​​Amar Bhidé

Thomas Schmidheiny Professor,
Fletcher School, Tufts University

Completing Uncertainty, Justification, and Enterprise for Oxford University Press
Email: amar AT bhide DOT net

Bio

Publications

Medical Innovation Course

Subscribe/Other Links

tba

Selected Books

Oxford 2000
Princeton 2008
Oxford 2010
Forthcoming (2024)

Uncertainty, Justification and Enterprise:
Moderning Knigtian Uncertainty

Oxford University Press

Ruminations and Updates:

  • Will frivolity sustain the development of the new AI?

    Google’s Bard has been rather a disappointment for me so far.  Several days after promising to try to edit my book draft (uploaded to my Google drive) it does not even seem to have tried. I have also asked it to find current examples of ‘bootstrapped’ (self-financed) new businesses and its answers were entirely useless.  […]

  • Last Word on Scottish Mortgage (posted on Linked In)

    I believe I fulfilled my duty to stockholders by attempting to make public my concerns about the director selection process to the FT. This was a last resort after numerous private attempts I made to rectify, going back several months, failed. I have presented my concerns, whose manifold aspects could not obviously be explicated in […]

  • Part One of forthcoming book Posted on SSRN

    Ive been hacking away — for way too long — on a new book, Uncertainty, Justification, and Enterprise: Renewing Knights Abandoned Construct. Im at least half a year behind schedule, but Part One is now finally posted on SSRN. To celebrate I tried to get Dall-E-2 to generate a book cover. I asked for “cover […]

  • Too good to be true? Adventures in ChatGPT-land

    For decades I have been unimpressed by AI hype. (I had a boss at McKinsey in the early 1980s who insisted it was the wave of the future and I should learn to program in LISP). Speech recognition continues to perform terribly (for me) and driverless cars scare me. But I was an early adopter […]

  • Reading/Listening Lists for millennials

    A student in my entrepreneurship class — a millennial naturally –asked for general reading suggestions. I sent the following email to my class. “One of you had asked for suggestions for books to read (but wouldn’t specify the category)That’s a hard assignment. So, trying to think about what might resonate with the largest number of […]

  • My nutty nut-free diet

    And NOT by any means a recommendation In April 2015 I had dinner with an old friend in Paris, who also happens to be the retired founder of a storied biotech company.  He looked in unusually splendid shape and being a competitive sort I was most curious why.  He told me elliptically that much of […]

  • The “fact” of rain

    Social Agreement v. objective facts/information Professor Reed writes on his blog. “Facts are independently testable and verifiable, with truth independent of one’s own opinions or beliefs. It is raining at this place and this time is a testable statement, provably true or false. An opinion is not a fact. “I think it is raining” is […]

  • The dangers of dismantling local zoning rules

    Well said Joel Kotkin! Zoning rules have become a target in many libertarian circles. Joel Kotkin who I believe is strongly inclined to libertarian views — as am I — points to dangers in this post. https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/04/the-limits-of-libertarianism/ Id make the argument differently — invoking Jane Jacobs and Elinor Ostrom — but end up in the […]

  • My mother and her friends started the Association 50 years ago

    Being very proud son of extraordinary parents, I have endowed a scholarship in their name. Modest sums go a long way in India.

  • The Selective Sovietization of American Capitalism

    Project Syndicate Op-ed This oped, just published in Project Syndicate memorializes Janos Kornai. I never met Janos but we published a couple of pieces he wrote for Capitalism and Society which I edited. I had the privilege of corresponding with him then. His Hungary’s U-Turn was a cry from the heart. I prodded him to […]

  • Entrepreneurial Specialization: How Subjective (“Knightian”) Uncertainty Matters

    Hayek Seminar Talk at LSE 2 Dec ’21 Tim Besley, John Kay, and Mervyn King organize a Hayek Seminar at the London School of Economics that’s been meeting for about a year and a half. Ive had the great good fortune to participate, and yesterday I got the chance to present a recently completed paper, […]

  • How the orthodoxy in academic and policy macroeconomics has changed.

