Oliver Kim Profile picture
PhD student @berkeleyecon, researching development and economic history.
@maraf@ Profile picture 1 subscribed
Mar 4 15 tweets 5 min read
🧵: On the role of bad social science in the Vietnam War—and how not understanding local conditions, and thinking through endogeneity (yes, endogeneity) can lead to policy conclusions with tragic, deadly consequences.

More, and a link to my new newsletter post below: Image In 1967, 🇺🇸 was mired in the Vietnam War. The corrupt South Vietnamese regime was doing little for its people: in 1966, 42% of farmers were landless peasants.

To help the war effort, 🇺🇸 policymakers considered land reform—redistributing land from landlords to peasants. Image
Nov 27, 2023 10 tweets 4 min read
🚀JMP alert🚀

My paper w @FergJoel applies machine learning to 1970s-80s satellite imagery to revisit one of the 🇨🇳 Chinese Miracle's first major reforms, the Household Responsibility System—the end of collective socialist agriculture.

What we found was quite surprising. 🧵 A NOAA satellite launch—the kind whose data is used in this paper Starting in Anhui Province in 1978, the Household Responsibility System (often incorrectly attributed to Deng Xiaoping) broke up Mao's collective farms and brought back household farming—loosely, the end of communism in rural China.

The common view is that it boosted yields. Pre-reform poster: Mobilize the Party and agriculture in the struggle to promote Dazhai County, 1975.
Apr 21, 2021 14 tweets 5 min read
THREAD: On the role of bad social science in the Vietnam War—and how not understanding local conditions, and thinking through endogeneity (yes, endogeneity) can lead to policy conclusions with tragic, deadly consequences. In 1967, 🇺🇸 was mired in the Vietnam War. The corrupt South Vietnamese regime was doing little for its people: in 1966, 42% of farmers were landless peasants.

To help the war effort, 🇺🇸 policymakers considered land reform—redistributing land from landlords to peasants. 2/
Apr 7, 2021 18 tweets 7 min read
Happy birthday to Albert Hirschman, who would be 106 today.

Hirschman—anti-fascist, resistance hero, later a development economist—may be the most interesting person to ever take up the profession.

🧵 and blog post on his remarkable life and work. 1/

oliverwkim.com/Hirschman-Stra… Hirschman was born in Berlin in 1916 to a Jewish family. He was just a teenager when he became involved as an activist in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was confronting Hitler’s rising Nazi Party in the streets.

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Apr 6, 2021 10 tweets 3 min read
A thoughtful piece on "the End of Development" -- the rising threat of premature deindustrialization in poor countries, closing the path of manufacturing-led growth that East Asia took to escape poverty in the 20th century.

A few of my thoughts: 1/N

dissentmagazine.org/article/the-en… I agree with almost all the obstacles to manufacturing growth raised in the piece.

But in my view, it remains better for gov’ts to try with all the tools at their disposal — industrial policy, export incentives, capital controls— than not at all.

2/N