Economics & Marginalia: July 16, 2021

Hi all,

Sorry for the unannounced radio silence last week – I went on leave and forgot to announce my absence; no doubt the absence of the links was marked by wailing, a virtual vigil and panicked phone calls. Next week will be the same, and I’ll be taking time off through the summer, so I may disappear without warning occasionally. But never fear! I will always return. The last time I wrote one of these intros I took a sideways swipe at England’s football culture, and was taken up on one part of that: this particular England team is genuinely admirable, made of up of good people, well-led. My critic was right, a point that was only reinforced by the abuse some players got for missing penalties. Read Marcus Rashford’s statement; read Bukayo Saka’s; read Jadon Sancho’s; read Tyrone Mings’ too. I haven’t often felt proud of the people representing my country this year, but in the football at least, I am.

1. “Fill the board with calculus”. This is one of my favourite Planet Money shows in months, and its all about race and academic economics (transcript). In it, Cecilia Conrad, now Professor Emeritus at Pomona College talks about the moment she had to go the extra mile to prove her worth as an economist to her students. She was being hassled a small group in her class, who thought she was a ‘diversity hire’, and was advised by a colleague that – at least once – rather than make learning easy for them, to show them just how competent she is, in this case by filling the board with calculus. I found it really moving – because like many other people from a minority background I’ve had my ‘fill the board with calculus’ moment, too. And it’s something that I’ve heard so many times in diversity seminars, in focus groups for research into discrimination I’m doing and beyond: people from under-represented groups have to go that extra mile to prove they belong, to show their working in a way that other just don’t need to. It doesn’t sound like much – big deal, she can do the calculus, so why does it matter that she had to do it in front of her students once – but in highly competitive fields all of this tiny frictions make a difference.
2. And while we’re talking about academic dysfunction, here’s Maggie Koerth on the increased prominence of pre-prints (that is, research that’s published before peer review) during the pandemic, and what that says about what’s wrong with peer review, as well as what’s wrong with science and science reporting. I think Andrew Gelman is right in his assessment. Post-publication review is often the best, but it needs retraction and correction to work, neither of which are consistent or common.
3. But as an antidote to bad papers, you can’t do much better than this wonderful curated list of Chad Jones’s best papers on growth. I cited Jones in a draft paper I’ve been working on today – if you haven’t read him, you should. The clarity of his writing is startling for an economist.
4. One of the great things about working at CGD is that I sometimes turn on my computer in the morning and discover that my colleagues – whom I’ve spoken with and worked regularly over the last months – have been doing something really extraordinary in the background the whole time, and it’s finally been published. Helen Dempster and Michael Clemens have created a one-stop shop for everything you need to know if you want to improve migration policy by creating a Global Skills Partnership. Migration policy – almost universally – is so bad that anything that reduces the cost of improving it is important. Also from CGD this week – David Escoffier and Mark Plant on how frontier markets – those just beginning to access global capital – can take on debt sensibly; and Charles Kenny and George Yang on the history of USAID, balancing seeing development as worthy for its own sake, or as blunt global strategic instrument.
5. If, like me, you have approximately 2,391,718 Development Impact blogs either bookmarked or open in fossilized tabs on your browser, this is a parsimonious alternative: a list of their interviews, advice, and most-cited posts.
6. One of my pet peeves about development economics is that for a discipline so in thrall to competition, there is a conspicuous lack of work about how much market power and huge imperfections characterise the markets for most goods and services in developing countries. Martina Kirchberger and Keelan Beirne have a cool summary of new research which shows just how bad the construction sector in many developing countries is, and the consequences that has for capital accumulation and – by extension – development.
7. Lastly, in a piece of brilliantly creative protest, a movement to have statues of Christopher Columbus (destroyer, as well as “discoverer” of worlds) replaced with the altogether more admirable figure of Lieutenant Columbo has sprung up. In general, the world needs more Columbo statues (and Season 3 needs to be released with subtitles), so show me how I can support this. Fun fact: my go to analogy for how to structure an academic paper is to compare Columbo and Poirot. Most people instinctively write like Poirot investigates: scattering clues everywhere until a grand finale ties them altogether and dispels the mists of confusion. But academic writing needs to be like an episode of Columbo. Show us the murderer and how they did it in the first scene; the fun is all in then proving it, step by step.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and see you in a couple of weeks!

R