Podcast appearances and mentions of charlie robertson

Charlie Robertson, president and CEO of American Cruise Lines (ACL), talks with James Shillinglaw of Insider Travel Report about his company's dramatic growth on America's rivers, lakes and coastal waterways. ACL has launched a series of innovative new ships that have helped it become the dominant player in domestic cruising—and Robertson says it will keep growing. For more information, visit www.americancruiselines.com. All our Insider Travel Report video interviews are available on our Youtube channel  (youtube.com/insidertravelreport), and as podcasts with the same title on Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Listen Notes, Podchaser, TuneIn + Alexa, Podbean, iHeartRadio, Google,Amazon Music/Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and iTunes Apple Podcasts, which supports Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro and Castbox.  

On women's semi-finals day at the US Open we hear from the two players who have reached the final at Flushing Meadows. Aryna Sabalenka overcame Emma Navarro and she will face Jessica Pegula in Saturday's final after she beat Karolina Muchova.Plus, Marion Bartoli and Feliciano Lopez give us an unbiased view on Jack Draper's last-four clash against Jannik Sinner and we hear from British juniors Charlie Robertson and Mimi Xu who have both kept up their progress in the boys and girls tournaments.

On May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter of the Oakland A's pitches a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins. Hunter's perfect game is the first in the American League during the regular season in 46 years, when White Sox right-hander Charlie Robertson, who accomplished the feat against Detroit in 1922.Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series.He strikes out 11, including Harmon Killebrew three times, and drives in three of the A's four runs, the other coming on a two-out, bases-loaded walk to 1B Danny Cater in the 8th inning. Only 6,298 fans are in attendance.1968 | Catfish Hunter | Danny Cater | Harmon Killebrew | May 8 | Minnesota Twins | Oakland A's

On May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter of the Oakland A's pitches a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins. Hunter's perfect game is the first in the American League during the regular season in 46 years, when White Sox right-hander Charlie Robertson, who accomplished the feat against Detroit in 1922.Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series.He strikes out 11, including Harmon Killebrew three times, and drives in three of the A's four runs, the other coming on a two-out, bases-loaded walk to 1B Danny Cater in the 8th inning. Only 6,298 fans are in attendance.1968 | Catfish Hunter | Danny Cater | Harmon Killebrew | May 8 | Minnesota Twins | Oakland A's

In this episode Brandon Caputo and Cam Halbett provide a post-game breakdown for Game 67 of the Niagara IceDogs season following a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Central Division rival Mississauga Steelheads at the Meridian Centre. Postgame with IceDogs Head Coach Ben Boudreau who provides his thoughts on the team leading up until the final 10 minutes of the game, in which their goaltender Charlie Robertson left injured while pitching a 43-save shutout..As well as our player interview with NHL Draft eligible forward Kevin He as he reflects on his second OHL season and putting a strong tape on display for NHL scouts to look at come June's Entry Draft in Vegas. The Dog Pound Podcast is brought to you by Global Pet Foods and their four great locations across the Niagara Region.*Audio goal highlights courtesy of YourTV - catch the IceDogs at home and on the road on YourTV Niagara, exclusively on Cogeco.

In this episode Brandon Caputo provides a post-game breakdown for Game 64 of the Niagara IceDogs season following a 3-0 shutout victory over the Central Division rival Barrie Colts on St. Patrick's Day at the Meridian Centre. Postgame with IceDogs Head Coach Ben Boudreau who provides his thoughts on snapping the 10-game losing streak and his team's bounceback performance in the defensive end as well as the strong play of his goaltender Charlie Robertson.As well as our player interview with goaltender Charlie Robertson following his 30-save shutout performance and building off his last few strong performances in the IceDogs net. The Dog Pound Podcast is brought to you by Global Pet Foods and their four great locations across the Niagara Region.*Audio goal highlights courtesy of YourTV - catch the IceDogs at home and on the road on YourTV Niagara, exclusively on Cogeco.

The North Bay Mitsubishi After Action Report starts live immediately following the final whistle of each Battalion home game.Kortney Kenney, Harrison Clements and Brad Brooks break down all the action and react to player and coaches comments fresh off the ice.The Battalion look to win their 5th straight game and a pair of players play against their formers team following a trade deadline deal. The Troops welcome back former goalie Charlie Robertson meanwhile Brandon Ride faces his former Icedogs team.

Hasnain Malik, Emerging and Frontier Markets Strategy at Tellimer, hosts this episode and sits down with Charlie Robertson, Head of Macro and Strategy at FIM Partners. Together, they discuss Charlie's book, The Time Travelling Economist (2022), which explores the key issues that countries in Africa and South Asia need to address in order to escape poverty. They take a look at how fertility, electricity, textiles, and more, impact development in any underdeveloped emerging or frontier market. For more emerging and frontier market content, make sure to follow The Emerging Markets Podcast by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tellimer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, the single point of entry to EM/FM research and data. Edited and produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Ella Ryan⁠⁠.⁠⁠ Artwork by Kristian Klamar. The Emerging Markets Podcast dives into a range of topics in the emerging and frontier market world including investment themes, debt restructuring, elections, and geopolitical tensions. This podcast is provided for information purposes and represents the personal opinions of the speakers. It is not an offer or solicitation for investment in any securities, nor should it be regarded as investment advice. Tellimer Limited does not offer or provide personal advice and no mention of a particular security in this podcast constitutes a recommendation to buy, sell or hold that or any security, portfolio of securities, or enter any transaction or investment strategy. Nor is any such mention an indication that any investment is suitable for any specific person.

Charlie Robertson and Harry Simmonds from Studio Elros join me on Tech Talks Daily. Studio Elros isn't just another venture studio; it's a hub where world-class inventors and forward-thinking organizations converge to co-create products and startups. Their mission? To foster positive change for people, the environment, and communities. This episode takes us on a journey from the West Midlands to Edinburgh and New Zealand, illustrating the power of curiosity and uncertainty in driving innovation. Charlie and Harry share the fascinating origin story of Studio Elros, including their serendipitous meeting while walking the length of New Zealand. This adventure marked the beginning of their partnership and laid the foundation for a venture studio driven by a passion for exploration and a commitment to making a meaningful impact. We delve into Studio Elros' unique partnership model, focusing on building relationships with organizations to create products that genuinely move the world forward. The duo discusses their approach to selecting projects, emphasizing their passion for initiatives that align with their core values. Harry brings insights from his experience at Apple, shedding light on how big tech influences smaller innovation hubs. We also explore the studio's sustainability and environmental focus with a fascinating dive into one of their projects on algae farming. This example underscores their commitment to sustainability and showcases how technology can be leveraged for environmental good. As educators in AI, ML, and product design, Charlie and Harry emphasize the importance of sustainable focus in these fields. They believe in nurturing a culture of open-minded thinkers and builders dedicated to designing products that solve problems and contribute positively to our world. This episode is a testament to the power of curiosity, serendipity, and openness to new ideas and opportunities. It intertwines life, technology, the universe, and everything in between, reminding us that a human story is at the heart of every technological advancement. Join us on this inspiring journey with Charlie Robertson and Harry Simmonds from Studio Elros and discover how technology, combined with human creativity and a vision for a better world, can lead to extraordinary outcomes.

Debtwire's Dan Anghelache speaks to Charlie Robertson, Head of Macro Strategy at FIM Partners, about the recent pressure on African sovereigns, especially in light of the slew of recent military coups in the region.Charlie considers the impact of elevated fertility rates in the region on sovereign default risk and whether this risk has been priced in by credit and equity markets. In particular, he examines whether there is a negative sentiment weighing on Eurobond-issuing West African sovereigns due to recent events.#EM #sovereign #debt #distressed

How can you tell if a developing country has a brighter future? Charlie Robertson, the author of ‘The Time-Travelling Economist' explains to Bradley why the most charismatic leaders in the world are doomed to fail if they can't get fertility, electricity consumption and literacy moving in the right direction.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City's only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today's episode: info@firewall.mediaSubscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter, follow Bradley on Twitter, and visit the Firewall website.

4-30-2023 Passed Ball Show. John opens up this program by explaining why Jacob deGrom continues to have arm ailments and will likely be injury prone for the remainder of his Major League Baseball career. John believes that Jacob throws too hard every single pitch for his forearm, shoulder, and elbow to be able to handle. John cites other pitchers who have learned to get hitters out by not throwing so hard- but that has been out of necessity. He then cites Justin Verlander, who keeps the velocity of his fastball down with some left in reserve. It is hard to point out a fair enough comp to what Jake is going through, but the bottom line is he should curtail the max effort on his fastball if he ever wants to make it through another full MLB season without a trip to the injured list. Next John talks about MLB doubleheaders and why he believes it is time to get rid of the split ones and why. He even explains why it is better for the players. John then expresses his shock over fourteen (14) NFL teams deciding to draft a quarterback. John cannot believe the decisions made to waste a pick because of position scarcity. Outside of Bryce Young and CJ Stroud, John believes most of the other selections were a waste of time, perhaps for the exception of Anthony Richardson and maybe Will Levis. During today's “Saving Sports History” segment of the show, John talks about Charlie Robertson, Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, Monica Seles, Charley Jones, and Isiah Thomas.

