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By sheer coincidence, I posted a short item on Esther Duflo yesterday; turns out she’s extensively profiled in this week’s New Yorker (unfortunately not offered on their web site). The article explores in much more depth the exact issue I mentioned yesterday: the pursuit of scientific analysis — randomized trials — about what works and what doesn’t in development policy. I’m a believe in principle but perhaps more along the lines of the criticism offered by Angus Deaton toward the end of this piece. I’m not a development economist but I have in fact seen firsthand some of this research being done. I’ve sat in on interviews. I’ve talked to people working in the field. This research is very, very difficult to produce in a sufficiently unflawed manner. The complexities of working in extremely poor places are beyond description. Respondents tell surveyors what they think they want to hear. They give impossible answers. Much is lost in translation. I’m just deeply skeptical of the purity of even the most well-intentioned of this kind of research. And that requires some humility when it comes to making use of the results. Duflo’s work is supposed to be a kind of antidote to “silver bullet” development theories, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for a silver bullet itself.
