- Interview with Mark Rosenzweig: “One of the advantages of studying developing countries is that it’s cheap to collect data and the response rates are much higher than in the United States. I’ve helped lead a survey in the U.S. of 8,500 households — it cost $23 million. In India, where the questionnaire is probably eight times longer, the total cost is about $750,000... Five hours is a substantial commitment of time, what’s the response rate? Our response would be somewhere around 90%. People enjoy telling you about their stuff. I’ve surveyed a lot of farmers in India and they want to show you everything. They enjoy it. People there value their time differently than we do. In most villages there are no cinemas or shopping centers there. There’s no television. They enjoy talking to people. That’s different than here. We all have better things to do than sitting down and answering silly questions over the phone, let alone allowing somebody into your house. Sitting down and talking to people is an interesting activity for these folks.”
- Another argument against industrial policy: Diego Daruich, Bill Easterly and Ariell Reshef on VoxEU summarize their work on the instability of export specialization. “Trade seems to be like a casino in which it is hard to know what will work. However, this surprising frequency of surprises should not imply shutting down the casino altogether. Participating in trade is important … but one must let the market and government support be nimble enough to support whatever is working at the moment. Government policies should not try to lock in support for one particular product.”
- The undercover historian has a nice discussion/commentary on Esther Duflo’s AEA talk on the economist as plumber
- The new Chetty/Friedman/Saez/Turner/Yagan work on the mobility effects of colleges in the U.S. is covered in the Upshot – 38 colleges have more students from the top 1% than from the bottom 60% + which colleges take in poor students who end up being rich adults?
- Job opportunity: Twaweza is hiring a Dar es Salaam-based Program Associate. to work on a large research program to evaluate education reform in Tanzania. The Program Associate will work under supervision of Georgetown University's gui2de research center. More details can be found here.
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