Charlie Robertson, chief global economist at frontier- and EM-focused Renaissance Capital, joins us to dig into the new Saudi story, whether emerging markets investors got a bit too excited early this year, how long we can expect the dollar to retain its primacy and when African nations will reach escape velocity.    Charlie also spills the beans on questions he's asking about his own portfolio. Should he go ex-China? Listen on to find out.

Don Smith is this week's guest. I won't say much about Don other than he is an inspiring example of how transformation can occur in one's life if you set your mind to it, take bold actions, and seek help and advice from experts.What we discuss Don explains his fluid view of who he is (4.00 - 6.00)I ask Don about what and who made him and his principles and ethics and references the OCEAN framework, Nietzsche, and the impact of being a father(7.50 - 13.10)Don explains the impact of his recently deceased Father and being a man of action(14.00 - 25.30)Don discusses the serendipitous impact of his Mother's tenacity, which opened up a work placement in an ad agency that set him on his career path. (26.30 - 30.00)Finding his Mentor and second father (32.00 - 30.00)Don reflects on serendipity his curious, rebellious non-conformist characteristics, (34.00 - 36.00)His natural talent - his empathy enables him to create ideas or products of value(36.00 - 37.30)What people compliment him for - conscientiousness, and hard work ethic (38.00 - 39.30)Don discusses his relationship with creative partner and artist Alex Paton 39.30- 40.25Don explains the emergence of his 1Haler Invention, developing the idea and realization of his limited executional knowledge (41.40 - 46.30)He then breakdown the impact and importance of asking experts and building a network support system and finding his commercial partner to bring his product to market (47.00 - 49.50)Don demonstrates how the 1nhaler works ( you can watch on YouTube (50.00 - 51.30)I ask Don about the importance of being unreasonable and not accepting the status quo (53.35 - 56.00)Don explains how his belief in the theory of emergence enables him to deal with success and failures (56.30 - 60.00)We discuss the role and impact of AI on the current education system and the importance of psychology and philosophy as skills for children to develop - referring to his son (1.01:17 - 1.02:00)The importance of discipline (1.02:00 - 1.04:30)The role of family (1.05:00 - 1.06:00)Speaking to the dead…and what we would have asked Alan Watts and Milton Glazer (1.06:30 - 1.07:30)The impact of Charlie Robertson (1.09:20 - 1.13:30)Don discusses KELP Systems (1.14.20 - 1.16.00)Don's hope that other creatives 1.17:45 - 1.19:55My challenge to Don 1.19.30Social Links KELP SystemsDon's SiteDon's TEDx Talk Interview With Don LinkedinLinks Epictetus Alex Paton Emergence Theory Ludwig von Bertalanffy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite the headwinds of inflation and interest rate rises, there's still been plenty of activity lately in the development and construction sector. Projects of all sizes are still underway, and increasingly they're being funded by non-bank lenders. Charlie Robertson, Executive Director of leading Australian investor and alternative asset manager Centuria Bass, talks to Sean Aylmer about the health of the sector and the role of private lenders.Find out more: https://fearandgreed.com.auSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to another episode of Ideas Untrapped. My guest today is Charlie Robertson, who is the chief economist of Renaissance Capital - a global investment bank - and in this episode we talked about the subject of Charlie's new book, "The Time-Travelling Economist''. The book explores the connection between education, electricity, and fertility to economic development. The thrust of the book's argument is that no poor country can escape poverty without education, and that electricity is an important factor for investors looking to build businesses. It also explains that a low fertility rate helps to increase household savings. Charlie argues, with a lot of data and historical parallels, that countries need at least a 70-80% adult literacy rate (defined as being able to read and write four sentences in any language) and cheap electricity (an average of 300 - 500 kWh per capita) in order to industrialize and grow their economies rapidly. Small(er) families (3 children per woman) mean households are able to save more money, which can improve domestic investments by lowering interest rates - otherwise countries may repeatedly stumble into debt crises. We also discussed how increasing education can lead to higher domestic wages, but that this is usually offset by a large increase in the working-age population - and other interesting implications of Charlie's argument.TRANSCRIPTTobi;The usual place I would start with is what inspired you to write it. You mentioned in the book that it was an IMF paper that sort of started your curiosity about the relationship between education, electricity, fertility, and economic development. Generally. So, what was the Eureka moment?Charlie;Yeah, the eureka moment actually came in Kenya, um, because I'd already done a lot of work showing how important education was. It's the most important, no country escapes poverty without education. So I'd already made that clear and there wasn't much debate about that. Perhaps there was a debate about why some countries have gone faster than others, but there wasn't much debate about that. The second thing I was very clear on was electricity, which kept on coming up in meetings across Sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, [at] a number of countries, people kept on talking about the importance of electricity. But the eureka moment came when somebody pointed out to me that Kenya, where I was at the time, couldn't afford to build huge excess capacity of electricity, which I was arguing you need to have. You need to have too much electricity, so that it's cheap and it's reliable.And then investors come in and say, "great! I've got cheap educated labour, and I've got cheap reliable electricity. I've got the human capital and the power I need, that then enables me to invest and build a business here." And the question then was, well, why was it so expensive in Kenya but so cheap in China? Why was the cost of borrowing so high in Nigeria but so cheap in Morocco or Mauritius? And when I was trying to work out where did the savings come from in China, uh, well I was looking globally, but China's the best example of economic success and development success we've seen in the last 50 years. Over half the answer came from this IMF paper saying, actually it came from their low fertility rate. That's over half of the rise in household savings, which are massive in China, came about because the fertility rate had fallen so dramatically.And I then thought, could this possibly be true for other countries as well? Could this help explain why interest rates are so high in Nigeria or Kenya and so low elsewhere? And the answer is yes. So this book, The Time Travelling Economist is bringing all of these three things together - the fertility rate, the education rate, and electricity - to say not just how countries develop, cause I think I've answered that, but when they develop. Because once we know those three factors are key, we can then work out the when. Not just in the past [of] countries, but also in the future. Um, so that's where this came from.Tobi;I mean, we're going to be talking about each of those factors over the course of this conversation, but another question...some would say boring question, but I know how development economists and economists generally always try to defend their turf, you know, around issues like these. So, has anybody like taking you to task on the causal link between these three factors and development? And how would you defend yourself against that were it to be asked?Charlie;I haven't found anyone yet who's argued successfully against these points. Um, the closest criticism I get, and just to say, you know, this book came about off the back of three key reports I did in 2017 on education, 2018 on electricity, and 2019 on fertility and savings. So I've now been talking about these ideas for three to five years. The book only came out in July, 2022, bringing them all together. But in five years I haven't had pushback other than people ask, "is it not correlated?" You know, "is it not perhaps economic growth leads fertility declines or boosts savings?" And I think I show really clearly in the data that "no." Um, the fertility declines give us the growth. You don't get growth without adult literacy of at least 40%, you certainly don't get industrialization until literacy is at 70 to 80.So, you know, I'm looking at the data and I think it's pretty crystal clear that you've gotta get these other things right first before your economy can take off. And I can't find any counter-examples. Except, I mean there's the inevitable few, those countries like Qatar or Kuwait with huge amounts of energy exports per capita or diamonds in Botswana's case. And there you don't have to get everything right before you get wealthier because you just happen to be lucky to have huge amounts of energy exports per person and a very small population. But they are a bit of an exception. I think you could probably argue that they do grow first before they get everything else right. But for the vast majority of the planet and all countries in history, it's the other way around. You gotta get education, power, fertility rates in the right place to take off.Tobi;So I mean, getting into the weeds, let's look at education first. Before your book, personally for me, and I should say what I really like about your book is, it's well written, it's an interesting read. It comes across as a bit less analytical, which is what you get from the standard development literature, you know, and I think that's partly because you are writing about a lot of the countries that you have also worked in and interacted with a lot of these factors. So it really gives it a first-hand experience kind of narrative. So I like that very much. So prior to your book, if someone were to ask me about the relationship between education and economic development or catch-up growth, generally, the reference usually goes to Studwell's big claim, Joe Studwell, that: Yeah. You don't really need a super high level of education metrics for a country to industrialize because the standard explanation is that how a relatively poor country starts industrializing is from the low-skill, uh, labour-intensive, low-skill manufacturing jobs, that you don't need a high level of education and skill for you to be able to do that.So what I wanna work out here is what is the transmission mechanism between adult literacy and industrialization the way you've, like, clearly analyzed in your book?Charlie;Well, thank you very much for saying it was nicely written, I appreciate that. I wanted to try and make it as accessible as possible. Yeah, I think Joe Studwell's books are really good and I think he's right that you don't need a high level of education to do that first step out of rural poverty, subsistence farming into a textile mill. I think what's interesting is how many people writing about development forget how important just adult literacy actually is, because we've taken [it] so much for granted. So Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of Nations, the father of economics back in the 18th century in Scotland, he didn't make a big deal about adult literacy driving growth. And more recently, you know, people like Dani Rodrik have echoed exactly that saying you don't need any great education to work in a textile mill. You just need to be dextrous with your fingers. Which is almost exactly actually what Adam Smith said 250 years ago. And I was sympathetic to that, but I then kept on seeing in the data, well, first of all, I found this theory written in the sixties that said that no country has industrialized even to that first basic level of textiles without adult literacy being about 70 to 80% of the population. Which means basically all adults, all men, plus well over half the female population as well. And this was the theory written in the sixties and when I looked at the data, it was proven right and I couldn't quite understand why - if you just need dextrous fingers to work in a textile mill, why would there be that link? And I ended up talking to a guy who ran Levi's factories in Asia in the 1980s and he said, “Charlie, just think about it.”You've got this box of Levi's jeans coming down the conveyor belt. Do you put that box onto the truck labelled United States or that truck labelled Europe for export? And if you can't read and write, you won't even get that right. So the adult literacy thing I think is overlooked. People are focusing on secondary school, high school education, how much [many] university graduates a country needs and they do need graduates too. But until you get to that 70 to 80% adult literacy, textile mills don't go to a country. And we can see that they did go to China in the nineties when they got to adult literacy of 70%. They are in Southeast Asia. They're in Bangladesh since education hit about 70 to 80% in the last 10 to 15 years. But they're not big in sub-Saharan Africa, or at least in parts of Nigeria or the Sahel or West Africa because the education levels still aren't there yet. So, you know, I looked as far back as I could go to the 19th century and even the first non-European country to take off, Japan, had an adult literacy rate of about 70% by 1900 and 20 years later, they had a thriving textile industry. The education always comes first. And Korea copied that Japan model in the 1950s and sixties, Taiwan, Hong Kong, all the rest [of] Southeast Asia's followed. Now, South Asia's doing it and luckily it's spreading across Africa too. But the adult literacy is the first essential step.Tobi;One possible objection. And I haven't seen this anywhere, but I couldn't really get it out of my mind while I was reading that part of the book is that some will argue that increasing education also increases domestic wages and that is really a problem for industrializing. And, if I recall, one particular point that the anonymous economic historian on Twitter, Pseudoerasmus, made particularly about Asia, is they were able to combine a very high adult literacy rate - a measure which you use is completion of secondary education…Charlie;Yeah.Tobi;With very unusually low domestic wages. What role do wages play in your analysis?Charlie;I think that's the norm actually. It connects to the fertility thing. And I'm not sure if you want to jump there just yet, but what tends to happen when you've educated your population is that the fertility rate drops a lot. And when that happens, the number of people who have to stay at home looking after 5, 6, 7 children goes down a lot too. Women can go into the workforce and of course cause you've got the education, right? Those women are educated so they can join the industrial workforce as well. So very roughly, if we say there's a hundred people in Nigeria, 50 kids and 50 adults, let's say 25 of the adults have to be staying at home to look after 50 kids, you're talking 25% of the population can go out and work of the overall population. You go to Asia today and it's more like 70% adults, say 30% of kids.So you need maybe 15% of adults to stay at home. And you end up with something like 85% of the whole population can go out to work instead of 25%. Now, the consequence of that is a massive rise in the working-age population. And I think that that keeps industrial wages low for a few generations, in fact. Or at least three decades. Probably 40 years, where the education's come through, the fertility rates come down, you've got this huge excess supply of labour, which is then joining the industrial workforce and getting jobs. But because there keeps on being more people joining that workforce, it keeps wages relatively low. Now, what eventually happens then after a few decades is that that big increase in the workforce stops increasing as fast. We've seen this in China in the last 20 years. So, 20 years ago China's per capita GDP was about fifteen hundred dollars, $1,500.Whereas now, now the population has stopped growing. Working age population's shrinking. It's gone up to over $11,500. It's gone up tenfold. So the big reward for industrialization comes later. And we had this in Europe of course in the 19th century, you know, wages were pretty awful and industrial working was pretty awful experience in the 19th century. I mean it paid slightly better than rural subsistence farming, which is why people came to the cities. But London was a horrible place for the vast majority of people. And the industrial workhouses were terrible places as well. And that lasted for generations. It's only when that big population, kind of, boom stories started to shift that labour eventually got any bargaining power. Cause when there was too much labour coming into the market, they