Hello. I am an author, journalist, public speaker and occasional university teacher. I am based much of the time in Cambridge. In the 2000s I restored and lived in a home in a still unspoiled area of central Italy (the photo at the top of the page is a view from the house).
My books are The China Dream (2002, about the 1990s foreign investment gold rush in China), Asian Godfathers (2007, about developmental failure in south-east Asia) and How Asia Works (2013, an explication of economic development across the east Asian region). How Asia Works has its own site where reviews and other material specifically related to the book are posted.
I recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge. My advice is don’t ever do one. The PhD might become a book, if I can face it, which very possibly I cannot. Meanwhile, I have started out on a much more interesting project looking at developmental success in Africa, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Omidyar Network. This will become a book in 2022.
I am also currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London and a non-executive director of Edinburgh-based Pacific Horizon Investment Trust.
I have attempted to bring some greater coherence to this blog’s coverage of my disparate interests — the major economies of East Asia, Britain, Italy, and the United States, political economy, financial systems, the failings of modern economics, institutional development — by posting around the central theme of ‘development’. This encompasses not only the development of poor countries, but the development of rich ones as well. I endeavour to avoid postings that do not fit with this already wide-ranging theme. Nonetheless, few people will want to read everything on this blog and postings are filed under Category buttons with the aim of allowing you to cut out stuff you do not want.
The blog settings allow for the posting of comments. Frankly, I authorise very few comments that are sent because, while they are usually complimentary, they are not complementary, and don’t add to what has already been written (plus, it involves pressing buttons). If you want your comment posted, please say something new and useful (even if it is negative and critical). Also, note that while I will endeavour not to post comments that are unsubstantiated or potentially libelous, I cannot and do not take responsibility for anything other than my own postings to this site.
Contacting me: you can use the Comments function, because the comment will not be published unless I authorise it.
Meanwhile, and entirely separately, we still have not sold our rather beautiful properties in Europe’s richest failed state. Take a look here.