Hey all, really enjoyed this piece and love that y’all are working on long-term evaluations. Johannes, I know your work from the GiveDirectly papers and it’s been interesting to see you shift gears.
Few small comments.
First, the actual comparison I want to see between Malengo & cash transfers is on a per-dollar basis. I’m confident that 12K of tuition is more welfare-improving than a $500 cash transfer. but is it 24X better? Thinking about this as a potential donor, that’s what I want to know. You can tease it out from the post, but is there a way to foreground the comparison?
Recognizing this, many high-income countries are actively working to reduce migration barriers
Are they? And is this really why? You might say that many forces within high-income countries are working to liberalize immigration—for a pretty wide array of reasons! -- but also that they’re being opposed every step of the way. And I can’t think of “many” high-income places where the push towards liberalization is so universal that we can say that the countries as a whole are “actively working to reduce migration barriers.” We might more accurately say that “Recognizing this, many advocates in high-income countries are actively pushing to reduce immigration barriers.”
Studies that permit causal claims
I understand what this means because I have a social science background, but I think it might be clearer to a general audience to say “studies that successfully identify casual effects”.
Specifically, education itself has large returns, on the order of 10% per year.
As Tyler Cowen notes, Caplanian views on education are more in vogue lately...so maybe this can be qualified to specify where and when those estimates are from? The first thing that came to mind for me was the reasonably well-established finding that 2-3 years of a B.A. produces very little additional return beyond a HS degree, because so much of the value of a college degree is the signal of ability to do something to completion.
Just asking, do these studies permit causal claims? I read the abstracts and I have no idea if these are good estimation strategies. I estimate that it would take many hours (days?) to get a good sense of their credibility. Imagine that I’m a determined skeptic. Would this evidence persuade? I am strongly pro-immigration but I’m also kind of a randomista so this evidence is a bit hard to parse. (I fully understand why this level of detail was beyond the post though.)
Anyway overall I love the thrust of this project and I look forward to hearing more updates!
Hey all, really enjoyed this piece and love that y’all are working on long-term evaluations. Johannes, I know your work from the GiveDirectly papers and it’s been interesting to see you shift gears.
Few small comments.
First, the actual comparison I want to see between Malengo & cash transfers is on a per-dollar basis. I’m confident that 12K of tuition is more welfare-improving than a $500 cash transfer. but is it 24X better? Thinking about this as a potential donor, that’s what I want to know. You can tease it out from the post, but is there a way to foreground the comparison?
Are they? And is this really why? You might say that many forces within high-income countries are working to liberalize immigration—for a pretty wide array of reasons! -- but also that they’re being opposed every step of the way. And I can’t think of “many” high-income places where the push towards liberalization is so universal that we can say that the countries as a whole are “actively working to reduce migration barriers.” We might more accurately say that “Recognizing this, many advocates in high-income countries are actively pushing to reduce immigration barriers.”
I understand what this means because I have a social science background, but I think it might be clearer to a general audience to say “studies that successfully identify casual effects”.
As Tyler Cowen notes, Caplanian views on education are more in vogue lately...so maybe this can be qualified to specify where and when those estimates are from? The first thing that came to mind for me was the reasonably well-established finding that 2-3 years of a B.A. produces very little additional return beyond a HS degree, because so much of the value of a college degree is the signal of ability to do something to completion.
Just asking, do these studies permit causal claims? I read the abstracts and I have no idea if these are good estimation strategies. I estimate that it would take many hours (days?) to get a good sense of their credibility. Imagine that I’m a determined skeptic. Would this evidence persuade? I am strongly pro-immigration but I’m also kind of a randomista so this evidence is a bit hard to parse. (I fully understand why this level of detail was beyond the post though.)
Anyway overall I love the thrust of this project and I look forward to hearing more updates!