Bookmarks

Reading

1. Organizing Intelligence

   Alex Imas, Andrew Koh and Shane Legg · Google DeepMind, October 2026

   A paper on how intelligence is built by organisations more than by individuals, which is what AI has to draw on to succeed.

2. China's growth machines

   Robin Rivaton and Ben Southwood · Works in Progress, October 2026

   An essay on how China's local governments drove its growth.

3. Shaping the Future of Asia

   International Monetary Fund

   A book on the opportunities and challenges facing Asia's economies.

4. Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us

   Maya Ackerman · Wiley, 2025

   A book on how generative AI can widen human creativity rather than replace it.

5. Equality and Development: A Comparative and Historical Perspective, 1800–2025

   Thomas Piketty, Lucas Chancel, Gabriel Zucman and others · World Inequality Lab, October 2025

   A working paper on how inequality and economic development have moved together across countries over two centuries.

6. How Asia Works

   Joe Studwell · Grove Press, 2013

   A book on why some East Asian economies got rich and others stalled: land reform, export-led manufacturing and banks steered towards industry.

7. Global Inequality

   Branko Milanovic · Harvard University Press, 2016

   A book on who gained from globalisation, home of the elephant chart: Asia's new middle class and the global top did well while the rich world's lower middle stood still.

8. The housing theory of everything

   Sam Bowman, John Myers and Ben Southwood · Works in Progress, September 2021

   An essay arguing that a shortage of homes where people want to live lies behind slow growth, inequality and falling birth rates.

Data

1. World Data Intelligence

   World Data Lab

   Consumer spending by income group, age and category for 194 countries and over 9,400 cities, every year to 2050.

2. Annual Survey of Industries

   India's Ministry of Statistics (MoSPI)

   Plant-level records of the workers, wages, output and costs of India's registered factories.

3. BEA regional accounts

   US Bureau of Economic Analysis

   Personal income, consumer spending by category and regional price parities for every US state.

4. Consumer Expenditure Survey

   US Bureau of Labor Statistics

   What American households spend, item by item, for each fifth of the income distribution.

5. Global Findex

   World Bank

   Survey data on how adults around the world save, borrow, pay and cope with an emergency expense.

6. Our World in Data: Tourism

   Our World in Data

   Charts and data on international tourism.

Data visualisation

1. Saloni's guide to data visualization

   Saloni Dattani · Scientific Discovery

   A guide to making charts that are clear and honest.

2. John Burn-Murdoch

   Financial Times

   The FT's data columnist and his charts.

3. Fundamentals of Data Visualization

   Claus O. Wilke · O'Reilly, 2019

   A free book on making charts that are clear and honest, organised by what you want to show.

Reading at the New York Public Library