    Per Larry Summers (quoted in Robert Armstrong’s FT piece)   “The first edition of Paul Samuelson’s textbook [Economics from 1948] had a graph of the price level, not the inflation rate. If you think the price level is mean-reverting [as it would be on the gold standard], when you have more inflation, you expect more […]

  • Kabul on the Charles

    The day Kabul fell I found myself at a Peet’s in Harvard Square. I had an inkling the barista might be from Afghanistan, so I asked him whether he was. He was. I asked if he still had family there. He did. I said I was very very sorry and hoped they would be unharmed.He […]

  • Good things come from those who hustle

    Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interview with a U Penn historian, whose image of the Founding Fathers is similar to what I formed and tried to convey in my research on modern day entrepreneurs. In other words, Mr. McDougall doesn’t flinch from acknowledging the fallenness of the founders—but in contrast with the woke, he […]

  • Sunlighting Knightian Uncertainty/ Commemorating McArthur (New Working Paper)

    This is my last month at HBS and I thought I’d squeeze in one last working paper, Renewing Knightian Uncertainty (just posted on SSRN). The real meat, if you can call it that, should be in the next two parts. I had first thought of writing a great big long paper. But I realized smaller […]

  • Celebrating Richard “Dick” Nelson

    Gave me joy to write this nomination In nominating Richard Nelson, I feel both honored and nervous. He has secured so many glittering accolades and well-deserved tributes that it is difficult to say anything that has not already been said. I will therefore provide a personal perspective; and, what stands out most for me, is […]

  • Capitalism Won’t Thrive on Value Investing Alone (just published HBR.org oped)

    First oped in more than a year (when I was maniacally trying to get my medical innovation course done… Trigger warning: starts with a suicide and more personal than my usual fare   https://hbr.org/2021/06/capitalism-wont-thrive-on-value-investing-alone Summary.   Investors fall into two camps: value investors, who base decisions on a careful analysis of revenues and costs, looking for steady […]

  • Course Evaluations did not disappoint

    The new course on medical innovations I developed and  just taught at HBS started disastrously. Fortunately, miraculously, by the end of the term, I thought it was the most substantive course I had ever taught, but it was far from the smoothest and I was on tenterhooks about what the student evaluations would say. They […]

  • ‘Tis done!

    Done with my LTMA course. Good or bad, is for my students to say in their evaluations but it was like nothing I have ever taught or taken. I said at the end of the last class that teaching my entrepreneurship course is like being a tour guide at Disneyland. I know every ride, there […]

  • Case Teaching Highs

    In less than nine months, I’ve put 15 case studies through the HBS system, which may be a record for a single submitter. (About 10 were reconfigured working papers, but they still had to be turned into a teaching product.) As of next Thursday, I had hoped to have taught all 15 in my Transformational […]

  • Shorter Simplified version

    Keynes thought it would be ‘splendid’ if economists became more like dentists. Disciplinary economics has instead become more like physics in focusing on concise, universal propositions verified through decisive tests. This focus, I argue, limits the practical utility of the discipline because universal propositions form only a part of new policy recipes. I further suggest that, as in engineering and medicine, developing economic recipes requires eclectic combinations of suggestive tests and judgement. Additionally, I offer a detailed example of how a simulation model can help evaluate new policy combinations that affect the screening of loan applications.

  • May or may not help, but can’t hurt.

    Long ago, when I had a persistent cold, my father had taught me the yogic practice of ‘jala neti.’ So when I began to read stories about the prophylactic effects of nasal sprays I googled. And sure enough someone has looked into it. (I have already been, out of an abundance of caution, gargling whenever […]

  • Bob Aliber remembers George Schultz

    The venerable sage, Bob Aliber (and co-author of Manias, Panics, and Crashes), sent along this fine memory of the late, legendary George Schultz (and then kindly agreed to let me post it here). February 14, 2021   George P. Shultz, Dean, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 1962-1968 “The Man with the Plan” Robert […]

  • Productive Knowledge and the Social Sciences — Some Pragmatic Ruminations

    The most that ‘scientific consensus’ can realistically expect is some kind of ‘abductive’ generalization: the “best” explanation for the widest possible phenomena. And I’m skeptical that without intellectual bullying such a consensus is possible…. The alternative ‘pragmatic’ enterprise (in the William James sense) looks for whats useful rather than what’s universally true. …social scientists have something to bring to the pragmatist’s table: more suggestive tools and heuristics for their selection and use. It would be a pity if this were lost in a dogmatic striving for the “best” model and approach

  • Syllabus for Transformational Medical Innovations Course Finally Completed

    The course seeks to encourage and guide innovators in health care and other industries using case-histories of transformational advances, supported by a framework of productive knowledge. After describing these basic ‘ends and means,’ this syllabus summarizes the required pre-class submissions, final paper, and grading methodology.  (A downloadable version also includes the provisional schedule and assignments) […]

