In an attempt to wrap up the endless back and forth on the Huffington Post (my latest post went up today), here is a cheat sheet of how the debate proceeded. Since this was produced by one of the debate participants, it might be a trifle one-sided:
| Huffington Post | Sensational attack | Defense against previous round of attack | Valid point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sachs 5/24: Aid Ironies | E got aid himself but opposes it for dying babies | None | Immunization works |
| Easterly 5/25: Why Critics are Better for Foreign Aid than Apologists | S as bad as Cheney intimidating opponents with smears | S previously quoted E accurately as in favor of what S now says E is against | Aid needs critics to make sure it reaches poor people |
| Sachs 5/27: Moyo’s Confused Attack on Aid for Africa | Aid critics don’t understand geography of Africa | S: Don’t worry, I’m smearing Moyo too | Malaria is bad |
| Easterly 5/29: Geography Lessons: Correcting Sachs on African Economic Development | Convoluted S geography theory uses a lot of Ifs, Buts and Excepts to fit Africa, ignores bad government | E: Bad government is more important than bad geography to explain Africa’s poverty | Aid should not go to bad governments |
| Sachs 6/1: No Need to Oversimplify Poverty | E has “pre-scientific” mono-causal, bad government explanation for poverty | S admits Zimbabwe has a bad government; geography theory data mining is justified in “complex systems” | Poverty is complicated |
| Easterly 6/2: Astrology, Despotism, and Africa | S doesn’t understand data mining, which makes geography analysis = astrology; S calls despotisms besides Zim “potentially well governed” | E: All science tests one thing at a time, such as bad government, not equivalent to believing only one thing matters | People adapt to geography thru trade & technology (like bed nets from S!) & migration |
Please feel free to add your own takeaways, or just damn both houses.
22 Comments
Is a real resolution possible?
Could one of you ever be convinved by the other?
What would need to happen, what kind of proof would it take, for E to side with S (or S with E)?
Professor Sachs argues against monocausal explanations and in favor of complex explanations. Unfortunately, complex causal pathways are the most difficult to influence deliberately and predictably.
It would be much more likely that massive aid effort could affect development outcomes if there *were* a monocausal explanation for poverty — bad governance, for example, can change vastly more rapidly and completely than bad geography (compare Doe’s Liberia to Johnson-Sirleaf’s Liberia, Mao’s China and Deng’s China).
Anyone who hopes that aid could “end poverty” should therefore passionately hope that poverty has a monocausal explanation rather than a complex explanation.
1. You say Sach’s geography theory is ‘too complex’, so I went looking for your ’simple’ institutional explanation of cross-country income differences. But in ‘Tropics, Germs and Crops’, your institutional variable is an index ” based on an unobserved components model that aggregates over 300 indicators”, helpfully grouped into a mere six covering “Voice and accountability”, “Absence of violence”, Light regulatory burden”, and so on. Could you explain how this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach is ’simpler’ than the much smaller group of geographic variables which Sachs uses?
2. Sachs’s second Huffington Post article cites research by Nordhaus, Collier and Carstensen and Gundlach that supports the idea of an independent impact of geography on growth – and there is more if you want to find it. No doubt you’ll find things to complain about in their work too, but I take it you will be withdrawing the claim that a ‘consensus’ exists among economists rejecting the role of geography? Separately, what kind of evidence would it take to convince you that, say, malaria has an independent negative impact on growth?
3. The argument that geography doesn’t matter because every country still has some comparative advantage is strange, since comparative advantage tells us that countries will be better off trading than not trading but does not tell us they will reach parity in terms of income. In fact, basic comparative advantage theory tells us that countries with different endowments might well end up with different levels of output and consumption, even after trade. The basic theory also assumes zero transport costs – the very transport costs which Sachs, Collier et al argue have an important impact. So, do you really think endowments or transport costs don’t matter for output in comparative advantage theory, and if so why?
4. All that stuff about ‘adapting to geography’ ignores the basic fact that some areas can’t support more than a minimal population density, which necessarily implies low levels of economic activity. Surely every economist worth his salt understands that people cluster in cities in large part because it is economically advantageous to do so, and that areas which cannot support high population densities therefore tend to have lower levels of economic activity?
5. Lastly, you’re still arguing that Sachs ignores the role of institutions when it is quite clear that he doesn’t. Even his research that you link to includes controls for institutional effects in the regressions, so I just don’t know how you can argue that he’s ignoring it.
My physician uses Occam’s Razors as an approach. It took him an extra few weeks to figure out that my two ailments were really two ailments instead of one.
It is funny how Prof Sachs now admits that Zimbabwe has bad government. because in one of the background papers used to dismiss the governance argument in The End of Poverty, he gives the country the grade “average” for governance.
See table two in Sachs, J D, McArthur, J, Schmidt-Traub, G, Kruk, M, Bahadur, C, Faye M, & McCord, G (2004), “Ending Africa’s poverty trap”. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, no 1 pp 117–216.
This may seem like a minor point, but would it be possible to hyperlink to the source in the table so one can go back and revisit the arguments in detail?
Instead of debating feckless theological conundrums couldn’t you, Sachs and Moyo simply agree that assistance to local entrepreneurs in building nets is a worthwhile endeavor and focus on designing a program that would spin off well trained entrepreneurs in a short time?
