(Context: I’ve been engaging in “RD” research since my econ PhD focusing on development, and in my past 2.5 years working at IDinsight. All views are my own.)
Thanks a lot for the post. I agree that a more hits-based approach to development within EA is needed. GiveWell says they eventually want to look at economic growth, but they’re starting with health policy which is easier to evaluate and it’s unclear how long it will take them to look at policies aiming at increasing growth, so it seems valuable for other EAs to look at it in the meantime.
A few questions / comments (apology for the length):
(Perhaps answers to some questions here will only emerge after you do some more research. I wrote this before looking at other comments to avoid being influenced, and decided to just post it all to reflect the full set of my reactions even though some content overlaps, so feel free to not comment on what you already responded to.)
I’m curious what methodologies you have in mind in assessing donation opportunities on growth.
I’m not sure what methodologies GiveWell is using to assess policy interventions since they haven’t published an intervention or charity report on this—they have given grants to Center for Pesticide Suicide Prevention and JPAL’s Government Partnership Initiative but haven’t published reports as detailed as for their top charities or interventions.
Slightly less relevant, but in terms of what econ academia will do about it: I was initially pessimistic as development economists may not like methods that aren’t “rigorous” as RCTs as they like to be scientific and not very speculative, but I wonder if this is just because we are currently in a “randomista” paradigm in development econ, and there is a chance that it will shift to being more macro like before. And I don’t have a great sense of the track record of macroeconomics in shaping policy—clearly it’s a very hard field, but it seems to have had some positive influence.)
What do you think of growth diagnostics? Clearly it’s more macro and has lower level of certainty and rigor as RCTs, but I wonder 1) what you think of their theory, 2) what the track record has been in applying it, 3) what barriers there are barriers in applying it (e.g. governments being uninterested)? (I’m not very familiar with the specifics; I would appreciate if you could link some good intro material.)
Apart from knowing what specific policies help increase growth (which we don’t know very well yet), how to get them adopted is a major issue. Apart from knowing what China, India, and the Asian tigers did right, we need to understand why their leaders did the right thing at that time—how much of that is a function of the leaders’ characteristics (which we can’t change) and how much traction outside influence can have. I’m not sure what’s the best way to get them adopted: trying to replicate what economists did to influence China and India (though they did seek out advice unlike many other countries), understanding how governments work and finding effective ways to lobby governments that otherwise wouldn’t be receptive, promoting better institutions and governance (e.g. voter information interventions) to help select better leaders who are more inclined to do helpful reforms (could be political so more caution is needed) etc.
I’m glad you mention other aspects of welfare, and agree that overall “development”, for which GDP per capita is a main indicator / correlate, touches on all of them. It reminds me of what Esther Duflo said in this interview :”I think one should have a healthy respect for growth rates and treat them as useful companions and people that you have to make work for you. I think we should think of growth rate as chief of staff, not something I think we should fall in love with.” Pursuing growth is overall a good bet, but we should always keep in mind what we ultimately care about is a “social transformation” (as your Pritchett quote says) that improves human welfare.
In particular, environment and public health seem very important for welfare in developing countries (e.g. cost of air pollution in China, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa). How to address these issues also deserves attentions from EAs (GiveWell is looking into tobacco and lead regulations and may one day look into these; just like for growth, the non-EA development and philanthropy sector have worked on it, which doesn’t mean EA can’t add value). Agree with you that we should think separately about growth and climate change, but I also think if we figure out how to influence governments to adopt growth-friendly policies, it’s important to think about whether one can promote sustainable growth, environmental policies, climate change adaptation etc. with this opportunity.
Also, I strongly recommend you frame your message in a way that’s less antagonistic to the randomista development community in future work (e.g. something other than “against randomista development”). You may think a more controversial title can catch more attention, and some other RCT skeptics have done it (e.g. Lant Pritchett, Angus Deaton), but I don’t think this is the right strategy, and it just makes it harder for people to talk to each other (e.g. I have heard complaints about Pritchett’s rhetoric among the randomista community which probably makes them less likely to want to give his other ideas a serious look). Clearly you do see “RD” as useful in improving the huge amount of funding and many organizations in the development space and creating a nontrivial amount of positive impact in human welfare (e.g. GiveWell top charities, Evidence Action, some JPAL/IPA partners), and that randomistas are motivated by such impact potential in their work. I’m really glad you point out that we need to invest more in a higher risk and higher turns approach in our portfolio, in addition to the “safe assets” of “RD”. But I think economics academia and the EA movement are harmed by antagonistic feelings among people holding different opinions that want to achieve fundamentally the same goals. (No one is perfectly rational, so even if an “RD” economist—which currently many mainstream development economists are—tries to be rational they may at first find your message hard to stomach; we don’t need antagonistic-sounding headlines to make that even harder and create enemies in people who could become allies. Of course, they do potentially compete for human and monetary resources in the development field, but we don’t need to exacerbate whatever rivalry they already have.)
