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Economics & Marginalia: October 4, 2024

Hi all,

Well, that was quite a week. Mark Lowcock and I finally published our book charting the birth, life and demise of the Department for International Development (DFID), for whom we both worked for a substantial portion of our respective careers. The launch, on Wednesday, was attended by much of the great and good of the international development scene in London, many of whom contributed to the book by generously sharing material, agreeing to be interviewed or through their day-to-day work, holding the department to account or publishing the details of their programmes and analysis (and in the case of Bernat Camps Adrogue, doing so much of the data work and document-management that makes an enterprise like this even feasible). Links to the book (as a PDF, epub, or an Amazon link for the hard copy) are in the hyperlink above. It’s not simply a document of bygone time; we think the messages about what the department got right (and wrong) over its life have lasting lessons for the UK and further afield; indeed, mission-driven organizations with entirely different missions can also learn much from it. Of course, much else of interest happened and was written this week, on which note:

  1. It’s hard not to lead with a piece called “The End of Development Economics”. Ravi Kanbur’s argument is basically that there are fewer and fewer really poor places, and fewer and fewer really poor people; and secondly that the methodological differences between the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘development’ fields, once distinct enough to effectively ghettoize any scholar focusing on the latter, have largely dissolved. In truth, he is arguing that we are victims of our success—on the one hand, insofar as our work has influenced the policies, primarily those of developing countries themselves, that have raised incomes and reduced poverty; and on the other, thanks to the indisputable influence two generations of brilliant development economists have had on the rest of the discipline. I rather think Ravi has overstated our demise, though. Firstly, much progress has been made, but 400 million or so people still live in extreme poverty; and the challenges they face are both difficult and important. And even those who have escaped extreme poverty remain a long way off a good life. The job is not done. And if the methodological difference with the rest of the discipline has declined, good; but the inescapable importance of the specific and varied conditions of different countries and places means some identifying label is still important.

  2. Of course, not all changes in development economics represent unmistakable progress. Consider the resurrection of the Doing Business survey, in the form of B-READY, which sounds like a long-lost member of Cypress Hill. Indermit Gill makes the case for B-READY in Project Syndicate (is anyone else pronouncing it ‘bready’ yet?). Meanwhile, Justin Sandefur, who pretty much dug the hole that they eventually lowered the Doing Business Index into, reminds us of its chequered history here; and gives his first impressions of the new index here.

  3. Matt Yglesias does yeoman’s work here, explaining why the common misconception that imports reduce growth is economically illiterate. I’ve heard some version of this many, many times, and it usually comes from people who think five minutes of study provides them with a rounded understanding of economics. Sadly, that describes one of the Presidential candidates in the forthcoming US election.

  4. I was gave a talk today to a room full of very smart, very inquisitive people, who asked me many difficult questions. More than once my only honest answer was that I didn’t know—I could speculate, more or less informedly, but the true outcome was too uncertain for me to say much about. Tim Harford has been thinking about uncertainty, too: in the context of Nate Silver and David Spiegelhalter’s forthcoming books. Silver and Spiegelhalter are both excellent communicators, who spend a great deal of time dealing with highly uncertain problems, but they have rather different approaches to answering questions about them. I have to admit to being rather reluctant to put numbers on events I’m very uncertain about, but perhaps that is counterproductive.

  5. The latest VoxDevLits, by Anders Jensen, Anne Brockmeyer and Lucie Gadenne, on taxation in developing countries is out. I hope you are all familiar with these living literature reviews, but essentially, VoxDev commission academics who are knee-deep in the literature to create living, regularly updated literature surveys, to provide a one-stop shop for policymakers (and indeed other researchers) who want to know the state of our knowledge on a topic.

  6. The more I learn about development economics, the more I think we massively underate the basics. Want a good economy? Build roads: they’re good for resilience, help keep prices down when shocks occur, help people move, and—apparently—have really quite large positive effects on the productivity of formal firms, and help reallocate resources from less productive informal firms to more productive formal ones. I used to give a presentation about stimulating economic growth in developing countries which basically boiled down to: it’s not complicated; it’s just difficult. This reinforces that conclusion for me.

  7. The week wasn’t all good news: we lost two people I admired a great deal, in very different ways. First, Kris Kristofferson, a truly great songwriter (with an only so-so voice, to be honest). Some of his songs were just amazing though. Johnny Cash once played the villain in an episode of Columbo (Season 3, Episode 7; for those who want to find it, it’s on Apple TV). Throughout the episode, he kept bursting into snippets of Sunday Morning, Coming Down (“Lord, I’m wishing I was stoned; for there’s something in a Sunday… makes a body feel alone”), and with Cash’s voice you really can concentrate on what a great song it is. I was even sadder to hear that Dikembe Mutombo passed away so young, at 58, of brain cancer. Mutombo was an absolute basketball icon for people my age: I remember him beating what was at the time my favourite team, the Kemp-Payton Sonics, in one of the great upsets of all time; his celebration was for the ages. When I was a kid, it was basically illegal to block a shot without breaking out the Mutombo finger-wag; and yet, his play is nowhere near his most important legacy. He was just a great person, constantly trying to help others and spending a huge amount of time, money and effort to support both the sport and welfare in Africa (and in particular in the DRC, where he was from; indeed, he came to the US on a USAID scholarship, my favourite USAID intervention after Pepfar). What a loss.

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.