SS
@Robert Bell
Yes, good idea! All the articles are now hyperlinked to their original source.
ref.: constructive suggestions on private net enterprises
n.b Actually doing something is a lot less flattering to one’s ego and career than a Rush Limbaugh type public fisticuffs full of sound and fury signifying nothing!
SS
Great post, although I may look around for a similar summary by someone other than one of the protagonists… just to be sure!
@Laura, thanks also for the links, had been offline for a few days so this has allowed me to catch up in no time.
I don’t know about closure, but the cheatsheet was both useful and very amusing.
Now, the next time Sachs accuses you of “assuming that a problem like poverty has a single cause” (from his 6/1), remember that Don Boudreaux explained convincingly back in 2004 that it actually has zero causes.
Those who seek the “causes of poverty” are on a pointless quest.
Bill,
Is it not possible for the two of you to talk face to face? Perhaps a debate? An academic forum? Something?
Best of luck.
Perhaps we can’t reach closure because we’re debating the wrong question.
To simplify, the debate is about poor governance versus geography (or malaria) as explanation of African poverty. This would beg the question…
…which is: what causes poor governance in Africa and how should Africans and aid donors respond?
I read the last the column vertically and it sound like I could easily have these statements from my mother who never went to school.
@ Moussa
Moussa one can see why you are not a “famous” aid expert! Sort of sad really. Pity the poor, pity us.
SS
My interpretation of each side:
(On geography)
Sachs “Geography factor is important, so we have to try really hard to overcome it by efforts such as distributing bed nets.”
Easterly “Geography factor is not important, because we can overcome it by efforts such as distributing bed nets.”
(On government)
Sachs “Bad government is a problem. But China, Russia,… Well, maybe we should define bad governments as those more oppressive and corrupt than China or Russia.”
Easterly “Bad government is a problem. But China, Russia,… Well, maybe these are not bad governments after all, because they have succeeded economically, and massacre at Tiananmen Square, Tibet, invasion of Georgia, and assassination of journalists seem to have little role in prestigious and rigorous statistical analysis.”
Dear himaginary,
that characterization of my view on bad government is completely wrong, I do not condone or make excuses for bad government and research does show bad government is also pragmatically BAD for economic development.
best, Bill
@ Bill Easterly
Very encouraged that you can reply to challenges as the one above, it shows the type of honest spirit I had always thought you capable of in spite of coming from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
But I think you might acknowledge as well that it is rather straightforward to denounce “bad” government. How about responding to the somewhat more nuanced and important challenge I posed to you and Dani Rodrik on several occasions during your debate on industrial policy, to wit why the World Bank won’t finance human waste to fertilizer conversion, fruit and vegetable processing, radio extension, organic agricultural research or any number of rather simple interventions which appear to have high rates of return and consist of sound sustainable development intervention?.
My own answer to this interrogation of Bank programs was that sound sustainable interventions are not what the Bank seeks but rather dependancy. It wouldn’t take much ink to say why the said interventions are inappropriate or on the contrary to advocate them and see some real progress Unless, of course, progress of your career is the unique goal and doing something real for the poor undermines your place in the dependancy hierarchy.
SS
I believe something is missing in this debate about aid.
Jefferey Sachs and Dambisa Moyo seem to forget what can be defined as “micro aid” or development through people-to-people relation.
My short knowledge about Africa, aid processes and civil society suggests that what is really working are development projects conducted among organizations of the same size.
And I would not forget the aid given by remittance transfers (more than 250 billion dollar per year, increasing every year) and the development that missionaries and churches are carrying on in a way that is so much clever and efficient than in the past.
Of course it would be wonderful to carry on huge projects which can produce big results thanks to great financial means and sophisticated technology but we have already faced so many disasters in this way.
Some of these projects indeed are working well but will they maintain the same initial success ? How long will they last ? Would it be possible to use that money with better results ?
I have seen so many partnerships between African civil society and small groups of volunteers in Italy or Europe involved in sustaining schools, healthcare facilities or projects for street children.
I am talking about people who spend their own money and time to help because they find the same concern on the African side in a common effort.
I wouldn’t underestimate this kind of aid: I believe that most of the good things are being realized in Africa are starting from these kind of small projects.
Dear Prof. Easterly
Thank you for responding to my comment. I’m glad that you share the condemnation against China/Russia governments, but that leads to another question. They did accomplish economic success in spite of the existence of bad governments, didn’t they? Maybe they could have done better with more democratic governments, but still they accomplished the kind of economic success which African countries and aid institutions are always dreaming about. And there are countries like Philippines which couldn’t take off economically with some history of democratic government. Don’t these counter-examples show the limitation of the praised scientific research?
Yes, they may be mere outliers in the statistical analyses, only representing one or two data points among tens of samples. However, in terms of population, China alone surpasses the entire Africa. Doesn’t the attitude ignoring these individual cases in the name of Occam’s Razor and persisting to general pattern extracted by statistical analyses look like that of “Planner” rather than “Searcher”?
Speaking of China, it is well known fact that there is a huge economic gap between coastal area and inland area. Yes, geography matters, even under the same government.
@ himaginary
If you are even somewhat conversant with Western development literature you will find studies of Chinese growth rare in spite of the astounding comparison of this growth historically with anything that has preceded. Are they too stumped to study it, jealous or simply behind the now thirty year old phenomenon? The West’s interest in growth in developing countries is exactly null. The main topic of all these studies is dependancy.
SS
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