Hi all,
One of the problems of a two-week break between editions of links during the CGD summer is that sometimes far, far too much happens between editions to do justice to in the intro (to be clear, this problem pales into insignificance against the value of having two extra days with my little one every month). But seriously, how am I supposed to summarise everything that’s happened? In the UK, we’ve not just elected a new Government, we’ve had what amounts to a clear-out of the fridge. It’s amazing what you find when you clean up there: an old lettuce, an odd stick someone put in the vegetable crisper for some forgotten reason. Time will tell how the new lot do; the bar wasn’t set that high, but such is the state of politics around the way you take nothing for granted. In France, Marine Le Pen and co suffered a shock defeat in the second round of the elections—though with nearly 40 percent of the vote (it bothers me, though, when otherwise intelligent pundits forget that elections are not just about choosing whom, but about choosing who not; one cannot simply look at the proportions and decide what the democratic ‘will’ was). And in the US… well, the less said there the better. And that’s without going into the sport! The last link rectifies that, somewhat.
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Another huge political ruction is going on in Kenya, where young people have been on the streets, protesting President Ruto’s proposed tax policies, despite violent suppression. It’s a confusing situation: weeks of popular protest against what appeared to be a populist politician; they are complaining about economic policy and mismanagement and corruption but against a President who rose to power complaining about the exact same things. And the whole thing has been handled without a sliver of apparent competence (made worse by the recent too-little-too-late act of sacking his whole Cabinet), despite competence being Ruto’s main actual selling point. If you’re confused, as I was, Ken Opalo has you covered, as usual. In his two-parter, he covers the basic political situation, explaining the corner Ruto finds himself (has painted himself?) in. And in part two, he explains the underlying economic crisis—from which there appears no easy escape—against which the protests have emerged, and which feeds them. There’s also a neat little drive-by on the limits of the IMF’s technocratic response to it. Never bring a model to a political economy fight.
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If the economics leaves you a little baffled, perhaps Planet Money’s Summer School is for you? Their annual extravaganza of econ 101 isn’t always perfect, but there’s a lot to like in it, and all sorts of interesting bits and pieces that are new even for us economists. The first episode goes into the origins and money and even sneaks a Smoot-Hawley (anyone? Anyone?) reference early on. Dive in. (Transcript).
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Two posts on the parlous state of social science. First, Ben Recht made me crack up from the title of “I don’t care what the studies say.”, including that masterful full stop. It’s a serious post though, not satire, and though it takes an extreme position, it reflects something about how I feel about ‘the evidence’. Much of ‘the evidence’ is crap! You can safely ignore it! A garbage study is always more garbage than study. Even good studies can be turned into garbage by the garbage practices of everyone else. If I wanted to be extreme: no matter how well you design your study, and how carefully you document your data choices and how carefully you design your experiment, if everyone else has a file drawer full of nulls and the journals want sexy big findings from sexy big places with sexy new methods, your study is hard to do anything with—it’s just difficult to parse what it means or trust it when the surroundings are rubbish and the system it emerges from is corrupted. Now, your mileage will vary here. I happen to think the system is not just a quagmire of garbage, so while there are difficulties, it is not irretrievably broken, and you can identify and use (clusters of) good work to interpret and learn about the world. But then, I read stuff like the latest on Data Colada on the Gino trial and throw my hands in the air.
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And if you want to throw our whole discipline in the air, too, read Jishnu Das, on the many discontents of development economics. I think this is excellent and worth every single reader’s time. But there are two dissenting thoughts that ran through my mind as I read it. First, I think there’s too little made of the vast amount of excellent, historically and politically sensitive economic research that is conducted by people with a deep, profound understanding of historical and geographical context. When I grew up, development economics meant reading Pranab Bardhan, Jean Dreze, W. Arthur Lewis, Michal Kalecki; and today, yes, there are people who parachute into a village, run a study for three weeks and then spend 2 years doing a tour of Ivy League seminars to get a good paper out of it, but there (probably more!) people who really get to know and understand the places they work in, whether or not they were born there. This is not a disagreement with Jishnu, so much as a feeling that the fightback started some time ago, and while it’s still not won, there’s much to celebrate in it (and in work like Rao, Szreter, Woolcock and Bayly’s interdisciplinary one). And secondly, the big question I had at the end is where we think the ‘right’ ways to think about development are being taught. We’ve got good thinkers—so something must be going right somewhere.
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Switching to the UK briefly: Sam Freedman’s book on the failures of the UK state is out. I’ve yet to read it, but his free excerpt, about how the Government has profoundly failed to understand the procurement problem it faces, and how it has lost or ruined lives by this failure, is superb. I teach public procurement and will ask students to read this in the future. And, with a little more hope: the philosopher Jo Wolff sets out the case for an inclusive, progressive political philosophy to underpin the Starmer government.
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Branko Milanovic’s review-of-sorts of Lea Ypi’s extraordinary book Free is fantastic. Whether you have read Free or not (yet), read the review. It captures something about how I feel about reading about parts of history or the world that I know well, too; and how it feels to be so pleasantly surprised by one.
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To close, England have a monumental sporting moment upon them: not the Euro finals (though England have somehow made it again); not the Wimbledon final; but the retirement of Jimmy Anderson. It’s kind of shocking. I loathed Jimmy Anderson in the early years of his career. I thought he was over-rated, too full of himself and would never learn to be as good as someone with his gifts could be. Good god was I wrong. At 41, he is probably still in the top three bowlers in England; he could happily play for another couple of years. And he’s probably gotten better in each five-year chunk of his two-decade international career. He was never the best quick of his generation (that was, very obviously and by a massive distance, Dale Steyn); but his career has had the most impressive arc, and he’s overshot early expectations more than anyone else. What a career.
Have a great weekend, 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.