I’m not an economist but I resonate with this- guilty as charged. I usually assume national figures are kind of the gospel truth and now that I think about it I’m not sure why...
“Strangely, economists pay a great deal of attention to statistical error when it comes to causal inference or survey data they collect themselves—but very little when it comes to national statistics.”
I’ve also been interested in economic growth as global health EA funding looks to increasingly be funneled into ways to improve this. Given that GDP data is so poor how on earth can we figure out what interventions might reliably improve growth in poor countries?
Wow thanks so much this is fantastic.
I’m not an economist but I resonate with this- guilty as charged. I usually assume national figures are kind of the gospel truth and now that I think about it I’m not sure why...
“Strangely, economists pay a great deal of attention to statistical error when it comes to causal inference or survey data they collect themselves—but very little when it comes to national statistics.”
I’ve also been interested in economic growth as global health EA funding looks to increasingly be funneled into ways to improve this. Given that GDP data is so poor how on earth can we figure out what interventions might reliably improve growth in poor countries?