(One example where growth-friendly policies and “RD” can complement one another: investing in education may be important for long-term growth as a country would want to upgrade from labor-intensive sector to human capital intensive sectors, and “RD” can help find the answer to what education interventions the government should invest in conditional on trying to improve education. Arguably Singapore etc. did this without advice from “RD”, but “RD” may be able to help with improving education in other developing countries like they already do.)
Overall I am with you in thinking that more research is needed and am very excited that someone in EA is thinking of working on this, including proposing to research the neglectedness and tractability of the field from an EA perspective. (I’ve long felt the lack of hits-based approach in development in EA and not sure what can be done about it as GiveWell, the main EA development research org, is expanding into new territories at a slow-ish rate—which might well be the right choice given their capacity constraint—and Open Phil has largely deferred development research to GiveWell. I would guess some EAs interested in development and some others in the development sector have similarly thoughts, but feel unsure or pessimistic about the tractability of more speculative approaches like Banerjee, Duflo, Blattman, Glennerster etc. -- more research is definitely helpful in updating people’s views.)
Hello, thanks for these comments! On the antagonistic point, I personally don’t think the post is antagonistic. I think calling something “the case against view x” is what you would expect of a post criticising a particular view. I also don’t think there are any parts of the substantive post itself that involve any snark, sneering or things like that. Where we do put forward critical opinions, they seem to me to be stated neutrally and directly, without flourish, rather than in an antagonistic way.
This being said, it has been mentioned to me that stuff I write can come off as antagonistic when it isn’t meant to be, and I come from philosophy where discussion norms are highly confrontational, so I am open to suggestions as to how this piece could be less confrontational.
I agree that we should keep our focus on human welfare rather than on gdp per capita as such, and that proposed research agenda should consider a broad question such as “how can we ensure democratic, sustainable and equitably shared growth?” As we say, I do think this is best approached outside of RCTs.
(Context: I’ve been engaging in “RD” research since my econ PhD focusing on development, and in my past 2.5 years working at IDinsight. All views are my own.)
Thanks a lot for the post. I agree that a more hits-based approach to development within EA is needed. GiveWell says they eventually want to look at economic growth, but they’re starting with health policy which is easier to evaluate and it’s unclear how long it will take them to look at policies aiming at increasing growth, so it seems valuable for other EAs to look at it in the meantime.
A few questions / comments (apology for the length):
(Perhaps answers to some questions here will only emerge after you do some more research. I wrote this before looking at other comments to avoid being influenced, and decided to just post it all to reflect the full set of my reactions even though some content overlaps, so feel free to not comment on what you already responded to.)
I’m curious what methodologies you have in mind in assessing donation opportunities on growth.
I’m not sure what methodologies GiveWell is using to assess policy interventions since they haven’t published an intervention or charity report on this—they have given grants to Center for Pesticide Suicide Prevention and JPAL’s Government Partnership Initiative but haven’t published reports as detailed as for their top charities or interventions.
Slightly less relevant, but in terms of what econ academia will do about it: I was initially pessimistic as development economists may not like methods that aren’t “rigorous” as RCTs as they like to be scientific and not very speculative, but I wonder if this is just because we are currently in a “randomista” paradigm in development econ, and there is a chance that it will shift to being more macro like before. And I don’t have a great sense of the track record of macroeconomics in shaping policy—clearly it’s a very hard field, but it seems to have had some positive influence.)
What do you think of growth diagnostics? Clearly it’s more macro and has lower level of certainty and rigor as RCTs, but I wonder 1) what you think of their theory, 2) what the track record has been in applying it, 3) what barriers there are barriers in applying it (e.g. governments being uninterested)? (I’m not very familiar with the specifics; I would appreciate if you could link some good intro material.)
Apart from knowing what specific policies help increase growth (which we don’t know very well yet), how to get them adopted is a major issue. Apart from knowing what China, India, and the Asian tigers did right, we need to understand why their leaders did the right thing at that time—how much of that is a function of the leaders’ characteristics (which we can’t change) and how much traction outside influence can have. I’m not sure what’s the best way to get them adopted: trying to replicate what economists did to influence China and India (though they did seek out advice unlike many other countries), understanding how governments work and finding effective ways to lobby governments that otherwise wouldn’t be receptive, promoting better institutions and governance (e.g. voter information interventions) to help select better leaders who are more inclined to do helpful reforms (could be political so more caution is needed) etc.
