& a start-of-the-semester academic-email-addresses-only paid-subscription sale:

Key Insights:

* Young whippersnappers Oks and Williams are to be commended for being young, and whippersnapperish—but we disagree with them.

* Contrary to what Brad thought, the fertility transition in Africa really has resumed.

* The problem of how you provide mass employment for people is different than the problem of how you increase your economy’s productivity by building knowledge capital, infrastructure, and other forms of human capital.

* It is important to keep those straight and distinguished in your mind.

* Commodity exporting should be viewed as a distinct development strategy from industrialization, and indeed from everything else.

* Sometime during the plague, Brad DeLong really did turn into a grumpy old man yelling at clouds. It's time that he should own that.

* People should take another look at the pace of South and Southeast Asian economic development. It is a very different world than it was 25 years ago.

* Thus if you are basing your view on memories of or on books written based on memories of how things were 25 years ago, you are going to get it wrong. BIGTIME wrong.

* Only the Federal Reserve can get away with saying “it’s context dependent”. All the rest of us have to put forward Grand Narratives—false as they all are—if we want to actually be useful.

* Hexapodia

References:

* Bongaarts, John. 2020. "Trends in fertility and fertility preferences in sub-Saharan Africa: the roles of education and family planning programs." Genus 76: 32. <https://genus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41118-020-00098-z>

* Kremer, Michael, Jack Willis, & Yang You. 2021. "Converging to Convergence." National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 29484, November 2021. <https://www.nber.org/papers/w29484>

* Oks, David, & Henry Williams. 2022. "The Long, Slow Death of Global Development." American Affairs 6:4 (November). <https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/the-long-slow-death-of-global-development/>.

* Patel, Dev, Justin Sandefur, & Arvind Subramanian. 2021. "The new era of unconditional convergence." Journal of Development Economics 152. <https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco/v152y2021ics030438782100064x.html>.

* Perkins, Dwight. 2021. "Understanding political influences on Southeast Asia's development experience." Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy 1, no. 1: 4-20. <https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/FREP-03-2021-0021/full/html>.

* Rodrik, Dani, & Joseph E. Stiglitz. 2024. "A New Growth Strategy for Developing Nations." <https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/research-papers>.

* World Bank. 2023. "South Asia Development Update October 2023: Economic Outlook." <https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/sar/publication/south-asia-development-update>.

+, of course:

* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0>.

Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Tuesday 26 August 2025 Morning Prayer for Tuesday in Ordinary Time