· Ken Opalo on the ambition gap among Africa’s ruling elites: “African elites have for the most part outsourced their countries’ developmental ambitions to outsiders….outsiders often set targets for outcomes in health, education, poverty reduction, responses to climate change, quality of governance, agricultural output, public finance, infrastructure, etc. Meanwhile, African governments and mainstream civil society organizations typically embrace these targets and the accompanying analyses and “best practices” as gospel truth….In my view, the real problem is how African states use foreign expertise. Instead of helping with questions of “how to get things done,” outsiders are often recruited into the driving seat and tasked with deciding “what is to be done.”…This post explores four key factors that (I think) explain the lack of elite ambition in the region: (1) Elites’ failure to establish cultural, material, ideological, and intellectual hegemony over their societies; (2) Weak state capacity; (3) Lack of policy autonomy; and (4) Being limited to a narrow set of feasible accumulation strategies in the global political and economic periphery.”
· On VoxDev, Leah Lakdawala and Diana Martínez Heredia summarize the counterintuitive findings of their study of a law change around child work in Bolivia: “In 2014, Bolivia took an unprecedented approach by legally recognizing the work of children as young as 10 years old while simultaneously extending worker protections to working children similar to those granted to adults….To ensure enforcement, the government tasked local offices of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection (MTEPS) with adding child labour inspections to their regular labour and workplace inspections; as a result, child labour inspections more than doubled between 2013 and 2017….We find that contrary to expectations, the law reduced rather than increased child labour. Children under 14 were nearly 4 percentage points less likely to work when the law was in effect—roughly a 22% decline relative to pre-law levels….The decline in work was particularly pronounced in areas closer to regional MTEPS offices, where enforcement through inspections was more likely.”
· The Economics that really matters blog interviews Eric Verhoogen about the role of firms in development, where he sees some of the open questions, and how young economists should define themselves when they work on a topic that crosses fields: “It’s important to decide whether you’re primarily a development economist, an IO economist, a macroeconomist, a trade economist, or something else. My advice is to have a clear “home field.” You should primarily identify with one field and complement it with others if possible. For example, I’ve always identified as a development economist first, with trade as my secondary field, and labor as a tertiary field. Consistency in this identification is key. While it’s okay to explore early on, by the time you’re on the job market, you need to clearly articulate your primary and secondary fields since hiring is often organized around specific fields. People would be reluctant to hire you as a development economist if they’re not sure you’re a development economist.”
· On the Trade Post, Samuel Rosenow, Alvaro Espitia and Ana Fernandes look at how tariff and non-tariff measures affect firm-level adoption of green technologies in developing countries. They find tariffs decrease both the likelihood of importing, and value of imports of green technologies – more so than for the average import, and particularly for solar value chain products and consumer end products. Technical barriers to trade have a much smaller, but still adverse, effect. “Some advanced economies are raising tariffs on green technologies in a bid to reduce their dependence on overseas suppliers and nurture or protect domestic industries. Most emerging markets don’t have that option, because they lack the capacity to quickly build domestic production capabilities. For them, protectionist policies would be counterproductive, slowing down access to critical green technologies. “
Join the Conversation