had no bargaining power with the factory owners. It wasn't until the 1870s that the trade unions became legal in, say, the United States. Because up till then, you know, "you join a union, I fire you," you know, could be what the factory owner would say in the United States, cause there's always gonna be another person I can employ. But once the workforce starts to gain a bit of bargaining power, cause it's not expanding quite so fast, then finally wages start to pick up. So I think what's happened in Asia is pretty normal and will probably be the experience that we've seen across Africa as well.Tobi;Inevitably this will take us into what it means to be educated, really. Because a lot of countries, I mean it's pretty much standard - they say, Oh yeah, we want invest in education. Um, we know it is important for human capital. We know how important it is to have an educated population and all that. You talked about some data challenges also for some countries in your book. So what I wanna ask here is what exactly does it mean to be educated in the sense that you are talking about in the book?Charlie;Yeah, this is a really fair question. Why am I talking about adult literacy? The definition is can you read and write four sentences in any language? Sentences like "farming is hard work." So it's not a very high threshold and I wouldn't argue, I don't think you would, that it's highly educated. It's just educated enough to put that box of jeans onto the right truck when it's going to America or Europe. But all that's doing then is taking your country's per capita GDP from your per person kind of wealth from say $500 a year, a thousand dollars a year to the kind of two, $3,000 a year level. It doesn't mean you've got the education levels you need to get to the $10,000 per capita GDP level growth or 20 or 50 or even a hundred. Um, to get to the 10,000 level, I think you probably need very good secondary school education as well.And to get to the $20,000 per capital GDP level, you're talking a lot of graduates coming out of university and you need to have that education then spreading throughout the population, both broadening and deeper education as well. And that is a process that takes decades. I mean I focused quite a bit on Korea because it was one of the most successful models and then China came along and did it even faster. But what Korea prioritized in the 1950s was getting that adult literacy rate from 35% or so, too low even to grow sustainably, to about 90% they said by 1960. So in about 10 or 15 years they got it from 35 to 90 and that was enough then to have textile mills do really well in the 1960s and they became a manufacturing country, an industrialized country by the early 1970s.But already then the government said, right, we need more engineers, we need graduates coming out of university to do heavy industry, to do cars, shipbuilding. But Korea had no cars or shipbuilding at the time, nothing significant. So they were changing the university focus from, kind of, the arts or law towards engineering and the sciences before they had the economic sectors that they were trying to promote. And then about 10 to 20 years later, all these graduates were then in the economy and ready to start up companies like Deawoo, Hyundai, Kia, Samsung. And they started small obviously in the 1980s and early nineties. But this kind of sequential thinking about it meant that Korea kept on having the right human capital at every stage of development. So my book's trying to focus on, you know, why hasn't Pakistan got all the textile factories?Why does Bangladesh have them? Why doesn't Nigeria have them? Why does Vietnam have them? And this is saying first you've gotta get that sequencing right of everybody ideally being literate, everybody having had school up to 11 years old and come out with a good standard of education. On the quality issue you just raised, the problem here is a couple of things. So I mean firstly people sometimes just make up the data and say, yes, my population is literate when it's not. But secondly, when you try and kind of shoehorn a hundred kids into one class to say, you know, they're all going to school now, but you've only got one teacher, you are not coming out with a good education at all. You might not even be coming out literate at all. So that, you know, I'm also trying to warn that governments can't do this on the cheap. Or not completely. They have to take it seriously and say, look, we actually need to make sure everyone really is coming out able to read and write. It's not just trying to tick a box to say everyone's at school.Tobi;Hopefully, we'll circle back to policy questions around this later. Let's talk briefly about electricity, which as you say, once you start investigating these factors, then you start teasing out what's what for each country. And the way you introduce that is [that] there are some countries with very high adult literacy rates but still weren't getting the benefits - like [the] Philippines, which was your example in the book. And it turns out what was missing in that particular case was electricity generation. But first I want you to make one distinction for me quite quickly. Cause it's funny, I was reading David Pilling's brief coverage of your book in the FT and he talked about the fertility part being controversial and I wonder that people miss the obvious controversy in electricity, but we'll get to that. So, now, is it really about investment in electricity that is often missing in countries that can't quite manage to get it right or the way their electricity market is structured? I know you are quite familiar with Nigeria and it's really a big, big, big debate that we've been having for, I don't know, like 20 years. So, some people will say you need very large upfront investment, possibly by the government, in generating capacity transmission, machinery and co. We argue, oh no, you really need to restructure the electricity market first. People have to pay for what they use. You need to restructure the tariff system, blah blah blah, blah, blah. What are your thoughts?Charlie;Um, big issues. And there is a debate. There're so many debates about this actually. There's the debate about whether you need a big national grid, big national generation and distribution companies or whether you can have localized electricity. Um, you are getting a couple of points though that I think it's easier to say some answers to. And one of them was to do with getting people to actually pay their bills. Certainly a problem in Nigeria, apparently, you know, discos will say that because there hasn't been good metering and despite privatization that those meters have not been rolled out. I know the government's promising to roll it out to all 10 million account holders now, but because there hasn't been metering, you can't charge necessarily the fair price for the amount of electricity people have used. So then people don't wanna pay. So then the discos are losing money, then they can't pay the generators and this then becomes a problem.And I think there is a case to say that if the generators can sell some power directly to some big companies, that could be one way around part of the problem. So in a place like Lagos, very similar to the Philippines in the 20th century, good educated population just held back by a lack of cheap reliable power. You know, I think if Lagos could have its own electricity story, it would be a phenomenally successful economy. It should be over the next three or four decades. So there is a case about how you structure this. But I found two or three things interesting when I was looking into this issue in 2018. And the first was just clarifying that it really is electricity that people need more than say transport infrastructure. You know, this is a survey the world bank had done and the only countries where they've said transport infrastructure was the bigger problem was countries where there wasn't an electricity problem because there's so much of it.So countries, where there's a load of electricity, say yes we need more transport infrastructure, but everybody else says we have to have the electricity first. So then it's a question of how do you roll that out in a way that makes money and supports development? And there is a... I think, a problem at the moment with well-meaning policies from people like the United Nations or the African Development Bank saying everybody should have access to electricity. But my point in the book is, and Adam Smith said the same thing in the 18th century, you want your infrastructure to be making money not losing money. You need to make sure that if you're going to supply people with a road or a bridge or electricity, that they can pay for it. And if you start building stuff that loses you money because people can't pay their bills, then you'll end up with an uneconomic electricity system which can't function properly and can't give industry what it needs.And what I try to emphasize in this is that every country from America and France in the 1920s to Turkey in the 1960s or seventies to Korea in the 1970s, every country has said, okay, let's make sure we've got electricity for industry first. Profitable, makes money, and then households over time? Yeah, okay, we'll connect them over time, but only when they can start affording to pay for electricity. It's not another subsidy that governments can't afford, we just can't do that. [This] is what every other country's done. But at the moment I do see this pressure for electricity systems to try and roll out universal access and so, in places like Kenya that's putting the whole electricity system under financial pressure because it's hurting their profits. And if you're trying to roll out cheap electricity to households, well how do you pay for that?Well, government subsidies partly, but the other way to pay for it is to make industry pay a high price. But if you're making industry pay a high price industry won't come. They'll go to Asia; where they get a low price for electricity. They're not going to go to somewhere that's got a high price. Cause no company's gonna say, I just wanna subsidize households getting electricity. Companies are coming to build stuff in countries because they'll make a good profit from doing so. So I think you've raised a number of issues there, you know, is localized electricity good, and so on? You know, what should you be prioritizing first - industry or households? And there's a whole host of issues. But I hope I've answered that.Tobi;Actually, that's the controversy I was referring to at the beginning of that question because the background that is, it'll be a very, very tough sell in the current political climate, for example in Nigeria, for any person aspiring to public office to make this argument that you have to power industry first. What it's going to sound like is: you are just trying to prioritize the rich and trying to exclude some people from what, like you said, has come to be framed as a universal basic right. You talk to a lot of small businesses, even individuals, like you mentioned with the World Bank Survey, the importance of electricity is so paramount on everybody's mind that if there's stable electricity, I can start X and Y businesses. I could make money and, I mean, no one needs the government for anything else. Just give us electricity.Charlie;Yeah.Tobi;So my point is practically… thinking about this practically, how do you think a sensible government that is not trying to bankrupt itself prematurely can manage this situation?Charlie;Well, I think it's hard work. Um, how did the Koreans do it in the sixties or the seventies or the eighties? They gave you no right to protest - military government. How did the communists do so well at getting this industry first, households later? How did they get it right in China or Russia? Same thing. You've got no rights to protest. "Your interests don't matter, we're thinking 10 to 20 years ahead how to make our country better off and how to make everyone better off. So you suffer now because we are gonna prioritize business." So that is one model. I'm not recommending it, I'm just saying it is a model that can be done. The other way is to allow it to be done by the private sector. And if you let the private sector roll out electricity, they will not supply electricity to people who won't pay their bills.And that is the story that you saw in western Europe, it's the story you saw in the States, and to some extent you're seeing actually in Kenya. There's quite an interesting company there called M-KOPA. And M-KOPA will sell you, well, they'll lend you, they'll lease you, a solar panel, a little one that you can put on your - actually, a friend of mine was showing it to me the other day in Uganda...they put it on the straw roof of the mud hut and that solar panel, you pay a monthly fee and after about 18 months you've paid for the panel, you've also got energy during that time enough to supply a mobile phone and so on, lights a little bit, and then it's yours and that's effectively privatizing that rural distribution story. But I think the difficulty is that politicians find it really hard to do this.And part of what I'm writing about in the book is how really hard it is for governments in a country with no savings, big population growth, to constantly meet all of the different demands. With huge population growth you're having to build new schools all the time, you have to hire even more teachers all the time. You've got population pressure, maybe, causing clashes over agricultural land like the Fulani herdsman in Central Nigeria, Northern Nigeria as well. And all of these pressures are on you all of the time. And there's constant demand to spend more on bridges, on hospitals, on education, on security. And what you can't afford to be doing is making a loss. And so I think what politicians need to do is say, we've gotta sequence this right. The same thing as with education. It's no good having a million university graduates if a country isn't literate enough to have an industrial base, you've gotta have the literacy first.And equally, it's no good having electricity rolled out to every household when there are no factories for people to go and get the jobs they need to be able to pay the electricity bill. And it's not easy. I, I totally understand it's not an easy situation for anyone to be in. The difficulty is [that] because it's not easy, too many political leaders will take what appears to be the easy option of saying, "I tell you what, let's just go and borrow a load of dollars offshore. Nigeria's going to go and issue a lot of dollar debt and we'll use that to try and sort these problems out." Kenya's done the same, Ghana's done the same, Pakistan's done the same. And the risk then is that you end up in default situations. So that feeds into one of the other chapters in the book as well.But I think it's very difficult. I think realistically governments need to say, what can we do here? And this is how long it's going to take. And it's going to be not a five-year story, it's going be a 20-year story, a 30-year story to get it right. And people, sadly, need to be patient, which is hard; when for generations people have been waiting for things to get much, much better and little progress has been made, relatively little progress has been made compared to Asia and that causes a lot of political frustration. I think.Tobi;I mean, speaking about Asia and I mean your point about taking away the right to protest, I think Africa and Nigeria sort of missed that window when we had military governments everywhere. So, uh, let me give you one experience I've had in trying to discuss your book with friends. So I get two reactions to the fertility section.It's almost automatic, you know, when you discuss fertility being at a certain level and I try to, you know, successfully argue your point, you get two strands of reactions in my experience, one goes immediately to the China issue - the one-child policy; that, "oh, so are you trying to say we should do what China did?" The other slightly more technical objection I get goes to the relationship between population growth and economic growth that is quite pervasive in the growth literature. Did you also experience that while writing the book and debating with colleagues?Charlie;Now I'll take each point in turn. Um, the China one-child policy story helps explain this massive rise in Chinese savings and then their very strong growth. What I'm trying to show in the book, of course, is that every rich country has seen a fertility decline. And what I'm arguing is probably the right sort of level for countries to aim for is about two to three kids on average. I don't care if people have five kids or one kid, it's just as a country the average of two to three kids is consistent with a very high, well, a big jump in the level of sayings. And with those savings, you can then industrialize and grow, and grow fast. Um, China I think actually made a mistake. I think China got it wrong by going for the one-child policy because they kind of turbocharged that story, that story that every rich country