Interesting post, very stimulating. A couple of thoughts:
Randomista is clearly not a neutral term, and I think constitutes a kind of name calling (e.g. Corbynista in the UK). Do proponents of RCT development use this term for themselves?
I’m not sure the ‘extreme scepticism’ (perhaps we could just call it scepticism?) argument is given a fair shake. Note that answering the question of what causes a country to grow is basically the big question of development economics, and as such it has received considerable attention from economists. In the Duflo and Banarjee piece, they argue that economists did find good low hanging fruit, notably misallocation of resources, but they argue this is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Economists are now struggling to find great opportunities in growth economics, and so there is a good case for looking at different approaches to development. This argument feels plausible to me, and it means you do not have to make the apparently crazy claim that economists never had significant influence on past effective growth policies.
I find it plausible that it would be valuable to get some more EA perspective on this issue, particularly for things like identifying particularly effective charities in this area. So I appreciate that contribution.
Randomista is clearly not a neutral term, and I think constitutes a kind of name calling
What’s your basis for claiming that ‘randomista’ is a non-neutral term? That is not my impression. A popular book that presents a positive picture of the field is titled Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Are Changing Our World. A recent article by one of the world’s most prestigious science journals uses the headline “‘Randomistas’ who used controlled trials to fight poverty win economics Nobel”, and includes the following line: “Kremer, Banerjee and Duflo are at the vanguard of the ‘randomista’ movement, which applies the methods of rigorous medical trials — in which large numbers of participants are randomized to receive either a particular intervention or a standard treatment, and followed over time — to social interventions such as improving education.” And Mark Ravallion, a leading authority on the economics of poverty, explicitly writes: “That term ‘randomistas’ is not pejorative.” (p. 2)
Randomista is clearly not a neutral term, and I think constitutes a kind of name calling (e.g. Corbynista in the UK). Do proponents of RCT development use this term for themselves?
We did not use it in a name calling way but rather as a neutral term to describe the intellectual movement. The term is used by mainstream economists who are critical in a respectful way, but also by randomistas themselves (note for instance that Duflo or Blattman have used the term).
However, it is true that
“the term was first used by another Nobel laureate and a long time and fierce critic of RCTs, Angus Deaton. According to Andrew Leigh, the author of a recent book titled, Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Are Changing Our World (2018), the term was meant mostly as an abuse which Leigh turned into a compliment. Leigh defined a Randomista as ‘’someone who believes we can find answers to important questions by tossing a coin and putting people into a treatment and control group, comparing the outcome, and then using the randomization to get a true causal effect.” (Social Science Space, 2018).”
A few people have mentioned that they think the title is inflammatory—it wasn’t intended as such. I had never thought that the term randomista is pejorative, e.g. you can find various examples of eg chris blattman owning it
I think even if it isn’t inflammatory, a different title might make the intended audience less defensive and more likely to change their minds as it isn’t about their identity, and more about how much weight to give RCTs versus other evaluation methods.
We did not use it in a name calling way but rather as a neutral term to describe the intellectual movement.
I have no doubt that the term was used in good faith. I apologise that my post was worded a bit poorly, so it sounded like I was accusing you of name-calling.
What’s your basis for claiming that ‘randomista’ is a non-neutral term?
The ‘-ista’ suffix sounds pejorative to me in English,like someone who is a zealous dogmatic advocate. Corbynista was the example I referred to, which is a term used often to in the UK to bash the left.
Etymologically, it sounds like my suspicion was correct (see Hauke’s post above). Of course these words often get reclaimed, and it appears that’s happened here too, hence why I asked whether the RCT proponents call themselves that.
It’s obviously not that important, and I don’t want to start a battle over words, but David makes a good point about how you engage your critics.
I’m not sure the ‘extreme scepticism’ (perhaps we could just call it scepticism?) argument is given a fair shake. Note that answering the question of what causes a country to grow is basically the big question of development economics, and as such it has received considerable attention from economists. In the Duflo and Banarjee piece, they argue that economists did find good low hanging fruit, notably misallocation of resources, but they argue this is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Economists are now struggling to find great opportunities in growth economics, and so there is a good case for looking at different approaches to development. This argument feels plausible to me, and it means you do not have to make the apparently crazy claim that economists never had significant influence on past effective growth policies.
