Development by washing machines

 

Perhaps some people who matter actually want unclear property rights?

Chris Blattman cites from a new book by Ato Onoma on the politics of property rights in Africa:

Muntari’s response was unsettling. He claimed that, after working with chiefs for seventeen years, he had come to the conclusion that chiefs did not want clear boundaries, functional property registers, and an environment devoid of disputes. He argued that the chiefs would sabotage any effort to provide these features. According to Muntari, in the absence of such mechanisms, cash-strapped, land-hungry chiefs could conveniently “mistakenly” allocate the lands of neighboring chiefs or sell land that their ancestors had sold earlier. Further, where tenants engaged in subversive political behavior, chiefs could conveniently award their rights to more loyal subjects…

Simply put, chiefs did not want property rights security.

The quote is from Ghana but sounds like something that could be true elsewhere too. It is a useful reminder that if we start with an assumption that everyone wants clarity, well defined property rights and no conflict, we may be naive. That may not be how local politics work. 

 

Lomborg vs Krugman

Bjorn Lomborg visited UMB today and gave a presentation. Probably much the same as his TED talk. Opponents were not given much time, so I thought I should link to his debate with Paul Krugman, who makes some very good points:

Lomborg vs. Krugman - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

The "Secret" Copenhagen recordings:

It was  as we expected: China and India were key.

From the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 - posted by Der Spiegel

Commented in The Guardian:

For anything substantial to happen, the leaders of China and India must be convinced that the costs of global warming will be high for their countries. And it will be.

Duflo vs. Acemoglu: Randomized social trials or general equilibrium?

Esther Duflo gives a great talk on randomized experiments:




while Daron Acemoglu argues that more general equilibrium analysis and political economy is the way to go. The partial equilibrium results from  randomized trials are often not valid when scaled up:

For example, it may be the case that in partial equilibrium estimation focusing on …firm-level variation we found that …firms with better access to credit expanded, but this was at the expense of other …firms that did not have access to credit (that is, partly by “stealing business” from others).

And yet, the same response cannot take place in general equilibrium. As a consequence, when additional credit becomes available to a large fraction of… firms, total output may not increase by as much or at all.

One could thus imagine a situation in which partial equilibrium estimates of relaxing credit constraints are large, while the general equilibrium effects would be small.

I think Chris Blattman has a good point (as usual) when he suggests that when everybody else is rushing toward randomized trials, the smart thing to do for a young graduate student is to run the other way: towards general equilibrium.

Aid priorities in fragile states

Donors are setting themselves up to fail says Chris Blattman.  His advice:

Set goals for the rate of bureaucratic improvement, not the level of standards.

Keep education and poverty on the table, but make certain that law and order are first not fourth on the agenda. 

Finally, in place of direct aid, there’s a nice new trick: community-driven development.  

Is decline in rainfall the cause of poor growth in Sub Saharan Africa?

Yes, reduction in rainfall has contributed a large share of the gap in growth between Sub Saharan Africa and other developing countries of the world say Barrios, Bertinelli and Strobl in a new paper:

We examine the role of rainfall trends in poor growth performance of sub-Saharan African nations relative to other developing countries, using a new cross-country panel climatic data set in an empirical economic growth framework. Our results show that rainfall has been a significant determinant of poor economic growth for African nations but not for other countries. Depending on the benchmark measure of potential rainfall, we estimate that the direct impact under the scenario of no decline in rainfall would have resulted in a reduction of between around 15% and 40% of today's gap in African GDP per capita relative to the rest of the developing world.