has got, of lower fertility, it took a really long time in Europe. I mean it took a really, really long time in Europe and that's why Europe had the slowest growth of any industrial revolution. It was done faster by the communism [they had] in Russia and they did faster growth and we've done even faster in China. But the consequence of this one-child policy and what the Chinese have discovered is it's bloody hard to get the fertility rate back up again once you've had one kid. I was talking to a Chinese professor on a plane back from Asia once and she was saying all of her friends, they can't get married, they can't stay married. They get married and they can't stay married because they're all used to being a one-child kind of princess or prince in the family who gets everything they want and then they try married life and they discover as you might well know, that you never get everything you want in a marriage, and you have to compromise.And it's certainly created a problem now that China can't get the kids, they can't raise the fertility level and it's not just China that's discovered that once you've got a low fertility rate, too low, I think of one, you have a problem raising it. Again, Italy's had the same problem, Iran, uh, Russia. So I think China did it too fast. And you certainly don't need to do it and loads of other countries show you that just aiming for that two to three kids figure really helps your economy and gets you onto the path to being middle-income and then a rich country. So I don't think you need to do the China one child. No. Um, the second issue, the population growth versus economic growth. What I show, what we did in this was we looked back at every country's growth rate since 1960 and I compared the per capita GDP growth, the per personal growth of an economy, it's the best way to measure how well an economy itself is really doing. And I compared that growth rate against the share of adults to kids that I was talking to you about a little earlier.Tobi;Yeah.Charlie;And where it's 50-50 roughly, between adults and kids, per capita GDP grows at 1% and that was the story of Asia in the sixties and seventies. It's still the story for a good number of countries including Nigeria today. So per capita GDP growth is about 1% when half your population can't work because they're kids. But once you get two-thirds of the population being adults, your average per capita growth in lower-income countries by half of America's wealth level, so not even lower-income, lower or middle-income countries, your per capita growth, and it averages three to 5% a year. So the structure of your population tells you what your per capita GDP growth is. So it's just... I can't see that there's any other way to explain this than you've gotta get that fertility rate down first before you can start to get the high per capita GDP growth. Um, and it's connected to the savings, of course; cause once you've got two kids instead of six, you're saving money in the bank, the bank starts to have more cash to lend out. There's more money for lending for investment. The government can borrow more cheaply so it can build infrastructure, roads and rail, electricity and cheap electricity cause interest rates are low cause the savings are high because most families are able to put some money aside at the end of the week. But that doesn't happen when 50% of the population are kids. They're not earning any money, they're not saving anything and the poor parents are trying to manage to feed five, six kids on average. You know, they've got nothing left at the end of the week to put into a bank.So the bank's got no cash. So interest rates are really high cause there's no money in the bank. Um, so money's really expensive. So the government can't afford to invest in infrastructure and if it does build electricity it has to charge a lot of money cause it's having to pay a lot of interest on the debt it's taken on. So to me, I've yet to find someone demolish the argument and uh, you know, it could happen.Tobi;Yeah.Charlie;But so far it seems you've got to get the fertility rate down first if you want to get fast growth. Now if you don't want to grow at three, four, 5% a year, you could do it really slowly like Europe did and you grow at say, one and a half, two, eventually, you get from European farming in 1800 to factories that are producing not great stuff by 1900, a hundred years later. But when I'm looking at Nigeria today, I don't want Nigeria to be waiting a hundred years to be doing what Europe took a hundred years to do. I also don't think the Chinese model of it taking 30 years, 20, 30 years but then having a population problem of being too old, I don't think that's the right solution either. But there's somewhere in between. At the moment though, Nigeria's on that long growth story, it's not yet ready for the faster growth storyTobi;On the China question, um, thinking about your answer there, is extremely low fertility or what they say "fertility below the replacement rate" a feature of the kind of explosive growth 30, 35, 40-year trajectory that we've seen in Asia. Because if you look at Korea, Korea even have worse demographic numbers than China and there was no draconian population policy, but it's kind of gone through this explosive growth phase that is even faster and bigger than China's.Charlie;Well, it's been going on for longer. So what the Koreans got right was they raised their adult literacy rate to, you know, they said about 90% by 1960. China, despite being communist and communists tend to say they really appreciate education, didn't get to over 70% literacy until 1990, sometime in the early 1990s, which is 25, 35 years later than Korea. Uh, so Korea was already booming in 1970 at a time when China was having the catastrophic mistakes of the cultural revolution and really bad growth and people feared mass famine. Well many, many did die in China in the sixties. So what I would argue is that Korea had a slower fertility decline and the growth rates were not as fast as China's but they've been growing for 50, 60 years already. So Korea's two to three times richer than China is today. But as you say, they're so ageing that they're gonna be the oldest country in the world by 2030.And what's gonna get interesting then, and I can't really answer this in the book cause we haven't seen it yet, but what's interesting about Korea and we're going to have to watch it carefully, is that you are going to end up with, not 70% adults and 30% kids, it'll be less and less working-age adults, maybe 60%, I dunno maybe eventually 50% and it'll be 50% kids and old age pensioners who can't work. And my guess is that Korean growth is going to slow back to about the 1% per capita growth that Nigeria's got at the moment because Korea's going to be too old. You know, and that's not something that I think people should be thinking about or worrying about. [People should be thinking about] Pakistan, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa at the moment. It's [Korea is] just not a...you know, that's a problem to worry about in 50, 60 years. But it is going to be interesting to watch what does happen to growth in really old countries. Um, can pensioners actually still do work? You know, maybe they end up retiring at 70 or 75 or 80, I dunno. It's gonna be quite interesting to see.Tobi;So I mean the question then is, uh, for countries that have fertility rates that are higher than what you described in the book.Charlie;Yeah.Tobi;It then becomes how do we get it to the point where domestic savings start going up, interest rate for the domestic investment environment then benefits from that virtuous cycle. You talked about access to uh, reproductive interventions like contraception, also education, which takes us to where we started this conversation from, especially the education of women and girls, generally. I was taking a look at David Le Bris recently where he was talking about equality between siblings and inequality between siblings and how it affects the overall capital formation, whether it's physical capital or human capital in the society. So my question then is, do you see individual sort of personalized household decision-making affecting this more or it is sort of a national policy thing?Charlie;When it's something as important as family, you know, the individual decisions matter a huge amount. And as I said earlier, I've got no issues with anyone doing what they choose to do. But that big family story, I was just talking to a former minister, actually, of a... former finance minister of a country and he's got five kids, he's saying that he's been able to help fund them go to university, but he can't afford to help them buy a house cause he just hasn't got the cash. And I thought that was a really interesting example of even in a wealthier country, you know, it still matters how big that family is. You know, when I looked into this on how do you get the fertility rate down and there's been quite a lot written about it. I don't have a magic or a single answer, but the theories are first: girls if they're staying at school until they're 18, versus girls who leave school at 13. If you leave school at 13, perhaps you have your first kid at 14, maybe a second kid at 17, third kid at 20. But if you stay at school until you're 18, perhaps the first kid's at 20. So already you've reduced the fertility rate by two just by keeping girls at school. And the key figure, but just kind of remind, well tell people is the key figure is at about three to four kids per woman on average, the banking system has got deposits cash in it of about 35% of GDP, at four to five kids, it's around 30, 25 to 30. At five to six kids, which is where Nigeria is, it's about 20% of GDP. Um, so 20, 30, you know, these sort of levels. If you get to two to three kids though, if you get it below three kids, it more than doubles to about 60% of GDP.That's when banks suddenly have loads of cash. When banks have got loads of cash, there's loads of lending, suddenly access to finance isn't a problem anymore. So how do you get it below three kids? So you educate girls, there's an incentive when women are educated for them to work cause they can start to make decent money in a textile factory that you can't do unless you've got that literacy. Um, the government just telling people that low fertility is a good thing is shown to have some success. From Indonesia to India, these kinds of government campaigns suggesting lower fertility rates have made a difference. The third thing, which really surprised me cause it's such a strong correlation, is [to] stop kids [from] dying. And I was pretty upset, actually, to see the numbers where, for Nigeria, you've got a 10% chance, just over a 10% chance of dying before the age of five because you're born in Nigeria. And when I was comparing that to Covid - which the world spent, what, trillions trying to fight - with a fatality rate of about one or 2%, you think of those with more than a 10% chance of dying just before the age of five in Nigeria. Anyway, it's kind of shockingly high, but when you have such a high chance of losing a child, you tend to have more children and the correlation is really quite strong. So, if you can try and address infant, [and] young child mortality rates, which doesn't cost that much, you can see countries with Nigeria's wealth level that have a mortality rate of not over 10%, but five or even 3%. And usually, countries with such a low mortality rate then have a much lower fertility rate as well. So, people tend to have less kids when they are more confident that all their kids are going to survive childhood. So, some investment in basic healthcare for children, education of girls, contraception availability, yes it does help, and government information campaigns. You put those things together and then you get a country like Bangladesh. Bangladesh which had the same population as Nigeria about 15 years ago. But today Nigeria's got tens of millions more. But Bangladesh is growing as fast as India. Bangladesh's per capita GDP is over $2,000. And it keeps on growing at six, seven, 8% every year. Because they have on average two kids per woman, they've got savings, they don't have much foreign debt because they don't need to borrow dollars from abroad to fund their growth, because they've got their own savings, because the fertility rate is low. Muslim Bangladesh: tremendous success story over the last two or three decades.Tobi;You sort of made allowances for countries that can't quite get their savings right up to the levels where they can get the desired domestic savings and really positively affect their investment environment in a big way. And you talked about debt in the book, which would be familiar to anybody that's been in the new cycle about Nigeria currently, which is that government revenue has collapsed. Debt servicing is rapidly approaching a hundred percent of what the government can collect. And it's only a matter of time before we are talking about a debt crisis. But, like you said, a debt crisis is, like, unavoidable if you're trying to grow and you don't have to requisite domestic savings to sort of mitigate that. But this inevitably brings in the question of debt restructuring which, again, some would also argue does not help you grow. So, in terms of just the sheer macroeconomics management of this, how do you go about it?Charlie;It's tough. The book's arguing, obviously, that a whole chunk of this stuff is really long term. You got to get the education right. So, you've got to have enough teachers and that takes, well, at best Korea did it in 15, 20 years. But even if you've got the education, then you've got to get the fertility rate down. And that takes at best 10 years to get it down by about two kids per woman. Nigeria's at 5.3 kids or so at the moment. It needs to be below three to have the local savings. So, we're talking at least 15 years, even if every priority was made today to try and improve education, do all this reproductive education and so on. So, the governments then have the choice of what do you do? I mean, if you're going to wait 15 years, you can grow at 1% a year per person. But you'll find the population is getting pretty cross because you've got all these other countries in the world growing at three, four, 5% per person every year. You know, why is my country growing at one [percent]? So, the politicians then...[it] becomes so attractive to go out and borrow and, you know, every country, not every single one, but the vast majority of debt defaults in the second half of the 20th century were in high fertility countries. The fertility rate I think was around, on average, five - five kids per woman was the average fertility rate in countries that defaulted in the second half of the 20th century. Wherever they were in the world. A lot of them were in Latin America in the debt crisis of 1980s. So firstly, debt crises are really common in high fertility countries because governments say I want to speed up my growth and they borrow when the markets let them.And we've certainly seen that in Africa in the last 10 years too. And then they borrow too much and then they go into default and then they can lose maybe a decade. And that is what happened in Latin America in the 1980s. But the alternative is to only grow at 1% a year. And yeah, you can avoid debt default. I'm not saying every high fertility country defaults. I'm saying almost all the countries that have defaulted are high fertility. So, you can settle for the low growth but if you don't want to settle for the low growth, the debt becomes a very attractive way to try and get faster growth. But it causes a problem. I end up finding roughly two other ways that you can try.Tobi;Okay.Charlie;And grow faster. Is it okay to jump on to those?Tobi;Yeah, go ahead please.Charlie;Yeah. First is to try and bring in as much foreign investment as you can. Cause you haven't got enough local savings, you don't want to take on too much debt cause eventually you'll default. So, you can try and make yourself very attractive for foreign investors. Foreign direct investors. The only problem with that model is that those foreign direct investors do also want their cheap electricity and the good infrastructure that unfortunately high fertility countries haven't got the money to pay for. So, it's difficult to get in a lot of foreign direct investment. Foreign direct investment in China, I was just reading a really good book by David Lubin, who's the chief economist of Citi for Emerging Markets and he did a book called Dance of the Trillions. Highly recommend, it's brilliant on emerging markets. And he says FDI suddenly started in China in the 1990s. Now, I know why. My book is explaining why I think, which is you finally had a literate population, 70% literacy and you also had the low fertility rate. So, you had the high savings, you had the good infrastructure. But the FDI didn't come 10 years before into China. It only really picked up in the 1990s. So, the point of then is, I mean yeah, try and get some [FDI] if you can, but the last option that I can see other than to