Yes, I steelman this view in the Appendix (my view not necessarily John’s):
“Growth is not as neglected as RD, its low-hanging fruit have been picked, and the marginal dollar is not as effective”
“The evidence that macroeconomic policies, price distortions, financial policies, and trade openness have predictable, robust, and systematic effects on national growth rates is quite weak—except possibly in the extremes. Humongous fiscal deficits or autarkic trade policies can stifle economic growth, but moderate amounts of each are associated with widely varying economic outcomes.”
For instance, take the debate over trade liberalization. Recall that there was exceptionally weak global trade growth over recent years. Relatedly to the previous point, some argue that the “low-hanging fruit” of economic liberalization has already been picked. For instance, Weyl argues that in “Radical markets”:
“There is a consensus that the economic gains from further opening international trade in goods is minimal. Studies by the World Bank and prominent trade economists find that eliminating all remaining barriers to international trade in goods would increase global output by only a small amount, 0.3–4.1%. For global investment, the most optimistic estimate in the literature finds a 1.7% increase in global income from the elimination of barriers to capital mobility. Many believe that liberalization of international capital markets has gone too far. Three top IMF economists recently argued that even liberalization that has already taken place has brought limited gains to economies while generating inequality and instability.”
However, there is a debate about this and counterarguments:
Others argue that trade policy is still very relevant. Complete rich-country liberalization would, after a 15- year adjustment, increase income in developing countries by $100 billion per year, which is approximately twice current aid flows.
Also, guarding against protectionism and not losing the growth from trade might be very important: one study suggest that an “increase in tariffs to average bound rates of 44.7 percent in highly protectionist countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka would translate into a decline in real income in South Asia by 4.2 percent or welfare losses of close to US$125 billion relative to the baseline by 2020”.
Pritchett too seems much more optimistic about growth diagnostics and believes that while we might not know everything, we generally have a reasonable understanding of what causes growth and can even influence it.
Pritchett has edited a whole volume on growth diagnostics, including on the causes of growth in India.
Generally, my take is that growth diagnostics might get harder the richer a country becomes, by virtue of there being less and less data from other countries on how they developed. Thus, for the poorest countries, growth diagnostics might be easiest because we can draw lessons from all other countries on they developed.
Because effective altruism often tries to focus on the poorest countries, where a dollar goes 100x further than in rich countries, there is perhaps most hope for growth diagnostics.
So perhaps Duflo is right in that “Growth is likely to slow, at least in China and India, and there may be very little that anyone can do about it.” And this is actually born out in China’s and India’s performance on the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators, where they score 63th and 31st out of 189 countries, though being relatively poor. Thus, there seem no low hanging fruit to improve their economic policy.
But in the Appendix I have an analysis where I multiply population size of every country by their poverty multiplier (i.e. $1 is worth x times more going to this country than to the richest country in the sample. See appendix 2 of this doc for more info). This can then be ordered by the utility created by increasing GDP per capita by $1. India comes out on top because of its large population (1.3bn) and relatively low GDP per capita ($6,574). China comes 3rd, because though it has a large population, it is already relatively rich ($15,531). Recall that the problem is that we might not know how to increase growth in India and China.
However, there are many very poor countries in the top 10 sample such as DRC, Bangladesh and Ethiopia—very poor countries with +100 million population. This can then also multiplied further by neglectedness/tractability criteria. For instance, in a country’s ranking on the WB Doing Business ranking divided by GDP. There one can see that, relative to its GDP per capita, China already does quite well on the Doing Business ranking. However, the DRC and Ethiopia do poorly on the doing business ranking, even relative to their GDP. These countries could be most cost-effective for economic policy assistance.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center is actually doing something along the lines of assisting countries / highlighting the need to improve their economic policies. For instance they are helping Bangladesh to improve its economy and prioritize which policies would have the highest social, economic and environmental benefits for every dollar spent. On top of their list is e-procurement across government and land records digitization—related to criteria used to rank countries on the WB Doing Business index.
Interesting post, very stimulating. A couple of thoughts:
Randomista is clearly not a neutral term, and I think constitutes a kind of name calling (e.g. Corbynista in the UK). Do proponents of RCT development use this term for themselves?
I’m not sure the ‘extreme scepticism’ (perhaps we could just call it scepticism?) argument is given a fair shake. Note that answering the question of what causes a country to grow is basically the big question of development economics, and as such it has received considerable attention from economists. In the Duflo and Banarjee piece, they argue that economists did find good low hanging fruit, notably misallocation of resources, but they argue this is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Economists are now struggling to find great opportunities in growth economics, and so there is a good case for looking at different approaches to development. This argument feels plausible to me, and it means you do not have to make the apparently crazy claim that economists never had significant influence on past effective growth policies.
