Economics & Marginalia: December 3rd, 2021

Hi all,

As you get older, you accumulate a number of experiences that should—in theory—help you navigate your life with a little more elan and with fewer pitfalls. And for the most part, it works like that: even in the space of a few weeks I’ve seen how my small son has learnt which bits of our furniture are only superficially steady; that the skin of a banana needs to be peeled before you can joyously clamp your teeth into it; and that it’s inappropriate to point at a passerby and yell “OWL” at them, while pointing at their face. On the other hand, despite having done the same thing countless times over the years, I’ve yet to learnt the lesson that after making my homemade fermented chilli sauce, I absolutely have to stop myself from rubbing my eyes for at least 5 hours. If these links are riddled with typos, it’s because they’re being typed through a haze of tears.

1. Another joy of getting older is that you gradually lose your sense of self-consciousness about the things that make you happy. In my twenties, I would have thought twice before telling the internet that I literally yelped with excitement at the publication of an e-book about procurement, but now—at the ripe old age of [REDACTED]—I’m more than happy to tell you that one of the best things that happened this week was the publication of the new CEPR book edited by Oriana Bandiera on that very topic. It’s extremely cool: it looks at the tension between rules and discretion in decision-making (a subject that was the original focus of my DPhil proposal), and documents how bureaucracies manage these tensions in normal times and in emergencies. The summary blog includes a study which is similar to a forthcoming paper I’m working on with a colleague, finding that the behavioural response of agents to sharp rules can be quite striking; but not always obviously detrimental in terms of outcomes.
2. Sometimes, just the motivation section of a paper can make your jaw hit the floor: in Mexico, the cost of treating diabetes is 2.2% of GDP; it is the second largest cause of death in the country. This great VoxDev write-up of a study which looks at how private healthcare can help address this problem uses a clever randomisation approach to estimate the effect of private healthcare, and finds it’s greatest where the public system is most oversubscribed.
3. The DI JMP series has wound up for the year, and it was another doozy. So many fun papers—the boundaries of the discipline just keep getting stretched. Two that caught my eye this week, one about sexual harassment and one about intimate partner violence. The big depressing finding in the former is just how prevalent it is among university students (small declines occur when men undertake training that makes them not change their own views on harassment, but makes them think that other men disapprove more, again a depressing finding). The second paper finds an absolutely massive decline in IPV, but from an incredibly intensive programme: daily psychosocial therapy sessions of 4-5 hours each for 12 months… which seems impossible to scale.
4. The ten-year results from the BRAC Targeting the Ultra-Poor programme are out… and they’re super impressive (if you need a primer on the intervention, I can recommend this brilliant podcast, completely impartially). It seems that a lot of the gains at the 10-year mark come from higher rates of out-migration among the treatment group. But it’s notable that the control group does very well, too—which prompted this exchange on Twitter.
5. A bunch of my brilliant CGD colleagues have a new paper out, summarising the results of a survey of 900 senior officials working in developing country education ministries in 35 countries. It’s rich with information, and I recommend reading the whole paper, but if that’s not for you, Lee Crawfurd’s thread on it is excellent.
6. When I was a student, I was fascinated by labour movements (in fact, my Master’s thesis was on trade union organisation on tea plantations in Sri Lanka). Planet Money cover the rise and fall (and perhaps rise again) of labour movements in the US. The fall really was hugely dramatic. It’s hard to believe now, but the US had some of the most powerful, most iconic labour movements in the world (with iconic leaders, like Joe Hill, whose last words before being put to death were “don’t mourn for me; organise.”), celebrated by their best musicians and writers, and a huge force for internationalism (transcript).
7. Lastly, are you watching Get Back? If you’re not, you need to stop reading RIGHT NOW and watch Get Back. It’s extraordinary: the sheer fizzing genius of McCartney and Lennon working off each other, the speed with which they understand what the other is doing and improve it… and how self-aware they are. And the moment when Paul goes from having nothing but a noodle on the guitar to having Get Back almost complete in about 2 minutes is just stunning. As I said to a colleague this week, you have to like the Beatles. It’s the law.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

R