Thread by @rglenner

When I tweeted about my many research trips to #SierraLeone over last 15 years I was challenged to explain why it was good for a UK citizen to study poverty in a poor African country. Would I encourage developing country scholars to study US/UK?
This qu deserves a thread (1/n)

My moral conviction is that we should seek to do the most good we can for the most people. I dont think I owe more to those in the country where I happened to be born or where I currently live than I do to anyone else in the world. (2/n)

My religion teaches me I should seek to repair the world, not my country, but the world. Everything else equal that suggests I, and others who think like me, should work on the biggest problems and in support of those in most need.
(3/n)

Of course everything else is not equal. Its no good seeking to help those most in need if you are not equipped to help. Most people know more about the country they grew up in and thus, at least initially, are better at helping fix the problems there.
(4/n)

But rich countries produce more researchers and many more highly educated people than poor ones. The result is that there is vastly more research on how to reduce poverty in rich countries than there is on poor countries. Even though most poverty is in poor countries.
(5/n)

As an example, I was asked to contribute to a Handbook on Health economics. All the other chapters were on one small aspect of health in rich countries (mainly US). There was one chapter for all aspects of health in all developing countries which contain the majority of ppl.(6/n)

This imbalance is a problem and we should try to address it. But if you want to help address it you have to put a lot of investment into making sure you understand the details of the context in which you work. (7/n)

Going in and giving advice about a country you dont know much about is not helping, its making things worse. This is why I returned to Sierra Leone (and Bangladesh and Pakistan) again and again. It is also why I always work closely with people who know the country well. (8/n)

Do I wish there were more researchers from developing countries working on developing countries? Of course I do. Its important to recognize that its not an easy problem to fix. (Read The Memory of Love for a good account of how universities in LICs were undermined). (9/n)

Building research capacity is much much more than having more Principle Investigators from low income countries. We need quality capacity at every step of the research chain--enumerators, supervisors, research infrastructure...
(10/n)

The objectives of better research capacity are varied:
ask qu that are relevant to local needs
data collection thats sensitive to local nuance (eg well worded questions)
good feed back of results into local decisions
spillover benefits to teaching in local universities
(11/n)

There are many ways to achieve 1 through 3 above. Its 4--spillover benefits to local university teaching--where locally based PIs are needed. 1 through 3 require researchers who know the country well working with local partners.
(12/n)

And even if we got lots more great PIs from developing countries working on the problems of development, researchers from the rich world should still work on the problems of global poverty because these are the most important questions in the world.
(13/n)

Should researchers from LICs and MICs work on problems of the rich world? They do! There are many many examples. Some of the top scholars on US/advance country macro are from the developing world eg @AtifRMian Gita Gopinath.
(14/n)

This reflects the incentives. There is better data, its easier to get published, media will cover you more, if you work on rich world problems. That is true for researchers where ever they come from. Its a problem. Glad @DFID_Research is part of redressing the incentives
(15/n)

To make the most impact I try to follow a simple formula to help with prioritizing my effort:
magnitude of the problem * tractability (ie chance we can change it) * my comparative advantage.
My knowledge is relevant to where I am likely to have impact, my nationality isnt.
(end)