just, perhaps, try to go full Stalinist, kind of communist, take control of every part of the economy. But even that still education and low fertility really helps... Um, the last option which any country can do is to run a current account surplus, I think. Have a currency level that's so cheap that you are running a trade surplus. A current account surplus, which is obviously trade plus services and remittances and so on.If you've got a surplus on that current account, you are bringing dollars into the economy and those dollars help reduce interest rates. And Nigeria saw that actually in 2005, six, seven and eight when the oil price was booming. Nigeria had that flood of dollars coming into the economy. Interest rates were really low below inflation and investment was relatively cheap and easy to finance. Now it's a problem to manage when it's a commodity-driven boom because commodities then bust. So, all that flood of money that came in suddenly disappeared again, you know, once the oil price collapsed there wasn't that current account surplus anymore. But if you run a cheap currency policy to make sure you always run a current account surplus, then that helps give you that supply of savings that you can then use to start investing. So that seems to me one of the few ways that a low-income country that's got not enough local savings, doesn't want to wait forever until its fertility rate's down [and] low enough to build the domestic savings, this is one way that looks sustainable that can bring in some foreign cash to help support growth.Tobi;But one minor aside on FDI and you can really correct me here if I'm wrong, wouldn't that really be a bit unstable? Because if you have loads of FDI, if other indicators are really working in your favour and at the slightest hint of a crisis, all that money then flows out.Charlie;Yeah. Well, I'll just differentiate between foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment. And, again, David Lubin's book is very good on this because the Washington consensus, which is this set of policies that were drawn up by policy makers around 1989, 1990, it said countries should welcome foreign direct investment. Building factories that it's pretty hard to move out of the country, that that should be welcomed. But when the original guys who drew up the Washington Consensus wrote down the kind of 10 principles, they weren't that keen on foreign portfolio investment. This is the hot money that will include a lot of my investors who will come in and buy shares in companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange and might come in and buy bonds. And I think it's fair to say that that money can leave in times of trouble and doesn't really support...isn't necessarily as supportive [of growth] and that money we count on the capital account because it is foreign capital.What I was talking about on the current account surplus was obviously the trade surplus, the remittances, the services and so on. So, I think it's more debatable. I think a number of countries have restricted foreign portfolio flows into equity market or the bond market. And if they've got other things going for them, like a low fertility rate, they can kind of get away with that. Um, what I'm highlighting is that for some countries they just don't have that choice. And when America was short of capital in the 19th century, it was British capital that went over and built their railways, that bought all the shares in their infrastructure companies. The Brits owned America for much of the 19th century and then the French actually owned most of Russia. Uh, the railways and the ports and some of the industry, the coal mines [were] very significantly owned by French investors, portfolio funds, and portfolio guys are there to make money as well. You know, they're there to make profit and if you're making good profit, five, 10% a year or whatever sitting in Nigerian equity market, people will stay, and it won't leave. They'll be happy to stay there for many, many years as people are and have been doing in India, actually, since India's education fertility and electricity numbers have all come together in the last 10 years in a really good way. Foreign portfolio guys are saying, "Hey, we wanna put our money into the Indian stock market too." And Indian shares are pretty expensive right now because of that. But the money doesn't want to leave. It'll leave when policy mistakes are made but fundamentally doesn't want to leave. However, I don't deny that there is a reasonable argument you can make to say we're going to choose foreign direct investment, we're going to be more restrictive on foreign portfolio investment. Because that can be more volatile. It can leave quicker. And I wouldn't argue with that. Well, I mean we could debate it, but I think it's harder to prove that you must have foreign portfolio investments to thrive. I think the current account surplus is a better policy choice because it's in your control. Foreign portfolio investors and what they do, that's not in your control.Tobi;One question that stayed with me throughout your book, which is a bit silent in the book itself, maybe it's implied, you can tell me, is that it's really difficult to find a country at any particular point where all these three factors align at the same time. Where you have the requisite adult literacy rate, electricity and fertility, they rarely align at the same point in time in the history of any one country. Because your book did not really distinguish between any particular political preference or institutional arrangements, which I like that, but what institutional arrangement favours the consistency for all these factors to sort of come together, uh, in the economic history basically of a country. Because we know that political leaders tend to favour what benefits their ambition at any particular point in time, you know? And a lot of these things are investments that do pay off in the long run, you know? Like we talked about on savings, a lot of political leaders would want to borrow a lot of money and then leave the debt crisis to the next administration.Charlie;Yeah. Yeah. Happens a lot.Tobi;Yeah. You know, and so many other things, whether you are investing in electricity or education or whatever, they don't really want to do the hard work. They want to do the easy stuff and just leave it to the next guy.So, what institutional arrangements have you found in your observation and study of this that favours the patient consistent build-up to the alignment of these three factors?Charlie;I think it's really, um, it's kind of interesting actually because in each chapter I try and say which countries are at the right place for industrialization, education, which countries are at the right place for electricity, and which countries are at the right place for fertility. Perhaps I didn't properly bring that together in one chapter at the end to say, "so, who's the fast growth story?" But right now, the countries that have brought them together are Vietnam, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and I think those five countries, Morocco actually six, um, those six countries should be the countries that will show the really good growth for the next 30 to 40 years. Um it's going to be great. And I'm then trying to highlight who's closest to joining them on a 10 year view. Um, Pakistan and Egypt both got big debt problems right now, but five to 10 years they could be joining that group as well and Ghana and actually Kenya and I would argue southern Nigeria could be, could be there in the 2030s.Um, so I am trying to say when they come together. The question you are asking, though, about institutions or perhaps leadership and so on, I think is a really important one because I guess this book in lots of ways is an argument against Why Nations Fail, which was a really interesting book; and [it] said it is all about institutions and the right institutions and that's why if you walk a kilometre across the US border into Mexico, things are run so very differently. It's got to be the institutions, that book argues, that makes the difference between a country succeeding or not. And what I'm arguing is that I don't think that's true. I think you appear to have the good institutions when everything else is running well and you appear to have the terrible institutions when you don't have the education or you don't have the electricity or you don't have the low fertility or worst of all, you haven't got any of them.So, a country that hasn't got any of them, like Niger, Chad, Somalia, you know, these are countries in a terrible place. But I'm saying that they can't have good institutions cause there's no money in the economy, there are not enough educated people in the economy. There's just no way that you're going to get a good setup in those countries. And actually, even at the beginning when, at the first 10 years or so, when you've got these things all coming together, you still don't think the institutions are good. You know, you go to India today, people don't think, "wow, this is a brilliantly run civil service. It's so uncorrupt[ed]." Such wonderful institutions everywhere. They don't say that. They don't say that about Philippines' Duterte, the president who's been just recently retired, by people who were worried the institutions found it difficult to control his populism. And yet Philippines boomed under Duterte, and India's boomed under Modi and countries like Korea boomed even with a level of corruption that means in the last 10 years we've seen four presidents go to jail for corruption.Um, so I argue that the better institutions come afterwards and that's why four presidents have gone to jail in Korea because they're now getting the institutions better. And I read a really good book about why democracies die by some American academics about three or four years ago now. I recommend it. And they pointed out that Latin America, across Latin America, they just copied the American institutions. They said, look, what's working in the Americas is North America. It's United States, they've got it right. Let's copy their institutions, we'll put them into my country, be it Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, whoever. And then they discovered that actually if the human capital is not as advanced, people will undermine the institutions. And you arguably saw Trump try it in the United States itself, but the human capital and the rest of the place was good enough to stop him from going too far.This is all debatable stuff, but you know, this is... So, I think the institutions do work when everything else has been working for some time and before then it's very hard to argue that the institutions work or can make a huge difference. I think the fundamental economic reality of are you growing at 1% a year or three to 5% a year per capita? That isn't about the institutions. Having said all of that? I think there's no doubt that you can have, if you're lucky, very lucky, really good leadership. A leader like Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, who has got vision, understands or is lucky, but he prioritized education and all the rest, who gets it right and takes the country onto a new path. When I think of some of the most obvious successes, a lot of them are small Singapore, Hong Kong, even Taiwan really.And maybe it's just tougher to do it in a country the size of Nigeria with over 200 million people or, or uh, India with over a billion, which is why it took India so long or Brazil. But I remember even the French president, Charles de Gaulle, I think in the sixties or seventies said, "how is it possible to govern a country with 350 types of cheese?".Um, and in India you'd say, "how can you govern a country of over a billion people with that many different dialects, different customs, different local cultures?" Um, and it is hard, but once you get these fundamentals of education, electricity and fertility right, suddenly, it looks like you can govern well. So, I want to think there is a role for good leadership, um, and it can make a difference and it does help. I just think history's telling us over the last 300 years that we can't count on luck and that lucky guy who happens to be the right leader to come in, sometimes woman who can come in, and push reform in the right way. What we can count on is that if you get the education, electricity and fertility numbers right, you will get out of poverty, you will get better off and your kids will have a much, much better future and your grandchildren even more so.So, I think that's probably one area [where] my book differs from many in the last 10, 15 years is saying, "I don't think it is so much about the things that we all like to pay attention to [like] who's going to win the next election and what are their different policies going to be?" And you know, most of the time I'm arguing it doesn't really make as much difference as we'd like to think.Tobi;Now, another point that came in the later chapters in the book, which I found interesting, and which is quite also a bit of a political issue right now, surrounds migration. Uh, a lot of Nigerians are leaving, I mean it's become even a social media trend and meme - "who is...Charlie;The Japa trend.Tobi;Who is leaving next, uh, yeah, yeah, Japa. So, like, who is leaving next, you know? Right. But you argued in the book that as countries grow richer, there will be more migration not less because what you often hear is that the reason why people are living is because the country is so bad and they're looking for a way to make better lives for themselves, which is true anyway. So, and that the way to really stop this migration wave is if you can improve the domestic economy and then suddenly you see a drop, but you are saying no, um, we are actually going to see more migration as countries grow richer. Now, how do you suppose that this can be resolved with the current, should I say, political environment in Europe and to some extent in America that is increasingly seeing migration from poorer countries as a problem, right? Is it a case of as countries grow richer, then the migration demographic just, sort of, changes to more educated people leaving and less tension and political rancour about migration?Charlie;Um, I doubt, I mean, I doubt that these political problems about immigration in Europe and The States are going to disappear. Cause we've seen election results just in the last two, three weeks in Italy with the far right becoming dominant, in Sweden as well. Where they took in a huge amount of, I think, it was Syrian refugees and before that Somalian refugees. Um, and you're trying to integrate people coming from a country with very low adult literacy into, particularly in Somalia's case, into a country like Sweden, which had a hundred percent, nearly a hundred percent adult literacy already by 1900. That's an integration process that takes generations. As America's still struggling 150 years after civil war, still struggling to manage integration. So, I think that political problem is going to carry on, but it is going to get more acute for Europe, um, and eventually United States because Europe is this aging old continent that hasn't got enough people.I was in Germany two weeks ago and there, there was a surprising number of industrialists saying "we must have a much more open border situation." I said, well, you know, that'll be really interesting to see if you do that because the backlash that we're seeing elsewhere says there is a limit to what countries politics seem ready to accept. And, I think, I even think the Brexit vote was about that. It was about the East European migration into the UK, which had the most open approach to east European countries from Poland and Hungary and Czech coming to the UK. Every other country in Europe kept in a border, well, restrictions, but the UK didn't. And I think that backfired on the UK when it had a Brexit vote that said, "oh, we have too many Polish people eating sausage in our supermarkets. And I, I, yeah, I mean really people cared.I don't understand it. I love the variety obviously, but while I don't understand, while I don't feel the same, [some] people do. So, I think that's the political problem. And even educated people who are needed by the economy might find it hard to integrate, say, beyond the bigger urban centres. I was really shocked when I was writing the book and I was looking at what happens when you've got an educated population but a high fertility rate. What happens across history is people leave. Cause there aren't enough jobs at home. Cause the fertility rate's so high, there's thousands, millions of people coming into the workforce. The savings aren't there to help create the jobs. So, they leave and it's the Philippines, you know, in the 20th century, it's Pakistanis now, where a number of people are well educated, not everyone sadly. But 150 years ago, it was Ireland, and it was Norway, and they were sending their excess population to America, and it caused huge controversy.There was, you know, rioting between, kind of, the Italian immigrants and the Irish immigrants in New York. T

