“To create conditions conducive to development, we should have a moderately strong prior in favor of doing things almost every developed country has done, and a moderately strong prior against doing things almost no developed countries have done.”
I’m not familiar with Rodrik’s work, but my mental model of Pritchett would claim that we should try to find similarities between very different countries that successfully developed, and that such similarities do exist. (My model could be way off, and it doesn’t account for most of how I judge development projects.)
I actually didn’t read Pritchett as having anything against LLINs, because “stopping malarial mosquitoes from biting people” seems like a thing developed countries generally do. (If he’s actually against LLINs and a big promoter of eradication strategies, I’m reading him wrong.)
I also imagine him trying to think backwards from end states: “What would a developed, wealthy Kenya look like? What sorts of work do people do in this hypothetical country? What role do women’s self-help groups play? If they’ve faded away, what role would they have had in enabling development? Why do we think they’d have had that role if we don’t have evidence that women’s self-help groups have enabled development in other places?”
I see his argument as:
“To create conditions conducive to development, we should have a moderately strong prior in favor of doing things almost every developed country has done, and a moderately strong prior against doing things almost no developed countries have done.”
I’m not familiar with Rodrik’s work, but my mental model of Pritchett would claim that we should try to find similarities between very different countries that successfully developed, and that such similarities do exist. (My model could be way off, and it doesn’t account for most of how I judge development projects.)
I actually didn’t read Pritchett as having anything against LLINs, because “stopping malarial mosquitoes from biting people” seems like a thing developed countries generally do. (If he’s actually against LLINs and a big promoter of eradication strategies, I’m reading him wrong.)
I also imagine him trying to think backwards from end states: “What would a developed, wealthy Kenya look like? What sorts of work do people do in this hypothetical country? What role do women’s self-help groups play? If they’ve faded away, what role would they have had in enabling development? Why do we think they’d have had that role if we don’t have evidence that women’s self-help groups have enabled development in other places?”