On April 17, the Financial Times published
David Pilling's delightful interview with Columbia University's most famous economics professor,
Jagdish Bhagwati. It was in their "Lunch with the FT" series, so the reader gets the bonus of a restaurant review, in this case JoJo at Lexington and 64th Street in Manhattan. Professor Bhagwati had organic chicken with olives, ginger, and coriander for his main course. Mr. Pilling had roasted hake.
The column isn't all about food. It deals with Professor Bhagwati's early life in India, with trade and the trade debate, and with the Nobel Prize that Professor Bhagwadi has yet to win. We will get to some of those things.
Today's quote, however, does deal with food. Here, from Mr. Pilling's article, is the full paragraph from which it was taken:
The main course arrives. My hake has subtle Asian flavours. "I always admire fusion food," he [Bhagwadi] says. "Because the only fusion food I can think of [making] is chow mein with sauerkraut." This exchange reminds me of something Bhagwati's wife Padma is reported to have said at his 70th birthday party. Knowing him to be fond of gourmet food, she tried to ease him into the culinary arts, first by getting him to prepare the morning coffee. Bhagwati, more familiar with the lecture theatre than the kitchen asked: "Darling, how do I know the water is boiling?" Padma replied: "Darling, when it looks like champagne."
As for what Professor Bhagwati had to say about his life as a boy in Mumbai, we will let you read that for yourself in the Pilling interview. With respect to the Nobel prize, when
The Simpsons take note of the omission, maybe it's time for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to dig out the Bhagwati nomination and think about it again. On the other hand, as the professor put it to Mr. Pilling, "No one has any clue as to what goes on over there."
We have to say something about trade in this entry. That is what Jagdish Bhagwati and these TTALK articles are all about. Mr. Pilling asked him if he didn't agree that trade has "led to a stagnation of wages in richer nations." In fact, Professor Bhagwati doesn't agree with that proposition. Trade, he argues, helps the poor by lowering prices, and you should not look to trade as an explanation of wage stagnation. The culprit there, he believes, is technology.
