After 30+ years in development I find the idea that Duflo/Banerjee are the heirs of Hirschman bizarre. RCTs are by their nature short term. In the early years of the RCT bandwagon I reviewed a large number. Typically the Principal Investigator only left his Harvard desk for one month a year. He, or she, did not do any tramping through fields collecting data. National subcontractors did that. Dependent on ever more convoluted statistical techniques, RCTs are just another form of the mathiness which Hirschman tried to avoid.
I am no economist, let alone a developmental economist, but I love reading Hirschman. His "The Passions and the Interests" with Amartya Sen's illuminating introduction was a real revelation about how the case for Capitalism was made before it became the Deathstar. Also made me me think of how 'interest' is such an interesting category - part cognitive, part affective, part social.
After 30+ years in development I find the idea that Duflo/Banerjee are the heirs of Hirschman bizarre. RCTs are by their nature short term. In the early years of the RCT bandwagon I reviewed a large number. Typically the Principal Investigator only left his Harvard desk for one month a year. He, or she, did not do any tramping through fields collecting data. National subcontractors did that. Dependent on ever more convoluted statistical techniques, RCTs are just another form of the mathiness which Hirschman tried to avoid.
I am no economist, let alone a developmental economist, but I love reading Hirschman. His "The Passions and the Interests" with Amartya Sen's illuminating introduction was a real revelation about how the case for Capitalism was made before it became the Deathstar. Also made me me think of how 'interest' is such an interesting category - part cognitive, part affective, part social.