  • The Plague in Pepys’s London

    Email from a distinguished, very thoughtful, and classically educated, pillar of the UK establishment concludes: “Meanwhile I send you our warmest wishes for a better 2021 than this Plague Year. I’m reading Pepys’s Journal and although the disease killed perhaps a quarter of the population of London, they seem to have remained rather more cheerful […]

  • Uplifting News to End a Dismal Year

    E, a Latina immigrant and single mother, who tidies my (bijou) apartment just heard her son was admitted to Harvard College. She used to have a business with her husband. After the business and marriage dissolved, E has supported herself providing housekeeping services – with great diligence and remarkable cheerfulness. I found her through J, […]

  • New paper on Anonymous Lemons

    European Financial Managment has just published ‘Symmetrical Ignorance: The Cost of Anonymous Lemons.’ It’s (kind of) a 50th Anniversary ‘inversion’ of Akerlof’s 1970 paper. Usually, increasing the information available to buyers reduces information asymmetry (‘lemons’) problems. But decreasing the information of potential sellers also reduces information asymmetries. I argue that in finance, rules  to decrease seller […]

  • To what end Heterodoxy? (Hayek Seminar at LSE)

    I’m privileged to participate in a seminar (with far more distinguished scholars than I) with diverse views and research agendas but joined by a common skepticism about the mainstream model for decision making under uncertainty.  After the first session presented by John Kay (based on a chapter with his book with Mervyn King) I posted […]

  • “Commercial” for HBS Spring 2021 Elective

    The more formal description is on the HBS elective course catalog

  • Growing scholarships offered by the Indian Women Scientists Association.

    Good to see their scholarships for “girl students” in science (;-)) keeps growing. I gave one in my parent’s name some years ago. My mother was a founding member and later served as its President. My father’s support for her remarkable life and career was itself remarkable: He found her (an unfunded) phd slot in […]

  • Speculations and Near Certainties about Covid’s consequences

    Trimmed and anonymized talk given to a group in London (whose identity has been edited out). Ive also removed the more indiscreet Q&A. The picture (which was taken at a Bloomberg Radio studio) has no relationship to the venue. Unfortunately you cant just upload audio to you-tube, so this is a bit of a chimera. […]

  • Confronting our inhumanity

    I regard death from disease, storms, earthquakes, accidents, and misadventures as an integral part of the natural order. Certainly sad for kith and kin, especially if life is cut short. But dying is integral to the process of birth and renewal. I have far fewer years ahead of me than I have lived and the […]

  • Impossible Shoes, difficult timing

    From the May 14 2020 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Board announcement: “Professor John Kay has decided not to stand for re-election at this year’s AGM and will retire from the Board in June after twelve years’ service as a Director. John’s career has spanned academic work, think tanks, business schools and consultancies. Scottish Mortgage has […]

  • Hustling to beat the Coronavirus (with Leif Pagrotsky)

    Our article (full text below) highlights the crucial role of local knowledge and action in global pandemics. While regretting the grim circumstances, I’m encouraged by this collaboration with Leif  — a stalwart Social Democrat who broke ranks to keep Sweden outside the Euro: apparently it isn’t just Hayekians who fear of over-centralization. And, syncreticism is […]

  • Overview slides of Practical Knowledge Seminar (hopefully encourages downloads of the syllabus!)
  • Hindu/Vedantic views on life and death (rather personal!)

    An oped in today’s WSJ about “Rage[ing] Against the ‘Bioethicists’ and the Dying of the Light” reminded me how different Hindu/Vedantic attitudes to life and death are from Judaic/Christian ones. I had emailed this to a stressed friend about ten days ago (nobody had died btw) “I guess I am very Hindu about all this. […]

  • What South Korean/Taiwanese “successes” dont resolve.

