My efforts to set priorities and work by a schedule were constantly defeated – often leading to a sense of desperation. But funnily, each time I reviewed my priorities for the year, I was more or less working along the lines though I scarcely met my targets day-to-day. I have been thinking of it for […]
Archive for January, 2007
Time Management for an undisciplined fellow!
Published January 30th, 2007 in Research: Ideas, Tools, Talks. 0 CommentsGoogle Calendar integrates with Remember the Milk
Published January 29th, 2007 in Software & Utilities. 2 CommentsA rather surprising feature about Google calendar is that it does not have a task manager. I recently changed my time management technique from being ‘calendar based’ to ‘list based’ management. In my search for a task management system, I discovered www.rememberthemilk.com - an incredibly well designed utility. It’s online, capable of […]
Using Refworks with Google Scholar
Published January 28th, 2007 in Bibliography: Lists & Tools, Research: Ideas, Tools, Talks and Software & Utilities. 2 CommentsIt’s easy to import citations from Google Scholar into Refworks. In order to do this go to “scholar preferences”, a link you will find next to the search box and at the bottom of that page you will find an entry called “Bibliography Manager”. In this, select Refworks (I often end-up choosing a similar sounding […]
Manage citations and bibliography with Refworks
Published January 28th, 2007 in Bibliography: Lists & Tools and Software & Utilities. 3 CommentsRating: out of 5
Manage citations, create bibliographies quick & easy in any format you want (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) and keep references organised
Important Note: Refworks has added important offline functionalities, for details click here
I have been using Refworks since six months with great satisfaction. It is perhaps one of the most useful and time saving utilities for graduate students working on research papers. The software has two broad components: (1) Database of our references to organise and manage references (2) Utility for easily adding citations to papers that we are writing in the chosen format.
Reference management
As a database it’s perfect for managing references. Unlike Endnote, it’s online and so we can put in, edit or use our data from any where as long as we have a net access. In case we anticipate working in some place where we will not have an access Refworks we can download the database and do most key things with it. It is also easy to import data from bibliographic databases such as Econlit, Google Scholar, and a wide array of other services. Typically, we can also hook-up to the library website and download references including title, authors, price, year & place of publication, and other key details in one swoop. I can also store notes, keywords and other useful information manually in order to customize the database and to add details of importance to the user. There is little to complain about Refworks as a database - and perhaps it is a better system than Endnote as long as we have a net access.
Creating bibliographies swift and easy
The most important reason to use refworks though is as a citation utility for greatly speeding citation and making it easy and painless to create bibliographies. I started using Refworks as a moron with no idea of how to write bibliographies. For the first time after using it, I started creating consistent and uniform citations. Refowks has a Cite and Write plugin for Microsoft Word that works smoothly - you just have to search your reference and click it in. But often one has to work from different computers, which means we cannot have the plugin installed everywhere. In that case, we can add citations by just inserting the index number of the record (book, journal, etc.) enclosed by two curly brackets (e.g. “{{136}}”).
It is easy to make minor modifications/additions to the citations such as adding text before or after it. When the paper is ready to send out all we need to do is to go online (this is a must) and ask refworks to format it. This gives a neat output of in-text citations and full references at the end of the paper. Over a hundred styles of citation are available and we just need to click a button to choose the particular style or format we want (e.g. Chicago 14th, APA, MLA etc.).
Comparing Refworks with Endnote
The advantage of Refworks over Endnote is its ability to work from any machine as long as there is net access. In this, it scores well over endnote. Today, I can work from the office, at home or when I go to India as and when I choose. More importantly, I end up searching for articles in all sorts of odd places - library for one! When I find an interesting article by accident, all I need to do is to import it to refworks from where I am (note that this won’t work in conventional search engines, but can be done from most specialized search engines including Google Scholar). This is a great convenience.
Both refworks and End Note are not built for collaborate work where the partner does not have access to the same software. This is a significant limitation given the culture of collaboration in the academia. Refworks can specially be confusing since we have to work in a raw copy that does not have citations and share the finished (formatted) version when we send it out. This makes editing a difficult process. In End Note though, the citations are stored as bookmarks and so we end up editing and sharing the same document - this makes it so much easier to revisit documents and to edit them.