I find it plausible that it would be valuable to get some more EA perspective on this issue, particularly for things like identifying particularly effective charities in this area. So I appreciate that contribution.
What’s your basis for claiming that ‘randomista’ is a non-neutral term? That is not my impression. A popular book that presents a positive picture of the field is titled Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Are Changing Our World. A recent article by one of the world’s most prestigious science journals uses the headline “‘Randomistas’ who used controlled trials to fight poverty win economics Nobel”, and includes the following line: “Kremer, Banerjee and Duflo are at the vanguard of the ‘randomista’ movement, which applies the methods of rigorous medical trials — in which large numbers of participants are randomized to receive either a particular intervention or a standard treatment, and followed over time — to social interventions such as improving education.” And Mark Ravallion, a leading authority on the economics of poverty, explicitly writes: “That term ‘randomistas’ is not pejorative.” (p. 2)
We did not use it in a name calling way but rather as a neutral term to describe the intellectual movement. The term is used by mainstream economists who are critical in a respectful way, but also by randomistas themselves (note for instance that Duflo or Blattman have used the term).
However, it is true that
A few people have mentioned that they think the title is inflammatory—it wasn’t intended as such. I had never thought that the term randomista is pejorative, e.g. you can find various examples of eg chris blattman owning it
I think even if it isn’t inflammatory, a different title might make the intended audience less defensive and more likely to change their minds as it isn’t about their identity, and more about how much weight to give RCTs versus other evaluation methods.
Yes I think that’s a fair point
I have no doubt that the term was used in good faith. I apologise that my post was worded a bit poorly, so it sounded like I was accusing you of name-calling.
The ‘-ista’ suffix sounds pejorative to me in English,like someone who is a zealous dogmatic advocate. Corbynista was the example I referred to, which is a term used often to in the UK to bash the left.
Etymologically, it sounds like my suspicion was correct (see Hauke’s post above). Of course these words often get reclaimed, and it appears that’s happened here too, hence why I asked whether the RCT proponents call themselves that.
It’s obviously not that important, and I don’t want to start a battle over words, but David makes a good point about how you engage your critics.
Yes, I steelman this view in the Appendix (my view not necessarily John’s):
However, there is a debate about this and counterarguments:
Pritchett too seems much more optimistic about growth diagnostics and believes that while we might not know everything, we generally have a reasonable understanding of what causes growth and can even influence it.
Pritchett has edited a whole volume on growth diagnostics, including on the causes of growth in India.
Generally, my take is that growth diagnostics might get harder the richer a country becomes, by virtue of there being less and less data from other countries on how they developed. Thus, for the poorest countries, growth diagnostics might be easiest because we can draw lessons from all other countries on they developed.
Because effective altruism often tries to focus on the poorest countries, where a dollar goes 100x further than in rich countries, there is perhaps most hope for growth diagnostics.
So perhaps Duflo is right in that “Growth is likely to slow, at least in China and India, and there may be very little that anyone can do about it.” And this is actually born out in China’s and India’s performance on the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators, where they score 63th and 31st out of 189 countries, though being relatively poor. Thus, there seem no low hanging fruit to improve their economic policy.
But in the Appendix I have an analysis where I multiply population size of every country by their poverty multiplier (i.e. $1 is worth x times more going to this country than to the richest country in the sample. See appendix 2 of this doc for more info). This can then be ordered by the utility created by increasing GDP per capita by $1. India comes out on top because of its large population (1.3bn) and relatively low GDP per capita ($6,574). China comes 3rd, because though it has a large population, it is already relatively rich ($15,531). Recall that the problem is that we might not know how to increase growth in India and China.
However, there are many very poor countries in the top 10 sample such as DRC, Bangladesh and Ethiopia—very poor countries with +100 million population. This can then also multiplied further by neglectedness/tractability criteria. For instance, in a country’s ranking on the WB Doing Business ranking divided by GDP. There one can see that, relative to its GDP per capita, China already does quite well on the Doing Business ranking. However, the DRC and Ethiopia do poorly on the doing business ranking, even relative to their GDP. These countries could be most cost-effective for economic policy assistance.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center is actually doing something along the lines of assisting countries / highlighting the need to improve their economic policies. For instance they are helping Bangladesh to improve its economy and prioritize which policies would have the highest social, economic and environmental benefits for every dollar spent. On top of their list is e-procurement across government and land records digitization—related to criteria used to rank countries on the WB Doing Business index.