Our Word is Our Weapon

Shame on you, Brad De Long. Not for slagging off Anthony Giddens, but for doing so from a position of ignorance: ignorance not just of sociology (which is nothing new in an economist) but, apparently, of international economics. Here is Giddens:

Market fundamentalism is disappearing from the scene. The stage is set for a return to the social. After all, even the IMF these days gives social and political factors a significant place in development processes …

And here is Brad:

I would be less alarmed by Tony Giddens if I were sure that he knew that of the two Bretton Woods institutions it is the IMF–the “Fund”–that is focused on international capital flows, reserves, and exchange rates; and that it is the IBRD–the “World Bank”–that is focused on development processes.

I had my comment ready, but ‘andres‘ beat me to it:

I would be less alarmed by Brad DeLong if I were sure that he had a clue that the IMF and World Bank have often overlapping roles, or at least did so in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the heyday of the Washington Consensus.

… the IMF has long-term Structural Adjustment Facilities (SAFs) where the conditionality includes liberalization of sectors well outside the purview of international finance: the elimination of trade barriers and price controls featuring heavily in the conditions.

Although the World Bank and IMF are supposed to have different areas of influence, the increasing debt burden of many developing countries, and the capital flow crises of 1982 and 1997, have significantly blurred the line between the two.

Secondly, Brad seems to have been scarred by an early encounter with Immanuel Wallerstein, which is perhaps why he seems to believe that Giddens and all other sociologists also yearn for Marxist revolution. Obviously, this is hilariously wrong as applied to Giddens, who not only made his sociological reputation by critiquing Marxism but went on to provide much of the theoretical window-dressing for New Labour’s passionate embrace of markets and big business in the 1990s.

Brad’s tirade is sad but perhaps not surprising. Sure, there’s a lot of waffle in sociology, and it can still learn a lot from economics and other disciplines, but it seems to me that sociologists have usually been very open to new ideas from other fields, perhaps because sociology is all about questioning the established order of things. In my view, economics could learn from this kind of methodological radicalism, and from sociology’s interest in power, identity, and the strength of social ties. In fact, much of the more interesting economics (such as research into happiness or preferences for equity over efficiency) seems to be influenced by sociological ideas, ditto arguably the most successful ‘economics‘ book in memory.

And there was me thinking the Globalisation Institute was becoming a bit more responsible in its old age. Apparently not - here’s Alex Singleton:

In fact, the issue of foreign aid is far more complicated that its religious supporters suggest. Even Christian Aid has come out and said that they don’t think the “big push” approach to foreign aid is the answer. As William Easterly points out, the overwhelming evidence is that development aid does not promote growth.

William Easterly is wrong. The evidence that aid is good for growth is diverse and powerful. And not just that, aid saves countless lives too. Easterly simply ignores or distorts that evidence to support his case. I’ve pointed this kind of thing out to Alex before so I suspect he chooses to believe Easterly because it is ideologically convenient. One side of the aid debate is indeed making flimsy arguments, but it’s not the likes of Oxfam or Christian Aid.

Someone over at the Adam Smith Institute blog obviously hasn’t read the posting guidelines. Here’s Krish Batra:

Despite not being the ideal state education system, the US model has been enlighteningly successful in many ways … a lot of districts often utilize big proportions of their district property taxes to fund the local public schools, resulting in a lot of high-quality state schools around the country. In fact in some states like Iowa, the quality of the public education system is so high that private schools cannot even come close to competing, and the majority of students opt to go to public schools.

What is this crazy talk? Spend more on state schools and they get better? Spend enough and the private sector can’t compete?? My god, consider the implications. I wonder how long this dangerous radical will last at the ASI.