I think it’s much more true that non-market solutions—or indeed anything that doesn’t look like unequivocal advocacy for markets—aren’t given enough consideration by Bryan Caplan!
One of his own examples of RCTs is the most market-based hypothesis imaginable: testing why poor Kenyans won’t buy a commercial product that saves them money and concluding they’re much more likely to if they have access to credit! The implicit conclusion of an intervention failing a test of cost-effectiveness is in fact, for the government (or private funders) to spend less money on it. And many RCTs—particularly under the auspices of EA—are funded by private individuals looking to allocate their own market-generated money according to their own goals. Some of them, like GiveDirectly’s, are based on hypotheses that market participation absolutely does offer people in poverty more choice about how to escape than centrally planned interventions.
There are valid criticisms of RCTs as reductionist and missing bigger pictures, but the better ones don’t argue microeconomists do empirical microeconomics research out of hidden anticapitalist agendas!
I think it’s much more true that non-market solutions—or indeed anything that doesn’t look like unequivocal advocacy for markets—aren’t given enough consideration by Bryan Caplan!
One of his own examples of RCTs is the most market-based hypothesis imaginable: testing why poor Kenyans won’t buy a commercial product that saves them money and concluding they’re much more likely to if they have access to credit! The implicit conclusion of an intervention failing a test of cost-effectiveness is in fact, for the government (or private funders) to spend less money on it. And many RCTs—particularly under the auspices of EA—are funded by private individuals looking to allocate their own market-generated money according to their own goals. Some of them, like GiveDirectly’s, are based on hypotheses that market participation absolutely does offer people in poverty more choice about how to escape than centrally planned interventions.
There are valid criticisms of RCTs as reductionist and missing bigger pictures, but the better ones don’t argue microeconomists do empirical microeconomics research out of hidden anticapitalist agendas!