Agricultural Economics—Without Apology
That’s the title of my first Key Findings Brief (link opens a .pdf document) as a member of the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN), which I finally joined last week after putting off submitting my application materials for months and after being encouraged to do so by my coauthor Nick Carnes, who is himself co-director of the Research Triangle SSN regional network.
As per its mission statement, the SSN
This raises a question: Why are lawmakers so willing to vote for farm subsidies — even lawmakers who usually oppose government spending? …
One theory is that money explains it all. Wealthy agribusinesses are somehow paying off Republicans to vote their way. …
Not everyone’s convinced by this, though. In a recent working paper (pdf), Duke University economist Marc Bellemare and political scientist Nicholas Carnes came up with a better reason for Congress’s ag-subsidy love. Farmers and farm owners have disproportionate political sway in key districts. …
Bellemare tells me that he expected agribusiness lobbying to have the biggest impact on various farm votes before they did the study. But that wasn’t the case. Pressure at the polls turned out to be the key factor.
That’s Brad Plumer on the Washington Post‘s WonkBlog in a post about why Congress supports agriculture.
Development Bloat
That’s how a former student who works for one of the biggest development organizations in the world expressed his frustrations with development and aid work these days when I had dinner with him in Washington, DC last summer. In my student’s view, “development” had become too many things.
I was initially skeptical of his claim. After all, one of the first things I teach the students in my development seminar is that there are no silver bullets; the causes of underdevelopment are many, and tackling just one problem is unlikely to lift an entire country out of poverty.
But the more I think about it, the more I remember often having had a “That is development?” reaction when reading articles about development in academic journals, specialized magazines, and newspapers. For example, here is a list of things that are considered by many to be part of the process of development: