Economics

Is microfinance useful or useless?

The evidence base for microfinance being effective was always extremely thin. Morduch (1999), in an otherwise hopeful article on the development of microfinance, could not help but note the paucity of the available evidence that it was actually doing anything. The best evidence cited at the time for the Grameen Bank was Pitt and Khandker (1998), who used an eligibility requirement to infer the effect of the loans. However,…

Some interesting facts

Lots of population numbers are pretty made-up. In many countries, there just isn’t really the infrastructure to do a good census. In Papua New Guinea, they’re not sure if the number of people is 9 million or 17 million. Similar things are true in other countries like Nigeria, which may have tens of millions more or fewer people than is standardly reported. In lots of countries, the way they get their official census numbers…

An unified theory of vibes

Kyla Scanlon is one of the most perceptive writers about the US economy and culture. Several years ago, she coined the term "vibecession" to describe the divergence between economic data and how people felt. In other words, after the pandemic, something weird started happening in the US. While economic data, despite…

Naked without values

This deterioration in the practice of politics can be attributed to many causes. One of the most important may be found in the deterioration in how economics is practiced. Economics is often described as a scientific discipline, which studies “if-then” propositions without reference to morals and values. But scientific findings do affect our values and normative judgments, and claims of “scientific objectivity” can be used to…

Will the poor countries catch up the rich?

What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence? A Critical Review of 50 Years of Economic Growth Research. Summary by Claude. This comprehensive 2020 review by Paul Johnson and Chris Papageorgiou examines one of economics' most enduring questions: Do poor countries eventually catch up to rich ones? After analyzing five decades of research and data, their conclusions challenge popular narratives about global economic convergence.…