In the last episode of 2022, it's a pair of debuts on the Frontline podcast!First, goaltender Charlier Robertson joins the pod to discuss his season, the top prospects game, goalie gear and more!Then later, Pasquale Zito drops by to talk the trade from Niagara, playing in Windsor, drafted by Detroit and his outlook on the Troops!

In this episode Matt Crawford speaks with author Charlie Robertson about his book, The Time Traveling Economist. Why is it that some countries in Africa and South Asia are still stuck in poverty? Robertson culls through the data and shows us what needs to be addressed and how they can move forward and prosper. Data however can be inuring, and we lose what it represents, which is of course, people. Roberston includes individual accounts and connects us to those numbers in a way that is easy to understand but most importantly, personal. 

What do high education and low fertility rates have in common? According to today's guest, Charlie Robertson, they are both positively correlated with economic growth. In today's episode, Charlie shares the reasons why he believes that countries that don't get their fertility rates down to below 3 children per woman and those that don't have adult literacy rates above 70% are doomed to remain trapped in poverty. Join us for a round-the-world trip where Charlie delves into the history of South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the West, and offers his explanation for why some countries have flourished while others have floundered. Charlie is the Global Chief Economist at Renaissance Capital and the author of The Fastest Billion and The Time-Travelling Economist.   Key Points From This Episode:   •   Understanding economic trends in Africa over the past few years. •   Factors that lead to the creation of urban slums. •   Charlie's hypothesis on the link between fertility and economic growth. •   What Charlie sees as the optimal fertility rate. •   Basic adult literacy rates in Sub-Saharan African countries when they were decolonized. •   A statistic that highlights the progress that has been made on the education front globally. •   Why education is imperative for growth. •   The correlation between education and fertility. •   The importance of correctly sequencing educational priorities. •   An explanation of the economic success being experienced in the Philippines. •   Comparing the rate of economic growth in India and China. •   Reasons why Pakistan hasn't kept up with India's levels of economic growth. •   Explaining Sri Lanka's downfall. •   Charlie's thoughts on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. •   The energy financing issues facing African countries. •   Challenges of using green energy as a baseload power source. •   Why Charlie believes governments should be focusing on providing electricity to factories rather than homes. •   Benefits of decentralized energy systems. •   The potential of municipal-level financing approaches.   Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-robertson-6814751/?originalSubdomain=uk (Charlie Robertson on LinkedIn) https://www.rencap.com/ (Renaissance Capital) https://www.amazon.com/Fastest-Billion-Africas-Economic-Revolution/dp/0957420307 (The Fastest Billion) https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=the+time+travelling+economist (The Time-Travelling Economist) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)

