizens. Here is a blog about it and here is the full paper.
Asim complained that I asked him about everything but his own research. Until I ask him about it in a future episode, you can read about it here.

Atif Mian's and Asim's own Twitter threads on the causes of the economic crisis.
Asim's Twitter thread about his field trip where he met the budding brain surgeon.
Asim mentioned my research on what politicians know about citizens. Here is a blog about it and here is the full paper.
Asim complained that I asked him about everything but his own research. Until I ask him about it in a future episode, you can read about it here.

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How Do We Recover From the Worst Floods in Pakistan's History?

Tahir Andrabi unpacks the stages of disaster recovery that Pakistan will go through. We use his experience working on the 2005 earthquakes to think through what an effective flood relief and rehabilitation effort will look like. We talk about what the long-term effects might be on livelihoods and on health and education outcomes, and the interventions that can help minimize these effects.

Tahir is the Stedman-Sumner Professor of Economics at Pomona College. He was the inaugeral Dean of the LUMS School of Education, and a co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan. It's his research on education that has achieved the most prominence, but the reason I'm talking to him for this episode is his work on disaster recovery in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.

Some links to what we talked about:

An archived version of RISE-PAK, the information aggregation portal developed by Tahir and his collaborators to aid recovery efforts following the 2005 earthquake.
Tahir's paper (with Benjamin Daniels and Jishnu Das) on the effects of the 2005 earthquake on income, education, and health outcomes.
Floods Impact Assessment by Uzair Younis and Ammar Khan, the source for the $13B damage estimate we discussed.
Abida Parveen's rendition of Ghalib's "Yeh Na Thi Hamari Qismat", from which Tahir quotes a couplet to illustrate Pakistan's climate crisis.