China’s growth acceleration from 1977 onwards produced $14 trillion NPV in cumulative economic output. Thus, if the only thing the economics profession achieved in 50 years was to increase by 4 percentage points the probability that the Chinese government shifted to this new economic strategy, then it would have had greater economic benefits than the Graduation approach.
I think this argument equivocates between the probability of any reform and the probability of a particular reform. Because the reform policy was academic-economist-inflected, denying the influence of economists sounds silly. But I think we should instead think about two separate chunks:
the wedge between the status quo growth trajectory and the reform trajectory that would have obtained had Chinese reformers only had e.g. 1960s economics knowledge
the wedge between the 1960s-style-reform trajectory and the actual reform trajectory
Economists since the 1960s get 100% of the credit for the second wedge, but I think it’s plausibly extremely small (especially since Chinese reforms didn’t hew particularly closely to economic orthodoxy in the details). Economists since the 1960s only get any credit for the first wedge insofar as they were the impetus for major economic reforms. My limited knowledge of Chinese economic history suggests that this probability could easily be very small.
Phrased differently, we can model this as:
Without post-1960s economists:
Status quo had X% chance of continuing
Reform had (1-X)% chance of happening and represented a $Z gain
With post-1960s economists:
Status quo had X-A% chance of continuing
Reform had (1-X)+A% chance of continuing and represented a $Z+B gain
I can easily imagine A and B both being quite small but the original presentation disguises that.
I think this argument equivocates between the probability of any reform and the probability of a particular reform. Because the reform policy was academic-economist-inflected, denying the influence of economists sounds silly. But I think we should instead think about two separate chunks:
the wedge between the status quo growth trajectory and the reform trajectory that would have obtained had Chinese reformers only had e.g. 1960s economics knowledge
the wedge between the 1960s-style-reform trajectory and the actual reform trajectory
Economists since the 1960s get 100% of the credit for the second wedge, but I think it’s plausibly extremely small (especially since Chinese reforms didn’t hew particularly closely to economic orthodoxy in the details). Economists since the 1960s only get any credit for the first wedge insofar as they were the impetus for major economic reforms. My limited knowledge of Chinese economic history suggests that this probability could easily be very small.
Phrased differently, we can model this as:
Without post-1960s economists:
Status quo had X% chance of continuing
Reform had (1-X)% chance of happening and represented a $Z gain
With post-1960s economists:
Status quo had X-A% chance of continuing
Reform had (1-X)+A% chance of continuing and represented a $Z+B gain
I can easily imagine A and B both being quite small but the original presentation disguises that.