One of the main motivators for starting this blog was to write a series of posts on development economics. Well, we’ve been going for about 18 months now, and so far I have completely failed in that mission.
But don’t worry! It’s still on the docket. I just may have underestimated the challenge.
While you wait for the good stuff, here are some of my considerations:
Planned Series
My original plan was to essentially do a layman’s taxonomy of the field, where I would lay out what seem to be the leading schools of thought and where they stand on the biggest questions.
As with all my posts, it is important for me to be writing original stuff (otherwise what’s the point? I’m not going to be “out-writing” existing/popular blogs, so I should find some comparative advantage). The good news is I have not found any blogs that try to tackle things at this high level. The ones I’ve found tend to be more narrowly focused, and I really have not found many development-focused blogs in general (I need to look way harder though). This is odd to me considering how popular some of the biggest development books seem to be and how important economic growth is to the world's well-being.
I haven’t decided what the final list of schools will be (there’s obviously lots of overlap, and different schools have more to say on different questions), but I was thinking it would look something like:
Geographists: Varying climates, ecologies, and geographies explain much of past and present growth
Key players: Diamond, Sachs, Zeihan?
Institutionalists: Property rights, rule of law, and other societal rules are the key determinants of growth
One size fits all (enough): Washington Consensus, Acemoglu/Robinson?
Free Marketers: Not sure?
Different Strokes for Folks (Growth Diagnostics?): Rodrik, Pritchett, Ang
Culturalists: Valuing things that lead to growth (as a society) is a/the key determinant of growth
Key players: Mokyr, McCloskey, Henrich, Clark
Randomistas: We don’t understand how to move the levers of growth around very well, but we can do rigorous experiments that “prove” certain smaller-scale interventions are helpful
Key players: Banerjee, Duflo, many more
Foreign Aiders/Big Pushers: Developing countries are stuck in a poverty trap which we can break using a relatively small amount of money from developed country governments
Key Players: Sachs, Collier?
Easterly and Moyo seem more defined by opposition to this school than membership in another one
Industrial Policistas: Governments should actively assist (via finance and regulations) domestic firms, which will lead to growth and (hopefully) global competitiveness
Key players: Studwell, others?
Educationalists: Education is a key institution and necessary for continued growth
Key Players: Glaeser? Pritchett?
Immigrationalists: We don’t understand how to move the levers of growth around very well, but we can let motivated people from developing countries into developed countries and this will make everyone better off
Key Players: Pritchett? Bryan Caplan?
Persistencers: Historical events like slavery and colonialism have impacted cultures and institutions in ways that are still inhibiting growth today
Key Players: Nunn, Dell
Geneticists: Some societies have evolved traits that lead to more growth than others
Key Players: Clark?
I’m sure these groups will change as I read more, and I’ll have more names to add as well.
I was thinking I would start with a post introducing these schools and the “key questions”. After the intro, I’d do posts on each question:
Why the Industrial Revolution happened when it did
Why it happened where it did
The Great Divergence
Economic growth in developing countries today
Economic growth in “developed” countries today
From there, who knows? There are obviously tons of subtopics I could dive into within each of those questions.
Hurry up already
So why haven’t I written anything yet?
Well… perhaps creating a taxonomy of a field is not the best starting point! The more I read the more unqualified I feel and the more new things I find to read! I’ve read around 20 development books, as well as a bunch of articles and blogs. I’ve read something like 5-10 journal articles/papers, but I’ve really been prioritizing books and blogs, which will have to change soon.
I have 12 books on my to-read list, a bunch of articles/blogs, and 50+ papers to get through, and I’m skeptical those numbers will ever go down (because everything I read cites other things that I then want to read). So I can’t plan on waiting until I get caught up. Ultimately, I need to evaluate where my current understanding is at and where I think it needs to be before I start this series.
First, how much do I know? Development Economics isn’t really an undergraduate major in most places, so I think at this point I know more than people who took a few development classes as part of their Econ majors (especially since they’ve forgotten most of it). They might have some tools/knowledge that I’m not getting through this book/blog approach (see next section) though. What I’m most uncertain about is how my knowledge compares to people with advanced degrees in development related stuff (which would mostly be professors or people working for NGOs and nonprofits I think?). There are obviously people in each specific area of development who know WAYYYYY more than me, but I’m hoping that I am somewhat close to approaching the knowledge these people might have about development literature outside their subfield (ie maybe I know as much about the Randomistas as people who study the Industrial Revolution and vice versa).
