Methodology – Page 3 – 黑料社区

State Capitalism Redux?

November 20, 2019 Ilias ALAMI3 Comments

Recent transformations in the global economy have sparked renewed interest in the role of the state in capital accumulation. Such transformations include a 鈥榬eturn鈥� to various forms of state-led development across the global South since the early 2000s (in China, Russia, and other large emerging economies), extensive state intervention following the 2008 global financial crisis in the global North, and the multiplication of various forms of state-capital entanglements such as sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). For instance, the number of SWFs increased from 50 to 92 between 2005 and 2017, while assets under management grew to over $7.5 trillion worth of assets, which is more than hedge funds and private equity firms听. According to a recent听, 鈥楽OEs generate approximately one tenth of world gross domestic product and represent approximately 20% of global equity market value鈥�. SOEs now dwarf even the largest privately-owned transnational corporations, with PetroChina currently leading the list with a market value of more than $1 trillion. Three of the top five companies in the 2018 Fortune Global 500 are Chinese SOEs (State Grid, Sinopec Group, and China National Petroleum Corp). Significantly, these state-capital hybrids have also become increasingly integrated into transnational circuits of capital, including global networks of production, trade, finance, infrastructure and corporate ownership. Does this renewed state activism 鈥� and its remarkably outward orientation 鈥� indicate a changing role of the state in capital accumulation and the emergence of new political geographies of capital?Read More »

Misunderstanding the average impact of microcredit?

July 31, 2019July 31, 2019 milfordbateman2 Comments

Photo: . Microfinance center leaders tally the week’s loan payments in India.

By听补苍诲

A recent article on the 鈥�鈥� by Dr. Rachel Meager (LSE) has received much praise over the past few weeks. Meager deploys Bayesian hierarchical modelling to provide a new take on the argument in favour of a reformed system of microcredit. Her work builds on the data provided by six randomized control trials (RCTs) conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and colleagues (see ). Meager makes an attempt to exculpate the microcredit model from the awkward fact that its impact on the poor has been very much less than originally envisaged. She also claims to show that the critics have overstated the negative impact of microcredit. Microcredit should therefore continue to be a policy intervention, she goes on to say, but there need to be changes in the operating methodology for a more meaningful development impact to be possible in the future.

While seemingly a well-meaning attempt to explore the impact of microcredit, we were struck by the way that her overall argument appears to seriously misunderstand, and it definitely misrepresents, the existing research on microcredit as a development instrument. Read More »

The Curious Case of M-Pesa鈥檚 Miraculous Poverty Reduction Powers

June 14, 2019June 7, 2019 Nicholas Loubere8 Comments

M-PESA kiosk outside Kibera centre in Nairobi. Picture credit:

By ,听补苍诲听Nicholas Loubere

Over the past decade the expansion of digital-financial inclusion through innovations in financial technology (fin-tech) has been identified by the World Bank, the G20, USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and other major international institutions, as a key way to promote development and alleviate poverty in the Global South (; ; ). Perhaps the most influential and widely reported publication pushing forward this narrative is an article examining M-Pesa written by US-based economists Tavneet Suri and William Jack鈥�and published in the prestigious journal Science鈥�entitled ‘The Long-run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money’. M-Pesa is a mobile phone, agent-assisted platform for transferring money from one person to another. It was originally developed with funding from DFID and has quickly become a darling of the digital-financial inclusion movement. In this particular article, the authors make the far-reaching claim that 鈥榓ccess to the Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA increased per capita consumption levels and lifted 194,000 households, or 2% of Kenyan households, out of poverty鈥� ().

Suri and Jack鈥檚 article in Science has sent ripples through the global development community and has served鈥�as perhaps was intended鈥�to solidify support for upping the promotion of digital-financial inclusion initiatives across the Global South. Importantly, the article鈥檚 claims of unprecedented poverty reduction have been uncritically picked up by all of the international development agencies and microcredit advocacy organisations, as well as by many mainstream economists, so-called 鈥榮ocial entrepreneurs鈥�, tech investors, and media outlets. Much like microcredit in the 1980s, fin-tech and digital-financial inclusion is now very widely seen as a 办别测鈥�if not the key鈥�to reducing global poverty and promoting local development.

In this post we summarise our recent article entitled 鈥業s Fin-tech the New Panacea for Poverty Alleviation and Local Development?鈥� (), which challenges Suri and Jack鈥檚 findings, and urges the global development community to take a second, more critical look at their study. We argue that the article contains a worrying number of omissions, errors, inconsistencies, and that it also employs flawed methodologies. Unfortunately, their inevitably flawed conclusions have served to legitimise and strengthen a false narrative of the role that fin-tech can play in poverty alleviation and development, with potentially devastating consequences for the global poor.Read More »

Why so Hostile? Busting Myths about Heterodox Economics

May 8, 2019August 2, 2020 Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven13 Comments

Call-for-Application-Pluralist-Economics

By Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven and Carolina Alves

鈥淓conomics is unique among the social sciences in having a single monolithic mainstream, which is either unaware of or actively hostile to alternative approaches.鈥� (: 17)

What does heterodox economics mean? Is the label helpful or harmful? Being outside of the mainstream of the Economics discipline, the way we position ourselves may be particularly important. For this reason, many around us shun the use of the term 鈥渉eterodox鈥� and advise against using it. However, we believe the reluctance to use the term stems in part from misunderstandings of (and sometimes disagreement over) what the term means and perhaps disagreements over strategies for how to change the discipline.

In other words, this is an important debate about both identification and strategy. In this blog, we wish to raise the issue in heterodox and mainstream circles, by busting a few common myths about Heterodox Economics – mostly stemming from the orthodoxy. This is a small part of a larger project on defining heterodox economics.

Why positive thinking won鈥檛 get you out of poverty

November 9, 2018 Farwa Sial11 Comments

By Farwa Sial and Carolina Alves

In a recent听, the development economist Seema Jayachandran discusses three studies that used听Randomised Controlled Trials (or RCTs) to underst补苍诲听the benefits of enhancing the self-worth of poor people. Despite wide differences in context, all the cases explore the viability of 鈥榤odest interventions鈥� to 鈥榠nstill hope鈥� in marginalised communities, concluding that 鈥榬emarkable improvements鈥� in the quest for poverty reduction are possible.

听from Uganda, for example, argues that 鈥渁 role model can have significant effects on students鈥� educational attainment,鈥� so the suggestion for policy-makers might be 鈥渢o place more emphasis on motivation and inspiration through example.鈥�听Another听听argues that 鈥減sychological barriers impede such disadvantaged groups from breaking the vicious circle and achieving better outcomes in life,鈥� so small but effective changes that address these psychological constraints can alleviate the effects of poverty and social exclusion.

The underlying theme of these studies is that individuals can surmount the structural challenges of poverty through their own efforts using tools like 鈥榚ffective role models,鈥� the generation of 鈥榤ore hope,鈥� and the 鈥榠mprovement of their mental health.鈥� Positive psychology of this kind and an emphasis on behavior change to meet the goals of individuals have been around at least since the 1950s, first in the popular literature of self-help books and now in academia, where they form part of an increasingly fashionable trend to 鈥榙o poverty reduction differently.鈥�Read More »

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