You may find my other posts on creating and manging bibliographies useful. For other related posts choose the topic that suits your interest by clicking tags next to “read more” below
Review of Easterly’s Elusive quest for growth
Published January 27th, 2007 in Social Policy, Economics & Economy and Books & Articles. 2 CommentsThe Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics
Rating: out of 5
Author: William Easterly
Year: 2002
Category: Economics, Development, Growth theories, Institutional Economics
Publisher: MIT Press
Magnanimity of IMF and World Bank leads to policies unfavourable to poor people – The Fund and the Bank did not go far enough, argues Easterly
The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly reviews various theories of growth and the consequent efforts by World Bank and IMF. As the title indicates he looks at how these approaches ‘failed’ and traces some reasons for their failure. The book is interspersed with live accounts of little cases (“intermezzo”) from the field to animate the discussion.
Useful review of evolving thinking in IMF and World Bank over 50 years
He starts by discussing why growth matters and offers a straightforward reason – “to help the poor”. The first chapter briefly traces some reviews of growth and its impact on poverty. This is followed by sections on “panaceas that failed” and the theme section “people respond to incentives” (see table of contents below for more details). Considering that the book is written by an insider (Easterly worked for the World Bank) the book offers interesting insights into the debates within the Bank and an episodic view of development thinking within the institution. It perhaps reflects the currently growing priority for getting institutions right to get the incentives right – a radical movement from ‘getting the prices right’ discourse. In the process the book offers a good insight into shifting thinking in these institutions for almost half a century.
Easterly criticizes the interventions of WB and IMF and claims that they have failed broadly. This is where the critical nature of the book stops. Underlying the book are narrow notions of “Good Policy” and a growth fundamentalism that gives no room for any measure that would deviate from the infamous Washington Consensus.
Growth and nothing else: how useful insights go awry
Needless to say, the book is focussed on ‘growth’ and the world view is presented by comparisons between ‘rich countries’ and ‘poor countries’. He uses this comparison to make an important point that growth often contributes to reduction in poverty and improvements in other standards of living (education, nutrition, health, etc.). What he misses to do though is to look at the wide array of patterns among poor and rich countries that are contributed by other measures. As Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze have argued on many occasions, policies focussed on human development need not always be inconsistent with concerns for growth. And growth very often happens without human development, specially when they are accompanied without any policies focussed on these issues. His world view based on rich/poor dichotomy is a significant weakness of the book.
Unquestionable “Good Policies”
There is an undercurrent of ‘good policy’ Vs. ‘bad policy’ through the book and much of the ‘good policy’ is what could be called the Washington consensus. He is rarely critical of the policy prescriptions and attributes their widespread failure to half-hearted implementation. I am not making an argument that Easterly sticks to Washington consensus (WC) in this book – that is far from true. But he does tend to give WC the hallowed ground and a part of the discussion is about getting the incentives right so that these get implemented.
Covers education, health, corruption and many other topics but with a narrow perspective
The book covers a wide ground by looking many pressing issues (population, human capital, health, etc.). Each of these chapters present interesting insights. May be given the limitations of discussing so many themes the discussion merely touches the surface of most topics. This would not be a shortcoming of the book but for the fact that what is discussed stays well within the framework of mainstream economics that is inadequate to understand phenomena. I have elaborated this in a separate post with reference to his cash for condoms chapter. The unfortunate tendency to ignore the rich context in which we live and make decisions persists through the book. My verdict about the book: useful insights, poor prescriptions.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE: THE QUEST
Why Growth Matters
To Help the Poor
Intermezzo: In Search of a River
THE PANACEAS THAT FAILED
Aid for Investment
Intermezzo: Parmila
Solow’s Surprise: Investment Is Not the Key to Growth
Intermezzo: Dry Cornstalks
Educated for What?
Intermezzo: Without a Refuge
Cash for Condoms?
Intermezzo: Tomb Paintings
The Loans That Were, the Growth That Wasn’t
Intermezzo: Roumeen’s Story
Forgive Us Our Debts
Intermezzo: Cardboard House
PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES
Tales of Increasing Returns: Leaks, Matches, and Traps
Intermezzo: War and Memory
Creative Destruction: The Power of Technology
Intermezzo: Accident in Jamaica
Under an Evil Star
Intermezzo: Favela Life
Governments Can Kill Growth
Intermezzo: Florence and Veronica
Corruption and Growth
Intermezzo: Discrimination in Palanpur
Polarized Peoples
Intermezzo: Violent for Centuries
Conclusion: The View from Lahore
I was looking for some of the most common terms that people search for online. Not surprisingly cinema and glamour made it right to the top followed closely by sports (see lists below). What did surprise me was “NDTV” was one of the ten most searched words by Indians. There were also a couple of […]
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