It's hard to summarize, so read the whole thing. But he is calling for a closer look at the evidence and the application of RCT [randomized control trial] standards. Here is an excerpt:
First, the fact that a technology has been scientifically proven in isolation–such as a certain fertilizer proven to raise crop yields–does not mean that it will improve people’s well-being amidst the complexities of real villages. Recent research by Esther Duflo, CGD non-resident fellow Michael Kremer, and Jonathan Robinson shows that fertilizer use is scientifically proven highly effective at raising farm yields and farmers’ profits in Kenya. But for complex reasons very few farmers wish to adopt fertilizer, even those well trained in its use and usefulness. This means that this proven technology has enormous difficulty raising farmers’ incomes in practice. The gap between agronomy and development is very hard to cross.
Second, it is not sufficient to compare treated villages to untreated villages that were chosen ex-post as comparison villages because they appear similar. Many recent research papers have shown this conclusively. A long list of studies conducted over decades showed that African and other children learned much more in schools that had textbooks than in schools that appeared otherwise similar but did not have textbooks. Paul Glewwe, Michael Kremer, and Sylvie Moulin evaluated a large intervention in some of the neediest schools in Kenya (ungated version here, published here). Schools that received textbooks were randomly chosen from an initial pool of candidates. The problem: Children did not learn more in the treated schools than in the untreated schools.
Chris Blattman comments.
Please don’t use anagrams, such as “RCT,” without spelling out what they stand for once.
Your right, Andrew, but its still a PIA.
That “complex reasons” link is very redolent of Greg Clark’s A Farewell to Alms, particularly his assertion that every peasant in the pre-industrial era had within his grasp the opportunity to become wealthy had he understood the power of saving just a little bit and investing it. The author’s of this paper note that “when fertilizer is used in limited quantities, it generates returns of 36 percent over a season on average, which translates to 70 percent on an annualized basis (Duflo, Kremer, and Robinson, 2008), even without other changes in agricultural practices. Low investment rates in the face of such high returns are particularly puzzling since fertilizer is well-known and long-used in the area…There could of course be fixed costs in buying or learning to use fertilizer (for example, making a trip to the store). Indeed, small fixed costs of this type will play an important role in our model. However, such costs would have to be implausibly large to justify the lack of fertilizer investment in the standard model.” (Page 2) High time value is at the root of the problem.
The authors compare this to the observed inability of American workers to figure out the deleterious impact of high mutual fund fees on their investment performance. One implication is that it is just as difficult to re-orient the thinking and behavior of African village farmers to modern agricultural practice as it would be to re-orient working-class Americans to understand exponentiation and the interactions of various inputs on the math. Doesn’t sound very promising.
I know, but it’s not a big deal for people who don’t know to just ask, either. It just gets frustrating when people make demands of the guys who are already doing so much for our entertainment. OTOH, the internets is a whole new world in need of new conventions, but IMHO, JIC, always spell out acronyms to CYA, k? YMMV.
All economists know that RCT = randomized control trial, because of embarrassment at realising that virtually none of their knowledge comes from RCTs.
What, Doug, you don’t pronounce it “rickit”?
(lol jk hand)
The author’s of this paper note that “when fertilizer is used in limited quantities, it generates returns of 36 percent over a season on average, which translates to 70 percent on an annualized basis … Low investment rates in the face of such high returns are particularly puzzling since fertilizer is well-known and long-used in the area.
Well, in the US, it is well established that interest rates of 400% on borrowing are reasonable in a free market, when the government gets out of the way. Apparently Africans chose not to pay 400% to gain 70%.
In the US, we know that licensed seed, fertilizer, and patented pesticides and herbicides require government insurance on debt, plus other crop subsidizes to allow farmers to make a profit from the higher productivity of these high cost inputs.
If Africa is more free market than the US, the methods proven to work with government subsidizes probably don’t work because they lead to bankruptcy. In India, many farmers commit suicide after they go bankrupt thanks to the free market and licensed seed, fertilizer, and patented chemicals; perhaps Africans prefer life.
mulp, see current work by Duflo, Kremer and Robinson in Kenya. They find that through an innovative program to convince farmers to save money for fertilizer purchases, they can increase fertilizer usage as well as yields without the need for financing.
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