Hi all,
This is the last week of the year that the links will written on a cramped train, perched on knees, fighting hanger—I’ve just taught my last classes of the term. Every year I do this teaching, I am given cause to reflect on Richard Feynman’s advice: to really understand something, teach it. Though some questions come up time and again, every year there are a few I’d never heard before, every year an argument or an example that is new to me. Teaching older students, most of whom who have already done interesting and important things with their lives is also a privilege. Many have never studied economics before, but all bring something useful to the subject. It really reinforces for me how democratic the study of economics is. It’s difficult, yes, but the ideas underlying it can be explained simply, and armed with the intuition they can take a new approach to a thousand things they’ve already encountered, even those they would never have guessed economics would have anything to say about. On Monday, I was explaining how my struggle to get my son into his school uniform each morning was a Principal-Agent problem, and how my strategies all in some way work to reduce our informational asymmetries or to align our incentives. Economics is everywhere, even in my son’s refusal to wear his underpants.
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Of course, economics has something to say about issues of greater global importance than whether Spidey or Ghostie is on the little fellow’s briefs. We’re a few days removed from the conclusion of COP29, and a closer look at the $300 billion dollar funding agreement that emerged at the 11th hour shows how profoundly unambitious (and potentially damaging) it was. My colleagues Jonathan Beynon, Karen Mathiasen and Ian Mitchell explain here. But the best post-Baku thing I read was Will Worley’s excellent, disillusioned missive from the Blue Zone. I think he’s nailed it here. I’ve long been a cynic about these big global shindigs, though some of my very smart colleagues have made the case for why they matter; perhaps they’re right, and the sense of global solidarity and attention on a problem does drive progress. But when it looks as grubby as Baku did, as Will so eloquently expresses, I wonder how much solidarity can possibly emerge.
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Two perspectives on systematic reviews, starting with Tim Harford on their utility, and why they are so important for the progress of science. He lauds the Cochrane reviews and 3ie, and bemoans the relative dearth of systematic reviews in other fields (he should subscribe to VoxDev). Meanwhile, in Science, Holly Else describes how ‘paper mills’, large-scale operations that produce published research of dubious or negative scientific value, are producing so much output that they threaten to undermine the very idea of a systematic review. My own perspective: I have always valued a good systematic review, but I also read most of them and think more of the studies should have been thrown out for poor design, or at least the results of a more restricted sample should have been reported. The judgements of inclusion and exclusion are fine, and take a great deal of skill and ability to make.
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Yuen Yuen Ang is always worth reading, even when you don’t agree with every part of her argument. Her piece on the so-called ‘polycrisis’ is very good. She argues that the ‘crisis’ is also an opportunity, because it encourages the abandonment of development shibboleths that hold back the development of poor countries. I think there are some straw men that take a real beating here, but there is also a great deal of insight and value.
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Two very cool and very different pieces from VoxDev this week. First, Sofia Amaral and co-authors on the impact of visible policing on the incidence of serious sexual harassment in India is excellent. Their study has three important findings: that visible policing reduces serious harassment; that this in turn has a big effect on the behavioural adaptations that women feel it is necessary to make in response to this harassment; and that this effect is confined to serious harassment, with lower-level harassment being essentially allowed to continue, largely because the police perceive their harms as smaller. This is great, great stuff. Secondly, Niklas Buehren and co-authors look at the effect of exposure to the civil was in Sierra Leone on how trust develops between parties. This is fascinating work, which gets at the kind of nuances in an important institution that economics very rarely manages to provide an insight into.
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This is related a bit to the link on systematic reviews, but at what point should research into a phenomenon stop? When are enough well-identified null results enough to stop us looking for an effect? I like Andrew Gelman’s take on this, which is that different researchers and funding bodies have different stopping points, and that this is a very good thing. We all put different value on the marginal bit of learning about a theory; it makes sense then that some of us would stop looking at it earlier than others.
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The Development Impact job market papers series is coming to a close: make sure you check them out. This paper by Sana Adnan Khan, which looks at how narratives shape attitudes towards refugees is fascinating. It’s amazing to see how the boundaries of our discipline keep expanding as new scholars come up with new ideas and research agendas.
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Finally, Kendrick Lamar dropped a new album last Friday, capping (barring a surprise) what may be the single greatest year by any rapper ever. The strongest competition I can think of is Rakim’s 1987, and even that was driven entirely by Paid in Full (the album, yes, but also the song). While Paid in Full is still probably for me the greatest sustained effort in rap mastery ever recorded (including my favourite ever bar, “I hold the microphone like a grudge / B’ll hold the record so the needle don’t budge”) it’s hard to argue with Kendrick 2024, and The Ringer make the case here. He had euphoria, Not Like Us (the song of the year), and now Reincarnated. What a time to be a music fan.
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.
