Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926-2022)

Today, I woke up with light tears and heart upon the news that my master, Thích Nhất Hạnh, has passed away at Từ Hiếu Temple in the homeland of Huế, where his spiritual journey began in 1945. It is also the homeland of my in-law family, a Buddhist heartland. Light, in the sense that he…

Phi Nhung (1970-2021)

COVID-19 has taken away many lives and unfairly so. Today marked the departure from this world of one my favourite southern Vietnamese country music singers, Phi Nhung (1970-2021), whom everyone in diaspora households grew up watching and listening to in the 1990s-2000s. This was a time when our parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and compatriots began…

Egalitarian cure?

"Responding to Chinese challenge with democratic socialism" by Thomas Piketty, 13 July 2021. In a recent blog post, Piketty argues that the most salient way for the West to address the supposed "Chinese challenge" is to be honest about chronic shortfalls at home and launch big investments into human capital and physical infrastructure. This will…

Reflections on Vietnam’s 35 years of reform

In the past week, Vietnam's 13th Communist Party Congress has been taking place. It is also 35 years ago since the country's reform era (officially termed "renovation" or Đổi mới) was launched during the 6th Communist Party Congress. A former editor-in-chief of Communist Review, the party's flagship journal, said that this congress should be viewed…

In memory

A difficult year is coming to an end. I have been fairly safe throughout this year, so far. However, the Buddhist concept of impermanence (vô thường) has never felt as close by as in many moments this year: how precious yet vulnerable a life can be. One may have to leave this world in any…

Persistence of revolution

A year ago around this time, I wrote the blog post "China and inequality" as a reflection of mine on recent academic papers within economics on the issue of income and wealth inequality in pre and post-revolution China. This week, another intriguing paper on this topic was released by Alesina et. al. 2020: "Persistence through…

Deaths of despair

The timing for reading the book "Deaths of Despair" (2020) by the economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case couldn't have been more suitable, but mostly for reasons that are presently ravaging the world in many different ways: the COVID-19 pandemic, protests and killings for civil rights, and reawakened debates on structural racism in our societies.…

Primary data collection during crises

On 5 June, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) announced that the US employment rate was at 13.3%, with 2.5 million new (non-farm) jobs created in net effect in May. Given the astronomical net loss of over 20 million jobs recorded in April, which gave way to the highest spike in the US employment…

Pandemic responses for developing countries

Spending time in self-isolation in foreign land has naturally triggered me to quietly observe the variety of pandemic responses being executed, either directly through my own observations (in Indonesia) or indirectly through regular conversations with colleagues who come from different parts of the world. These days, my way to show my care for someone that…

A week of applied microeconomics

It has been a great week of recognition for the field of applied microeconomics, especially for people working in the intersections of development economics and political economy. Yesterday, it was announced that Melissa Dell, an applied microeconomist, was awarded this year's John Bates Clark Medal for her work on the role of the state, institutions,…