Second, how much do I need to know? None of the people who know more than me are writing something like this, so I certainly don’t need to get to their level before I start. But I’d like to get to a point where generalists with more breadth and specialists in each area would read my work without their eyes rolling out of their heads. That’s really the ultimate goal. But how do I know when I’m there?!?!
Lagging Indicators
There are a couple ways to figure out when “I’m there”.
Sadly for my introverted self, talking to developmenty people is probably the best way. The only problem is I don’t know any of these people. I might be comfortable talking to a friend or coworker about this stuff, but I certainly wouldn’t want to waste a professor’s time having them read my crappy blog and asking them what they think the key questions/schools are in development econ. I guess this is something I should think about though. Maybe I can find a PhD student (or someone like myself who’s just really interested in development stuff and looking for people to talk to) who will be friends with me or something :)
Second, taking some online (or U of U) courses would give me an idea of where I’m at knowledge-wise. If all the lectures and readings are familiar to me, I’m probably good to get started. As I mentioned above, I’m curious if there will be different types of information and ways of thinking in a class compared to what I get through independent reading. Talking to classmates, listening to lectures, and doing assignments are all fairly different from how I’m doing things now.
Intermediate Output
With all that said, it sucks to do so much reading and thinking with nothing to show from it. I don’t really like the idea of posting an unfinished taxonomy or something like “here are my current overall thoughts subject to change”. I could do some deep dives on specific things I’ve read, but I’d rather do that after I’ve laid the foundation of the series.
Book (or paper) reviews seem like the best (and only good) possible option. And in fact I am planning on writing one of these very soon! I wish I had thought of this before because there’s no way I’m going back and doing this for all the books I’ve already read (though I do have lots of notes from each book and wrote “personal reviews” for most of them).
However, book reviews are a writing format I haven’t figured out yet (given my current writing ability, this isn’t a trivial point). My typical post has is intended to have a clear structure and key points, whereas book reviews don’t seem to work in quite the same way. The most common approach is to start with a summary (after the intro), then talk about some interesting parts, and then finish with some personal analysis and other critiques of the book you’ve found. I will probably try to stick to this approach because I need some structure. BUT, when I try this, it ends up feeling like a pretty boring read and I usually don’t have a ton to say on the analysis portion (“if the thesis is true, idk if it is, then woah”).
We’ll give it a shot though! IF I can figure out how to write interesting reviews that would be a big step for me.
How we got here
Perhaps the conclusion is an odd time to mention how this all started, but here we are. I’m pretty bad at remembering where my interests sprung up from and there’s no exception here. I think it's often super intriguing and enlightening to try to think back and remember how you got interested in something though (ditto for hearing the origin stories of other people’s interests), so it’s worth a look down memory lane.
When I did my undergrad in Economics, I didn’t take a single course related to development or economic history, and I don’t think I was particularly aware of those sub-fields or why I might care about them (I view this as a serious failure of our current college system, but let’s move on). After college, even as I became more interested in effective altruism (which has obvious development tie-ins) and a few econ blogs (like MR), it still wasn’t really something I had thought too much about.
Strangely enough, How Asia Works was actually the first development book I read (a little over 3 years ago). I think I must have found it on MR when I was trying to find “country books”. I liked it well enough, but it still didn’t really get me going down this path. I read and really liked Guns, Germs, and Steel around six months later and I think that definitely piqued my interest. Though it wasn’t until a year later when I read Poor Economics and Why Nations Fail that I was hooked and started to make an intentional effort to find everything I “should” read and to start thinking about things more seriously.
Those 3 books (GGS, WNF, Poor Economics) seem like a great trilogy for people to get a taste of some of the different schools in a very easy to read and engaging format. I know people say big picture books are dangerous (especially if you don’t have background in the field; since they make some big claims that you can’t evaluate), but I think if you read several of them in the same field and see a lot of incompatible claims you will end up confused, instead of overconfident that you understand a huge body of research after a bit of effort. And hopefully that confusion leads you to seek out more details like it did for me :)
I’ll wrap up with a few additional reads I’ve really enjoyed:
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Greg Clark)
EA Forum post on Randomista vs Growth Economics: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bsE5t6qhGC65fEpzN/growth-and-the-case-against-randomistas
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (Henrich)
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (Ang)
Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste (Spears)
Lant Pritchett Ideas of India podcast: https://www.discoursemagazine.com/economics/2022/03/17/ideas-of-india-where-did-development-economics-go-wrong/
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