I’m glad you mention other aspects of welfare, and agree that overall “development”, for which GDP per capita is a main indicator / correlate, touches on all of them. It reminds me of what Esther Duflo said in this interview :”I think one should have a healthy respect for growth rates and treat them as useful companions and people that you have to make work for you. I think we should think of growth rate as chief of staff, not something I think we should fall in love with.” Pursuing growth is overall a good bet, but we should always keep in mind what we ultimately care about is a “social transformation” (as your Pritchett quote says) that improves human welfare.
In particular, environment and public health seem very important for welfare in developing countries (e.g. cost of air pollution in China, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa). How to address these issues also deserves attentions from EAs (GiveWell is looking into tobacco and lead regulations and may one day look into these; just like for growth, the non-EA development and philanthropy sector have worked on it, which doesn’t mean EA can’t add value). Agree with you that we should think separately about growth and climate change, but I also think if we figure out how to influence governments to adopt growth-friendly policies, it’s important to think about whether one can promote sustainable growth, environmental policies, climate change adaptation etc. with this opportunity.
Also, I strongly recommend you frame your message in a way that’s less antagonistic to the randomista development community in future work (e.g. something other than “against randomista development”). You may think a more controversial title can catch more attention, and some other RCT skeptics have done it (e.g. Lant Pritchett, Angus Deaton), but I don’t think this is the right strategy, and it just makes it harder for people to talk to each other (e.g. I have heard complaints about Pritchett’s rhetoric among the randomista community which probably makes them less likely to want to give his other ideas a serious look). Clearly you do see “RD” as useful in improving the huge amount of funding and many organizations in the development space and creating a nontrivial amount of positive impact in human welfare (e.g. GiveWell top charities, Evidence Action, some JPAL/IPA partners), and that randomistas are motivated by such impact potential in their work. I’m really glad you point out that we need to invest more in a higher risk and higher turns approach in our portfolio, in addition to the “safe assets” of “RD”. But I think economics academia and the EA movement are harmed by antagonistic feelings among people holding different opinions that want to achieve fundamentally the same goals. (No one is perfectly rational, so even if an “RD” economist—which currently many mainstream development economists are—tries to be rational they may at first find your message hard to stomach; we don’t need antagonistic-sounding headlines to make that even harder and create enemies in people who could become allies. Of course, they do potentially compete for human and monetary resources in the development field, but we don’t need to exacerbate whatever rivalry they already have.)
(One example where growth-friendly policies and “RD” can complement one another: investing in education may be important for long-term growth as a country would want to upgrade from labor-intensive sector to human capital intensive sectors, and “RD” can help find the answer to what education interventions the government should invest in conditional on trying to improve education. Arguably Singapore etc. did this without advice from “RD”, but “RD” may be able to help with improving education in other developing countries like they already do.)
Overall I am with you in thinking that more research is needed and am very excited that someone in EA is thinking of working on this, including proposing to research the neglectedness and tractability of the field from an EA perspective. (I’ve long felt the lack of hits-based approach in development in EA and not sure what can be done about it as GiveWell, the main EA development research org, is expanding into new territories at a slow-ish rate—which might well be the right choice given their capacity constraint—and Open Phil has largely deferred development research to GiveWell. I would guess some EAs interested in development and some others in the development sector have similarly thoughts, but feel unsure or pessimistic about the tractability of more speculative approaches like Banerjee, Duflo, Blattman, Glennerster etc. -- more research is definitely helpful in updating people’s views.)
Hello, thanks for these comments! On the antagonistic point, I personally don’t think the post is antagonistic. I think calling something “the case against view x” is what you would expect of a post criticising a particular view. I also don’t think there are any parts of the substantive post itself that involve any snark, sneering or things like that. Where we do put forward critical opinions, they seem to me to be stated neutrally and directly, without flourish, rather than in an antagonistic way.
This being said, it has been mentioned to me that stuff I write can come off as antagonistic when it isn’t meant to be, and I come from philosophy where discussion norms are highly confrontational, so I am open to suggestions as to how this piece could be less confrontational.
I agree that we should keep our focus on human welfare rather than on gdp per capita as such, and that proposed research agenda should consider a broad question such as “how can we ensure democratic, sustainable and equitably shared growth?” As we say, I do think this is best approached outside of RCTs.