Thread by @DinaPomeranz

@ingridharvold Thank you! Going into a seminar now. Will respond later.

@ingridharvold Hi Ingrid. I finally have a stretch of time without interruption & can respond to your text with the required focus.

I really appreciate this opportunity for dialogue. This is going to be quite a long thread, as I wanted to take this seriously. Maye not ideal for Twitter.
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@ingridharvold I’ll try to structure this as follows
1 Points of agreement
2 Points where I perceive development econ differently from how I understand you to perceive it
3 Pros & cons of current development econ style compared to past
4 Spaces for development econ to improve in future

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@ingridharvold Let me start by saying that based on how I understood your text, I believe there’s a lot that we agree on

My sense is we agree that
-understanding global mechanisms, not just small interventions, is important
-there are many important questions that cannot be answered by RCT
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@ingridharvold -there are large power imbalances in global economic relations that are very important to address
-racism and sexism in economics, in international development (and elsewhere) should be addressed more

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@ingridharvold -the role of people from rich countries intervening in lower income countries (randomizing or otherwise) needs critical reflection
-many rich people going to poor countries are not cognizant of the role of these power imbalances

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@ingridharvold - development economics has a lot of opportunities to further improve
- ethical considerations in “field” research are very important to take seriously
- there is nothing embedded in RCTs that forces those who use them to assume neoclassical models

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@ingridharvold In terms of where we might disagree, many points relate to ways in which you characterize the work by the Prize winners - and of mainstream development economics more broadly - that I have personally not experienced in the way you seem to perceive them.

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@ingridharvold These are points where - if I thought development economics was indeed this way - I would wholeheartedly agree that it would be a problem.

My experience (which may or may not be representative) however tells me otherwise.

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@ingridharvold It isn't my experience that economists studying global development or poverty don't care about ‘big questions’.

Nor that RCTs entirely dominate development economics.

This blog blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluati… for example finds that much less than half of development econ uses RCTs.
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@ingridharvold What I do think is true that there has been a large shift in (development) economics towards more empirical work, and within empirical work a strong focus on the types of methods that allow for causal inference.

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@ingridharvold While this has many benefits - and is in my opinion great progress over some earlier work that made causal claims based on correlations - I also hope that were will be more space again for descriptive work.

Some recent work by Raj Chetty in the US points in that direction.

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@ingridharvold So in my experience, non-RCT methods are still the norm in development economics, precisely because, as you also say, RCTs are not appropriate for all questions.

In my own work, I have done RCTs on domestic tax enforcement on small and medium size firms in Chile, …

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@ingridharvold …non-RCT work on domestic tax enforcement on medium size firms in Ecuador, and am now working on non-RCT work evaluating the impact of the OECD-led transfer pricing regulation that aims to prevent international profit shifting by multinational firms.

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@ingridharvold The latter project is the “bigger” question, in the sense that it relates to issues of global governance.

It has been my experience that exactly for that reason, this research has been met with a lot of interest by mainstream development and public finance economist.

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@ingridharvold On the topic of legacy of colonialism, which you also mention, Nathan Nunn is for example a mainstream economist who has done a lot of work on that, and is very highly regarded in development economics (using methods of economic history, not RCT).

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@ingridharvold In addition, there are more and more studies using RCTs to try to address questions related to more structural issues. One example that I like is the paper by @JonathanWeigel on how tax enforcement can strengthen the relationship of citizens to the state.

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@ingridharvold Similarly, there's a big focus among leading mainstream economists using RCTs to try not to just measure impacts, but test for underlying mechanisms.

Indeed, whether or not you can identify mechanisms is a key factor for whether a papers makes it into a “top” econ journal.

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@ingridharvold So I agree with you: if development economics would not care about institutions and would not care about mechanisms, I would be extremely concerned as well.

My experience however has been that the trend is to look exactly more and more at institutions and mechanisms.

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@ingridharvold On external validity, it's certainly not the case that the leading development economists assume interventions are generally valid across geographies & scale

That’s why there's so much talk about replication & mechanisms. I think we already discussed this earlier on Twitter
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@ingridharvold Next, I want to briefly address the style of development econ today vs. the past.

Personally, I like the current empirical emphasis. Reasonable people can of course disagree on that. My sense is that the empirical focus is exactly what led us to go beyond rationality, etc.
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@ingridharvold Personally, I also like that *insofar* as we want to make causal statements, development econ focuses a lot on methods of causal inference.

At the same time, there should of course also be space for work that is focused on description or measurement, not causality.

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@ingridharvold Why do I like it? You mention that development economics in the past has looked at bigger questions.

What I am very concerned about regarding past behavior is that powerful economists showed up & forced very strong, sweeping reforms, based on very thin empirical evidence.

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@ingridharvold Washington consensus comes to mind.

My hope is that the empirical focus on causal inference can protect us to some degree from that.

You may not agree, and may call me naïve for thinking so.

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@ingridharvold My sense is also that RCTs, through their practical nature have led many development economists out of their offices & to deep, long-term interactions with people & their lives.

I think this has led economists to ask questions that are more related to real people’s lives.

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@ingridharvold Finally, let me talk a bit about where I think development econ (RCT & otherwise) has room to do more introspection & to potentially improve.

First, as you point out, when people from rich places intervene in less advantaged places there is a lot of power at play.

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@ingridharvold This is something where I think we have a lot of work to do, to become more aware of & to address in our practical work.

Both in how foreigners interact with people “on the ground” & in how economists reflect on our role when entering other communities.

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@ingridharvold (Note, I think almost all groups from rich places going to less privileged places have a lot of work to do on that).

One key tangible aspect I see for that is that representation is really lacking.

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@ingridharvold I am very committed that we create more pathways for entry & inclusion of people from low- & middle-income countries in the profession.

The faces in the room at leading development economics conferences in no way reflect the countries that the studies are conducted in.

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@ingridharvold Similarly to how we no longer think it’s ok to have all male panels talking about women’s issues, we need to reflect on why there are still all American/European panels talking about African issues (and how we can change that).

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@ingridharvold Finally, you state that "randomistas" give little acknowledgement to other ways of knowing about the world.

While my sense is that economists who do field work are actually often more open to that than econ was in the past, I agree there is certainly scope for improvement.
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@ingridharvold Economists have started collaborating increasingly with psychologists, political scientists, public health experts, etc.

But I see a lot of untapped potential in more dialogue with ethnologists, sociologists, etc.

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@ingridharvold Ok, this is now officially the longest thread I’ve ever written! And there are many points you made that I haven’t even addressed. I’m sure I’ve gotten things wrong. I find it quite difficult to do this on Twitter, as for each point I’d be eager to hear your response, etc.

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@ingridharvold Maybe we can follow this up with more interactive dialogue e.g. via Skype?

Thanks again for being interested in my perspective!

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