lant pritchett: the best of aid
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The Best of Aid:Guiding the Movement
Lant PritchettAt
The Best and Worst of Aid: Accountability, Incentives, and Effectiveness
March 5, 2010
Capabilities, Functionings, Utility, Well-being, Happiness, Life Satisfaction(Dimensions and Valuations)
Capabilities, Functionings, Utility, Well-being, Happiness, Life Satisfaction(Dimensions and Valuations)
Human Development
Smallest unit of Analysis: Individual
DevelopmentPolity Economy Administration Social
Smallest unit ofAnalysis: “Nation”Economy, Organization,Society,
H0: T
ightly Causally
Connected
The Challenges of a Movement
• Maintaining the core
• Allowing for transformational excellence
Economics as a Craft
• Robert Solow (roughly): Graduate student papers are the equivalent of child violin recitals, not interesting for what the produce but for what they promise.
• Paul Krugman (roughly): The production of the thousands of boring, unread, uncited, academic papers exists just to give heft to the economist at the policy table. All of academic economics existence can be justified if all it produces is 1 percent of GDP welfare gain from freer trade in the USA (120 billion vs 2.5 billion)
Well-being gains from the 1990s reforms in India exceed the previous 20 years of aid, plausibly by
an order of magnitude Gains from post-reform growth (relative to counter-factual) adjusted to OECD marginal utility in trillions
Marginal utility:
Counter-factual “without reform” growth rate
0% 2%
Constant $2.10 $1.18
1/y $20.63 $11.57
1/y^2 $202.47 $113.49
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
1950
1957
1964
1971
1978
1985
1992
1999
2006
GDP per capita (PPP)
Acutal
Zero Growth
1950-1990growth
Cumulative aid, 1970-1990: ~1 trillion
US GDP 12 trillion
Did Aid Contribute to Reform?
• Not directly as conditionality.• But…
– Policy makers with international exposure coming and going from multi-laterals
– Influential studies– Promoting alternative views within India for decades
(one independent view on the economy)– Contributions of specific information– Supporting domestic think tanks– Just being the fat part of the pyramid
Any of a number of reform initiated growth episodes could, by themselves justify decades of the entire endeavor of aid
CountryGrowth Episode
Total gains in trillions
Relative to Counter-
factual growth rate of:
Gains with log
Utility(2 ppa)0 2 ppa
Indonesia1966-
2007 1.22 0.70 5.91
Vietnam1986-
2007 0.21 0.15 1.68
Widjojo, the Indonesianeconomist
Orthodox Principles, Heterodox Implementations
• Successful growth episodes involve the expansion of orthodox principles of generating prosperity (incentives, security of claims, space for innovation and ecological learning)
• But…– Domestically driven and adapted– Often heterodox implementations (marginal,
incremental, adaptive)
The Achievements of the best of aid look the Conditions of the worst
of aidEvery Hollywood movie has the same plot: a sympathetic character overcomes increasingly difficult obstacles to achieve their final objective
William Goldman
The Achievements of the best of aid look the Conditions of the worst
of aidEvery Hollywood movie has the same plot: a sympathetic character overcomes increasingly difficult obstacles to achieve their final objective
William Goldman
The problem wasn’t that Rocky had the same plot as all other Hollywood movies, it was the inauthentic repetition
Isomorphic Mimicry: Which is a bee, which is a fly looking like a bee?
Space fornovelty
(E)Valuation ofnovelty
Legitimation
Leadership
Front-line worker use of capacity
Open
Functionality
Demonstrated Success
Wealth Creation
ConcernedFlexibility
Closed
Agenda promotion
Isomorphicmimicry
Rent Seeking/Distribution
Compliance
Agents(leaders, managers,Front-line workers
Organizations (firms, ministries, NGOs)
System Characteristics
The worst of aid encourages isomorphic mimicry to thrive as a viable organizational strategy
Space fornovelty
(E)Valuation ofnovelty
Legitimation
Leadership
Front-line worker use of capacity
Open
Functionality
Demonstrated Success
Wealth Creation
ConcernedFlexibility
Closed
Agenda promotion
Isomorphicmimicry
Rent Seeking/Distribution
Compliance
Agents(leaders, managers,Front-line workers
Organizations (firms, ministries, NGOs)
System Characteristics
The worst of aid encourages isomorphic mimicry to thrive as a viable organizational strategy
Big Development:Closing Space,
Promoting External Agendas, Rewarding
Inauthentic BAU
Small Development:Against the systemCreates InnovativeSmall Scale Success
Allow
s dysfunctionalP
rograms, policies,
Organizations to thrive
Without system
icC
hanges this remains
Localized and effervescent
Space fornovelty
(E)Valuation ofnovelty
Legitimation
Leadership
Front-line worker use of capacity
Open
Functionality
Demonstrated Success
Wealth Creation
ConcernedFlexibility
Closed
Agenda promotion
Isomorphicmimicry
Rent Seeking/Distribution
Compliance
Agents(leaders, managers,Front-line workers
Organizations (firms, ministries, NGOs)
System Characteristics
Fighting against our baby ontology to focus on properties of complex adaptive systems: allowing success to emerge
Space fornovelty
(E)Valuation ofnovelty
Legitimation
Leadership
Front-line worker use of capacity
Open
Functionality
Demonstrated Success
Wealth Creation
ConcernedFlexibility
Closed
Agenda promotion
Isomorphicmimicry
Rent Seeking/Distribution
Compliance
Agents(leaders, managers,Front-line workers
Organizations (firms, ministries, NGOs)
System Characteristics
Fighting against our baby ontology to focus on properties of complex adaptive systems: allowing success to emerge
Markets succeed by creatingConditions for ecological learning
Through Creative DestructionAnd then Allowing Emergent
Properties of Complex AdaptiveSystems to Emerge
Pull systems this way
Allow
this to em
erge
Best Aid: SSA?
• Program from central to state governments
• Huge support from World Bank, Dfid
• Built schools, hired teachers (mainly)
• Had components for deconcentration and marginal groups and innovation
“state of the art” design
Spent the money, substantially expanding education budgets
Met most physical implementation targets
Enrollments did increase
India on way to meeting MDG for universal primary completion
But….Rocky or Rocky VI?
• Learning levels remain abysmally low, and are not increasing (over five years)
• Entrenched “perfect storm” among teachers (high pay, low performance, disillusioned teachers) persist (PROBE repeat)
• Not a single piece of evidence that SSA caused increased enrollments (in many states total public school enrollment fell).
• Few (any) scaled innovations emerge
Worst of Aid: ASER/EI?
• ASER: nationwide, district representative, testing of simple reading and math competencies using local partners
• EI: Sophisticated testing with techniques for feedback
• Don’t teach a single child
• Not clear what exactly to do in response
• Aren’t rigorous evaluations of “solutions” that could be scaled
ASER/EI as the Best of Aid
• Have, with amazingly few resources, completely changed the discourse about schooling in India
• Are creating pressure for defining success in functional terms where isomorphism doesn’t trump
• Facilitate the emergence of lots of solutions: “vouchers”, low cost franchises, remedial programs, innovations in the public sector (learning for all)
• By demonstrating the failure/slow progress of BAU open up the space for innovation
“We few, we happy few…”
• Core principles (open structured systems pressured on performance)--heterodox implementation that avoid baby ontology to allow solutions to emerge as reification of good struggles
• Free up aid from either complacency or narrow accountability to make more transformational successes possible