{"id":11190,"date":"2015-07-22T05:00:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T09:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=11190"},"modified":"2015-07-19T20:07:18","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T00:07:18","slug":"development-economics-and-method","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/11190","title":{"rendered":"Development Economics and Method"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Simple regression analysis, the method of\u00a0randomization, and the analysis of big data have been transforming development\u00a0economics (Banerjee and Duflo 2009; Deaton 2010; Ray 2014; Varian 2014).\u00a0This is truly welcome and has the potential to leave its mark on human well-being,\u00a0growth, and development.<\/p>\n<p>There is a risk, however, that this euphoria will once again have us carried\u00a0away. We are seeing, especially in policy circles, these new empirical findings\u00a0being quickly waved in front of our noses and treated as ground for doing whatever\u00a0the policy maker wants to do. What is important to realize is that when we\u00a0say that policy should be evidence-based, both words are important\u2014\u201cevidence\u201d\u00a0and \u201cbased.\u201dWe must not fall into the trap of evidence-waved policy. To see this\u00a0mistake, consider the commonly heard policy refrain: \u201cRecent data show 90% of\u00a0jobs were created by the private sector. Therefore, we have to rely on the private\u00a0sector for creating jobs.\u201d The \u201ctherefore\u201d is wrong. If it were not wrong, we\u00a0would also have to go along with the Soviet economist who having studied\u00a0Russian data in the 1980 s wrote: \u201cRecent data show 90% of all jobs were\u00a0created by the state. Therefore, we have to rely on the state for creating jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is why we need the discipline of deductive reasoning, economic theory,\u00a0and also common sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That is from Kaushik Basu and Andrew Foster&#8211;respectively, chief economist at the World Bank and editor of the <em>World Bank Economic Review\u00a0<\/em>(WBER)&#8211;in an <a href=\"http:\/\/wber.oxfordjournals.org\/content\/29\/suppl_1\/S2.abstract?etoc\">article<\/a> titled &#8220;Development Economics and Method,&#8221; which serves as an introduction of sorts to a special issue of the <em>WBER<\/em> summarizing this year&#8217;s\u00a0Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics.<\/p>\n<p>I have been saying for a few years now that the pendulum will swing back, that theory will make a comeback in development economics in order to help understand the mechanisms whereby the effects observed in randomized controlled trials occur. It looks like the pendulum is on its way back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Simple regression analysis, the method of\u00a0randomization, and the analysis of big data have been transforming development\u00a0economics (Banerjee and Duflo 2009; Deaton 2010; Ray 2014; Varian&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/11190\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Development Economics and Method<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-2Uu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11190"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11195,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions\/11195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}