Economic Rockstar

Connecting Brilliant Minds in Economics and Finance

112: Stuti Khemani on Making Politics Work for Development and Using Creativity and the Arts to Make Better Policy Decisions

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112: Stuti Khemani on Making Politics Work for Development and Using Creativity and the Arts to Make Better Policy Decisions

Stuti Khemani is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of The World Bank. She joined through stuti-khemani-economic-rockstarthe Young Professionals Program after obtaining a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Khemani’s area of research is the political economy of public policy choices, and institutional reforms for development.

Her work is published in leading economics and political science journals, such as the American Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics and American Political Science Review.

Stuti has studied the impact of electoral politics on fiscal policy and intergovernmental fiscal relations; drawn policy implications for the design of institutions to promote fiscal responsibility; and analyzed political constraints to efficient allocation of resources for health and education services.

She is also the lead author of the forthcoming Policy Research Report ‘Making Politics Work for Development: Harnessing Transparency and Citizen Engagement’.

Her research and advisory work spans a diverse range of countries, including Benin, China, India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

More and more I’m fascinated by the world around me and with people currently living in the world.

In this episode you will learn:

  • why working in policy is important.
  • about the basic need for freedom and and the freedom to choose government.
  • about the Dictator’s Dilemma.
  • what makes a successful autocratic government.
  • whether culture plays a significant role in a successful government and economy.
  • how leader selection and sanction can create better government.
  • the importance of art and creativity in policy-making.
  • and much much more.

Papers:

Making politics work for development : harnessing transparency and citizen engagement.

The World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends

Making Autocracy Work by Timothy Besley and Masayuki Kudamatsu 

Writing Tips:

  • “Write short sentences. My natural instinct is write long convoluted sentence. Now I discipline myself to edit and re-write and to make every sentence as short as possible.”
  • “Write to intuition. Not to use mystifying language or jargon. I try to think through how I would say it to my brother who works at Google and knows nothing about economics and then write it.”

People Mentioned in this Episode:

Books:

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058: Morten Jerven on Poor Numbers and Why Economists Get It Wrong With Africa

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058: Morten Jerven on Poor Numbers and Why Economists Get It Wrong With Africa

Morton Jerven is Professor of Economic History and Development at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

In 2014, Morton was appointed Associate Professor in Global Change and International Relations at Noragrica at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

Morton has published widely on African economic development, and particularly on patterns of economic growth and on economic development statistics.

Upon the release of his book, Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It, Morton caused uproar across Africa and had been expelled from two conferences. His latest book Africa: Why Economists Get It Wrong is now available on Amazon.

Morton is an economic historian, with an MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics.

Economics:

In this interview, Morten mentions: capital markets, sovereign bonds, National Income Statistics, GDP, demographics, wages, rents, profits, consumption, investment, exports, imports, population growth, m-pesa, debt-to-GDP ratio, poverty and GDP per capita.

Economists:

In this interview, Morten mentions: Jonathan Temple, Stephen Durlauf, Simon Johnson, Shanta Deverajan, Neil Fantom (World Bank) and Wolfgang Stolper.

In this episode you will learn:

  • why Morten was expelled from two conferences in Africa.
  • about the knowledge problem that exists in economic statistical data.
  • if economic statistics is underfunded relative to other social sciences.
  • whether economic data from African countries is intentionally misleading or if it’s a methodology and availability problem.
  • what is GDP and why is it used.
  • the problems with measuring GDP.
  • why the production approach is really the only valid method to measuring GDP.
  • why a country’s GDP is estimate by proxy and how productivity data is difficult to collect.
  • how population growth is used as a proxy for GDP.
  • whether we should allow Google and other companies that store big data to provide economic data.
  • whether cooperation or conflict between big data and official statistics will emerge.
  • how observing the brightness of countries from space is now being used to measure economic growth.
  • what the IMF does to missing data, such as GDP.
  • why Morten collected his own data for a number of African countries since the IMF wouldn’t share their own.
  • whether papers written by the IMF and the World Bank undergo a peer-review process.
  • how the ‘branding’ of statistics by the World Bank and the IMF can mislead the user.
  • how using the 3 methods of calculating GDP for all African countries shows significant differences when ranking each from poorest to wealthiest.

Quotes by Morten Jerven:

Statistics is the archetypal way of generalising from complex social realities to a very orderly aggregate picture – Morten Jerven

Make everything count. If you write something, make sure it’s going somewhere. If you prepare a lecture to speak about something, make sure you have an idea about how that can become a publishable unit – Morten Jerven

Make sure, as an academic working, it’s important not to think that working long hours is the key to being effective. Start writing early. It’s important – Morten Jerven

Organisations Mentioned in this Episode:

Books:

Papers/Articles:

Resources:

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