South Africa features in Charlie Robertson's recently released book, The Time Travelling Economist: Why Education, Electricity and Fertility are the key to escaping poverty. Not in a flattering way. So we asked the author, whose day job is chief economist of the world's leading emerging markets specialists Renaissance  Capital, to unpack his masterful analysis of what drives economic growth by comparing countries over extended periods. In this interview with Alec Hogg of Biznews, Robertson uses numerous examples to explain what bedevils the South African economy - using the three key economic factors to explain part of SA's massive underperformance in the past half century. A sobering assessment by an independent thinker - and grist for the mill of the Western Cape independence lobby. A must listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An adjustment to the normal format in this episode of the BizNews Business Briefing where Alec Hogg and Lucy Ferreira are joined by colleagues Stuart Lowman and Nadya Swart to provide context on the day's major business news; including Purple Group's big Asian deal that was announced on Friday; the Time Travelling Economist not countering lobbyists for Western Cape Independence; debate on remote work after Apple's CEO demands staff return to the office; and controversy around an apparent 70 year old myth that has delivered massive profits to Big Pharma. All that plus the latest on markets and shares that moved on the JSE today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world's leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew is joined by Charlie Robertson, author of The Time-Travelling Economist: Why Education, Electricity and Fertility Are Key to Escaping Poverty. Charlie Robertson is an emerging markets specialist, covering global economic themes including democratisation to demographics, education to ESG, fertility, as well as shorter-term indicators like exchange rates and growth. He is the lead author of The Fastest Billion: The Story Behind Africa's Economic Revolution, and his latest book is The Time-Travelling Economist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlie Robertson, Kayleigh Lee and Ian Bonin discuss the upcoming production of "The Producers" and other things involving IPAL.