    Much is being made of the “success” of covid containment in South Korea and Taiwan. This seems based on rather superficial news reports. The BBC reports on Taiwan for instance say that people who were ‘suspected’ of infections were tested. What does that mean? Just symptomatic patients — or people who had come into contact […]

  • Honesty in Pandemic Modelling

    This fine post by Maria Chikina (Pitt) and Wesley Pegden (CMU) reaches important if unpalatable conclusions, including: “There is a simple truth behind the problems with these modeling conclusions. The duration of containment efforts does not matter, if transmission rates return to normal when they end, and mortality rates have not improved. This is simply […]

  • Murky data calls into question quarantine strategy (New FT oped)

    My oped on covid 19 that the FT has just kindly published, emphasizes we are operating in a fog — of irreducible, radical uncertainty. As Mervyn King wisely put it. ” “No one can really know the nature of this virus.” Six years of studying medical advances — Im going to be teaching a new […]

  • Conflating Convenience with Correctness

    My email and facebook feed is filled with pictures and videos of exponential growth functions.   The flood originates, I believe, in epidemiological hubris, namely that:   1. The form of equation governing infection growth is known and unchanging; and,   2. That the parameters of the equation — the now infamous R0 — also […]

  • How reliable does a test need to be in order to be used for screening?

    A pro-screening friend posed this question — in response to my strong objections to mass screening. To which I replied: “It depends on the purpose, costs and the consequences. Testing witches by tying weights to suspects’ feet and tossing them into ponds was a terrible idea. Yet at the time, many authorities decided it was […]

  • What the seasonal flu teaches us about dealing with the coronavirus scare

    Comparisons of coronavirus infections to the mundane seasonal ‘flu have invited widespread mockery. In fact, the comparison is oddly and usefully apt. Estimates of infection and death rates –for both – require heroic, unverifiable assumptions. And how we deal with flu outbreaks provide useful lessons for coping with what the World Health Organization has declared […]

  • Frank Knight’s spin on Hume’s induction paradox.

    Brilliant observation from Knight’s Risk Uncertainty and Profit: “We live in a world full of contradiction and paradox, a fact of which perhaps the most fundamental illustration is this: that the existence of a problem of knowledge depends on the future being different from the past, while the possibility of the solution of the problem […]

  • Making Economics More Useful. Final typeset version posted.

    The compositor has sent  the “final” version of Making Economics More Useful: How Technological Eclecticism Could Help (though the official publication in Applied Economics wont be till July or August.) I nearly emptied my research budget to make it completely open source so feel free to download, pass around, republish, excerpt or whatever. Its a huge […]

  • Questions about the practical utility of Randomized Control Trials

    I got a “revise and resubmit” for my paper on making economics more useful on the very day the Nobel prize in economics was announced. I have long been skeptical of the practical utility of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) in general and field experiments in developmental economics in particular. I had not gone into this […]

  • Just completed case-history of Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG)

    Srikant Datar, Fabio Villa, and I are happy (and relieved) to complete this case history on the evolution of coronary bypass operations. This is by FAR the hardest writing I’ve ever attempted: the story is incredibly complex, and I knew nothing the topic when I started. Fabio bailed us out with his expertise — and […]

  • Re-reading Chandler’s Strategy and Structure

    While preparing for for my practical knowledge seminar last week I saw something in Chandler that had been hiding in plain sight, which I think aligns Chandler with Frank Knight — and away from the transaction cost view of organizations advanced by two Nobel Laureates Ron Coase and Oliver Williamson. (Chandler felt strongly that Williamson had […]

  • A Pragmatic Libertarian’s Angst about Immigration (Project Syndicate oped)

    I am a staunch free-trader with strong but pragmatic libertarian leanings. I am also an immigrant (of “color” in the prevailing euphemism). All this makes me seriously conflicted about immigration, which I cannot reduce to a matter of high libertarian principle. The questions are difficult:how many immigrants can our public infrastructure tolerably accommodate? How do […]

  • In Praise of Market Volatility (WSJ Oped)

    Talking heads on “financial” TV channels have always provided “infotainment” — information so blended with entertainment that you couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other started.  One rated the Fed Chair’s “performance” at his press conference on the Fed decision to hike rates an “F”. But why should the Fed and its chairs have […]

  • The Zero Percent solution (WSJ Oped + Tribute to Volcker)

    Paul Volcker’s critique of 2% inflation targets in his recent memoir spurred me to write this oped just published in the Wall Street Journal. Volcker focuses on the economic hazards of the targets; I question the legitimacy of “independent” appointees in making inherently political choices about ends and not just means. The Constitution envisions a […]

  • Skepticism as Antidote to Fake News (Wall Street Journal op-ed)

    The WSJ op-ed reflects my ingrained First Amendment-absolutism: fake news will always be with us and any remedy is likely to make things worse. (Yes, I did recently suggest corralling infopolists’ assaults on privacy. But, our Constitution protects the exercise of free speech not of market power — even if the power was “fairly” secured. […]

