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Economics & Marginalia: December 20, 2024

December 20, 2024

Hi all,

I need to start with a bit of news, as promised last week. As some of you may have spotted online already, in the new year, I will be leaving CGD after four and half great years to become the Deputy Chief Economist (Development) at FCDO. It’s a great opportunity to do some good in the world, and if you’ve followed my writings here at all, you’ll know I have a lot of views about how to do that good. Even so, I am immensely sad to be leaving CGD. I’ll have more to say about it closer to my last day, but this is one of the great places to work in the world. You’re surrounded by smart, thoughtful people who all want to make the world better. We disagree a lot with each other, which only makes each of us better; and we’re afforded the freedom to write what we think is right, and what we think matters. There aren’t many places in the world set up this way, and I’ve been very lucky to work here. My move does mean that I will have to put the Economics and Marginalia series on ice for a little while, though. I would like to keep writing it from my new vantage point, but this does depend on getting the required agreements from my new organization. I expect that will take at least a few weeks, and there’s a chance it doesn’t happen at all. I’ll keep you up to date on that from my BlueSky account (the Twitter one is time capsule now). Fingers crossed it all works out; but if not, it has been a great pleasure. I always say writing this is the most fun thing I do every week. It’s a chance to think, unencumbered by practicality or direction, and to try summarise complex ideas. It’s the sandbox from which I improve at everything else I do.

  1. Leaving CGD means I’m in a flurry of final activity before I disappear under the cloak of civil service anonymity (to the extent that I’m able to keep my head down entirely, which history has taught me is pretty limited). I had two new pieces out this week. The first was on economic growth in lower-income countries, and what FCDO should do if its really serious about trying to support it. Together with Mark Miller and Roli Asthana, I argue that FCDO’s grip on the levers that deliver growth is tenuous: it’s hard enough to deliver growth in one’s own country, when you have direct control over policy instruments. In other countries, where we have no direct hold over those levers, we need to operate in different ways. The first and most important is to support these countries to articulate truly home-grown growth strategies, with fewer caveats and conditions, and to actually listen to what they want. The rest follows from that: to get our resourcing offer organized, to use domestic policy levers that support poor countries and to invest in tech. But it’s the first that matters most. And a couple of days later, I put out a piece on how donors engage with evidence, institutionally. This is an area that remains understudied, and in my job I’ll be observing closely.

  2. In a fortuitously-timed turn of events, Tim Harford has just published a blog on why governments are so bad at problem solving, a diagnosis I tend to agree with. He does not pull punches. Drawing on Donald Campbell (he of the Campbell Collaboration), he writes “[a]n experimenting society had to be active, always looking for improvements and practical solutions. It had to be honest, willing to criticise itself and face facts. It’s striking how different those virtues are from the fearful and polarised habits of today… We do not seem to be living in an age that rewards humility, an honest admission of uncertainty or a willingness to change course. But we won’t know for certain until a serious politician gives it a try.” I disagree in only one substantive part of this: it is not just politicians but technocrats who stymie the clear-eyed and even-handed use of evidence to reward the good and terminate the bad. It’s easy to think of a better way to govern, but very difficult to plot a realistic way to get there.

  3. In a similar vein, Chris Woodruff talks to VoxDev about the use of research at BII, the UK’s development finance institution, and what kinds of evidence it needs most. Also on VoxDev: you can’t just do cash and nothing else—usually market imperfections are still of first-order importance in maximising their welfare impact. Antonia Delius and Olivier Sterck write it up here.

  4. As the year comes to an end, so too does the Development Impact Job Market Papers series, now 14 years old. It’s one of the best things on development anywhere. If you want to peek at where our field is going, look at what all these brilliant young people are doing. I’ve discovered a number of rising stars in from the series. They summarise this year’s blogs here—as ever, the quality is very high, but a couple of observations, not about these papers but what about their composition tells us about the field. The first is that the diversity of settings covered is lower than you would hope. That’s in part because what candidates feel they need to produce to do their best in the job market means they need to work in places where data, implementing partners and institutions allow for that kind of work. Relatedly, and again due to the incentives candidates face, there are never enough papers which major in just describing things extremely well and with insight. These are some of the hardest papers to write, but I’d love to see more candidates saying: “look, here’s a problem no-one knows much about, but I’ve dug into it here and this is what I’ve found and why it matters.” It probably doesn’t optimise for jobs, which is why it doesn’t happen. But mainly, I would happily read double the number published, so it’s good to hear Cornell have their own series.

  5. One response to my new job from a friend was, to paraphrase, “why? None of it matters and nothing seems to change.” I really understand the impulse that pushes one to that conclusion. The media is not geared up to highlight or explain slow and steady progress, or policies that help make things a little better, so I really appreciated this post from Hannah Ritchie, about deforestation rates in the Amazon under Lula, which have halved since their increase under Bolsonaro. The whole thing is worth reading, especially for the massive progress in Lula’s first term. Policy does matter, and we do have the capability to affect the real world. We just often won’t get the headlines for doing it.

  6. Of course, progress is not guaranteed. It takes effort, and very often, a fight. Ryan Duncombe, Karam Alabd and Justin Sandefur write about the new malaria vaccines—potentially game-changing advances that could save and improve lives—and what it would take to get them out there faster. The best thing about this is the last section, specifying what different actors in this all need to do. Concrete and clear.

  7. Given my impending move, and CGD’s holiday closure, this will be the last Economics & Marginalia for a while (though hopefully not forever). I would have loved to close on a cheerful and uplifting happy note of festive cheer. But then I read LitHub’s collection of the most devastatingly scathing book reviews of the year and found myself chuckling so much at how Alex Preston unloads on Haruki Murakami (with a drive-by on that massively overrated paperweight, The Magus, thrown in for good measure) that I had to share it. Like disastrous restaurant reviews, it’s always more fun to read a review of book the reviewer hates than one they love. There are some easy targets here (Tom Selleck turning his autobiography into an episode-by-episode summary of Magnum, PI and Kristi Noem’s book of dog-murder included), but sometimes easy targets are deserving ones. And if anyone needs to end the year on a happier note, here are three songs guaranteed to make you smile.

Have a great break, everyone!

R

Disclaimer

CGD blog posts reflect the views of the authors, drawing on prior research and experience in their areas of expertise. CGD is a nonpartisan, independent organization and does not take institutional positions.