Having worked on a variety of projects designed to improve the lives of poor, I’ve frequently heard the idea floated that we should always focus on ‘teaching people to fish’. In short, we should aim for sustainable solutions that are designed to reduce the dependency of target beneficiaries, after all: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Completely reasonable advice: after all, why shouldn't beneficiaries be empowered to provide for themself rather than relying on the generosity of others? The answer…
Composite indices: comparing apples with oranges
'A composite index' is a common approach for tracking and/or measuring a particular concept or idea by combining multiple data series into a single measure. Global indices, that attempt to compare and rank a nation's performance, typically try and measure something that can't be observed. You'll likely have seen these before in the form of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, the Fund for Peace's Fragile States Index and the UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI). With each of these composite indices attempting to measure a broad idea or concept that is difficult to measure directly, such as the level of corruption,…
Everything is Correlated(?): How Common are Significant Cross-Country Correlations?
An (unscientific) approach for determining the 'typical' frequency of significant cross-country correlations using World Bank data and R. What attracted me to the field of economics when introduced to it in high-school was the apparent abundance of solutions it offered for everyday problems. Does your country have low life expectancy? No problems: research has found that countries that invest more in public health perform better on this measure. Low GDP per-capita? Just improve your governance; as better governed countries tend to be richer. Suffering from internal conflict? Rough-terrain is statistically linked to conflict, perhaps you could invest in earth-moving equipment?…
Economic Policy is a Wicked Problem: It Needs Generalists
I remember being told by a mentor that the problem with my skill set was that I was a 'generalist'. Being early in my career, I didn't think too much about the feedback; as I really hadn't worked long enough to build a specialty even if I knew what I wanted that to be. But, I did find it confusing. After all, didn't the field of economics actively poke its nose into nearly every area of human existence - whether it be the links between abortion and crime or how to start a city? And weren't the intellectual giants of…