Political Macroeconomics

25 Dec

Look Ma, I Connected Some Dots!

In late 2019, in a lecture at the Watson Center at Brown University, Raghuram Rajan spoke about the challenges facing the Indian economy. While discussing the trends in growth in the Indian economy (I have linked to the relevant section in the video. see below for the relevant slide), Mr. Rajan notes:

“We were growing really fast before the great recession, and then 2009 was a year of very poor growth. We started climbing a little bit after it, but since then, since about 2012, we have had a steady upward movement in growth going back to the pre-2000, pre-financial crisis growth rates. And then since about mid-2016 (GS: a couple of years after Mr. Modi became the PM), we have seen a steady deceleration.”

Raghuram Rajan at the Watson Center at Brown in 2019 explaining the graph below

The statement is supported by the red lines that connect the deepest valleys with the highest peak, eagerly eliding over the enormous variation in between (see below).

See Something, Say Some Other Thing

Not to be left behind, Mr. Rajan’s interlocutor Mr. Subramanian shares the following slide about investment collapse. Note the title of the slide and then look at the actual slide. The title says that the investment (tallied by the black line) collapses in 2010 (before Mr. Modi became PM).

Epilogue

If you are looking to learn more about some of the common techniques people use to lie with charts, you can read How Charts Lie. (You can read my notes on the book here.)