Positively Iberia is a joint effort between the Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce, KANE, KADN-15 and 1st National Bank of Jeanerette, airing each Thursday at 10:30. Along with host Marti Harrell this week: An update from the Iberia Performing Arts League (IPAL) from Charlie Robertson and meet the lady behind those "You are Wonderful" signs we've been seeing all over town, Ms. Felicia Armstead.

In this episode of the new series Lagos to Mombasa, Abebe Aemro Selassie of the IMF and Charlie Robertson of Renaissance Capital join Gyude Moore to discuss how to increase investment in transportation, power, water, health, and education infrastructure to spur economic growth in African countries.

Terje Bjøranger jobber som politiadvokat i Kripos. Han debuterte i 2012 med Den tredje søsteren. I Barcode (2017) og Business (2019) følger vi den røffe politietterforskeren Charlie Robertsen. På forsommeren kommer Kalifatet, hvor Charlie Robertson og hans politikolleger må jobbe effektivt og godt for å avverge flere tilsynelatende IS-relaterte drap og ikke minst avverge terroraksjoner man frykter er under planlegging. Gard Sveen brakdebuterte med Den siste pilegrimen. Boken vant Rivertonprisen i 2013, den skandinaviske prisen Glassnøkkelen i 2014, Maurits Hansen-prisen for beste krimdebut og i 2015 også den danske Palle Rosenkranz-prisen for årets beste krimroman. Siden har han skrevet tre kritikerroste politiske thrillere. Her er Terje Bjøranger og Gard Sveen i samtale med Asbjørn Slettemark

Today's broadcast is sponsored by - www.franchisingconnection.com If your career is in transition they would love to help.  On May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter of the Oakland A’s pitches a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins. Hunter’s perfect game is the first in the American League during the regular season in 46 years, when White Sox right-hander Charlie Robertson, who accomplished the feat against Detroit in 1922. Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He strikes out 11, including Harmon Killebrew three times, and drives in three of the A’s four runs, the other coming on a two-out, bases-loaded walk to 1B Danny Cater in the 8th inning. Only 6,298 fans are in attendance. 1968 | Catfish Hunter | Danny Cater | Harmon Killebrew | May 8 | Minnesota Twins | Oakland A's

Charlie Robertson and Kayleigh Lay from the Iberia Performing Arts League discuss the upcoming season and other events coming up.

In the 21st episode of the A Perspective Podcast, Andrew turns to Charlie Robertson. Charlie is Global Chief Economist and Head of Macro Strategy at Renaissance Capital. Focused on emerging, Frontier, and Africa markets, Charlie is often rated number 1 for Emerging Europe or Frontier/Africa commentary.  Join them as they discuss a wide range of captivating topics including; why the 21st century is going to be better for Africa, what the continent needs to address to achieve industrialization, and the notion of supply chains and added value in Africa post COVID-19 and AfCFTA. Charlie also shares his views on which country has it right on the continent, vaccine diplomacy, why Education underpins all progress on the continent, and rounds off this illuminating conversation by giving us a reason to be cheerful.

Charlie Robertson and Tiffany Poirrier discussed the Iberia Performing Arts League's upcoming season and Essanee Theater amid the pandemic.

Renaissance Capital's Global Chief Economist Charlie Robertson joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the prospects for debt relief in Africa amid the worsening economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic.JOIN THE DISCUSSION:Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject Twitter: @eolander | @stadenesque | @RencapManSUPPORT THIS PODCAST. BECOME A SUBSCRIBER TO THE CHINA AFRICA PROJECT.Your subscription supports independent journalism. Subscribers get the following:1. A daily email newsletter of the top China-Africa news.2. Access to the China-Africa Experts Network3. Unlimited access to the CAP's exclusive analysis content on chinaafricaproject.comSubscribe today and get two-weeks free: www.chinaafricaproject.com/subscribe

Katelyn Gulotta and Charlie Robertson from the Iberia Performing Arts League discussed their upcoming fundraiser and production of the musical "Music Man".

Charlie Robertson from the University of Amsterdam's International Development Master joins us to discuss his research into Rwanda's clothing industry.

Kaitlyn Gulotta and Charlie Robertson discuss the upcoming IPAL production of "Legally Blonde, The Musical". www.ipaltheater.com

Charlie Robertson, president of the Collision Career Institute, explains how shop operators can prepare their entry-level workers properly in the modern era, and eventually make them a shop asset. 

Charlie Robertson, president of the Collision Career Institute, explains what shop operators can do to set their entry-level employees up to be assets at their facility. 

In his new history of the hundreds of race riots that erupted across the country in the 1960s, historian Peter B. Levy offers a gripping look at the violence in York, Pa. in the summers of 1968 and 1969, resulting in the deaths of a white police officer and a black woman from South Carolina. The deaths of Officer Henry Schaad and Lillie Belle Allen went unsolved until the daily newspapers in York published 30-year retrospectives on the riots. Those reports led to new investigations that pinned Allen's death on members of white gangs and complicit police officers, including one, Charlie Robertson, who went on to become York's mayor. Two black men were charged in Officer Schaad's death. Levy, a professor of history at York College, lives in Towson. He is the author of, ----The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban America during the 1960s,---- published by Cambridge University Press. Levy will be a guest on an upcoming episode to talk more about the uprisings of the 1960s, including those in Baltimore and Cambridge, Maryland.For more about the York riots: ----Silent no more: The murder of Lillie Belle Allen,---- by Kim Strong, and ----40 Years Later: A Different York,---- by Mike Argento.

Standup comedians Ken Garr (MGM Grand, "Love Meets Hope" film with Ed Asner) and Nate Weatherup (Comic Edge on Aspire TV, Dave Coulier's opener) face off in ten trivia questions each about two subjects they love:  Ghostbusters and The Chicago White Sox. Category Round:  Simpsons Characters. Listeners Quiz Prize:  free Trivia with Budds t-shirt! Email ryan@ryanbudds.com with the three answers to enter. http://kengarr.com/ http://nateweatherup.com/ Theme song by Frawsty: https://soundcloud.com/frawsty Hosted by Ryan Budds. http://TriviaWithBudds.com http://Facebook.com/TriviaWithBudds http://Twitter.com/ryanbudds http://Instagram.com/ryanbudds http://RyanBudds.com FULL SHOW NOTES:  INTRO Who am I? (:22) How the podcast works (1:30) Some of my favorite podcasts and inspiration (4:20) GUESTS Ken and Nate's apartment (6:25) Ken didn't understand picki topics (7:35) PORTILLOS YUM (8:15) Cleaning chaw (9:40) Ken's Topics:  White Sox, Brexit, Facebook Live, PORTILLOS, Dating in LA What it's like Dating in LA (12:05) Nate's topics:  Ghostbusters, Harry Potter, State Capitals, Rollerblading Female Ghostbusters (13:00) Collecting toys for your kids (14:00) What year did the first Harry Potter book come out? (15:30) What's the capital of GA? (16:00) Meeting Matt Groening (17:07) 90s Rollerblading Movies (18:10) Hover board podcast (18:30) Buzzword:  BEARS (19:40) Trivia showdown! (19:02) Shaving tips and a great bald joke (25:30) Acting out GHOSTBUSTERS and Die  Hard as a kid (29:31) The movie The Secretary (33:51) Wendi Starling VOs (37:00) Combo Question! (37:04) Popped next to Ernie Hudson (38:00) Categories with Budds! (38:40) THE WINNER (40:49) Prizes (41:02) Plugs! (41:28) Listener Quiz! (43:02) Questions from this ep:   WHITE SOX In what year did the White SOX win their first championship? What jersey number was Frank Thomas? What is the nickname of the fuzzy green mascot for the SOX? Charlie Robertson was the first player in white SOX history to do what?  Disgruntled do Steve Dahl created what crazy event in the middle of the field that drew 100,000 people? How many innnings did the longest game ever have against the Brewers?  Who did the SOX sweep to win the 2005 World Series?  What did player Monty Stratton leave the SOX for? A) won the lotto B) hunting accident C) entered a monastery  Who was the only member of the 09 SOX to play 150 games? Who was hired as manager of his former team in 2004? GHOSTBUSTERS  What location does the opening scene for the first movie take place in? What artist had the iconic Ghostbusters theme song? One the set of the movie what recently passed friend did Dan Akroyd refer to as Slimer?  What did they use for cheap marshmallow in the film's end scene? What year was Ghostbusters 2 released? What does the PKE meter stand for? What percentage did the film receive on rotten tomatoes? Annie Potts plays what character in the series? Who turned down the role of peter venkman to star in the police academy MOVIES? A darker cartoon with a different word before the main title premiered in 1997, what was it?  COMBO QUESTION In 2014 what GHOSTBUSTER threw out the first pitch at a SOX game to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the films release?  CATEGORIES WITH BUDDS:  Simpsons Characters   LISTENER QUIZ: What is the capital of Vermont?  What year was the original NES released in the Us? Who played the Penguin in Batman 66?