  • Corralling the Info-Monopolists (Project Syndicate Op-ed)

    I am viscerally skeptical about expanding state power but recognize that technological advances do often require new rules: Automobiles required brake inspections and traffic police for instance. Similarly, I argue in this just published Project Syndicate oped,  the digital economy poses new risks and requires new rules. The info-monopolists are not your great grandfather’s oil […]

  • Formulaic Transparency: The Hidden Enabler of Exceptional US Securitization (New article in JACF)

    This article in many ways, is the “debt” counterpart to my 1993 Journal of Financial Economics piece and offers an even broader critique of the reflexive belief that more complete financial markets are always better. I conclude thus: Lemon problems do not stop the sale of well over a million used cars in the U.S. […]

  • Seminar on Practical knowledge — manifesto-like syllabus

    (Manifesto-like) Syllabus This seminar examines the development of knowledge embodied in artifacts (including physical objects, protocols, and organizations) intended to transform “existing conditions into preferred ones.”We are particularly interested in knowledge “inclusively” produced by the many and for the many. Thus, we care more about how ready-to-wear footwear is designed, produced, and sold, than in […]

  • Just published essay on how public policies have harmed American banks

    Number 34 • Winter 2018   Why We Need Traditional Banking   Amar Bhidé

  • Equifax Critics Are Missing the Bigger Point (Wall Street Journal op-ed)

    Fair-lending laws turned consumers into anonymous credit scores—and a target for identity thieves. (Appeared in the September 14, 2017, print edition. ) In a longer working paper I further argue that reducing individuals to scores has also undergirded the vast growth of anonymous markets in securitized consumer and mortgage loans.

  • Making Economics More Useful

    My working paper just posted on SSRN synthesizes ideas Ive been working on for my practical knowledge seminar, a case writing project on medical innovation and a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance. I argue that economics lacks an “engineering” counterpart to its “physics” side. That’s fine as long as you don’t […]

  • Bottoms up critique of top down monetary interventions

    My article, just accepted by Ekonomisk Debatt, will be published after translation by the Swedish Economics Association in May. The argument is half-Hayekian in the sense it argues for an important role for the decentralized, private sector creation of the medium of exchange, which Hayek presumably would have approved of, but anchored in a government […]

  • Lecture on medical innovation at ESBRI, Stockholm

    http://www.esbri.se/forelasning_tv_visae.asp?id=180708882

  • Bloomberg Surveillance interview snippets
  • What central bankers should and should not be asked to do

    Amar Bhidé Financial Times  August 16, 2016 Easy money is a dangerous cure for a debt hangover Central banks should be held responsible for prudent lending not stable prices, writes Amar Bhidé Sweden’s Handelsbanken is an exemplar of prudence, barely touched by the 2008 financial crisis. It operates globally like a small community bank, to […]

  • You cant dine in the clubhouse if you dont pay the dues

    Amar Bhidé and Anders Barsk Quartz June 21, 2016 Brexiters are making a dangerous mistake in their argument for leaving the EU An essential claim of UK campaigners who want to leave the European Union is that the country could negotiate the same access to European markets from the outside as it now has from […]

  • Abroad, as at home, first do no harm

    From Quartz  January 7, 2015 When it comes to ISIL Europe is repeating the sins of its fathers While candidate Trump spouts anti-Muslim rants, elected officials on both sides of the Atlantic are pressing ahead with plans for military action that will shed real blood. The British Parliament just voted to join French airstrikes in […]

  • Greece isn’t too poor or misgoverned for the Euro (oped)

    Widespread private and public cheating in Greece is old hat. Michael Lewis documented it splendidly in Vanity Fair in 2010. What’s “novel” in this just published piece (tho Ive made it a few times before) is that the Euro doesn’t need or can’t have “convergence” of standards of living or in the quality of governance.  […]

  • Ten Miles SquSupport for Free Speech Is Not Support for More Surveillance

    A civil libertarian and free-speech absolutist’s concern about the Charlie Hedbo demonstrations By Amar Bhidé http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2015/01/restraint_is_called_for053846.php Mass demonstrations of solidarity in favor of free speech and against the Charlie Hebdo killings are understandable, but they could inadvertently give cover to actions that subvert the very liberties the protesters cherish. Legitimate public outrage should not be […]

  • The dubious utility of productivity estimates.

    Talk at Cato conference on the future of US growth