UC Davis Econ in the News

2007-06-29 · Original WordPress address

(... of the blog coverage variety ...) Will Wilkinson writes about Prof. Clark's good book:

This a profoundly insightful work sure to raise ire and inspire further progress. Key claim: labor quality is the difference between rich and poor. Depressing claim: Sub-Saharan Africa has largely Malthusian conditions, so success in increasing health and life-spans has decreased the average material standard of living below hunter-gatherer levels. Biggest disappointment: seems evasive on the question of the cause of variations in labor quality. Why not culture?

I should be careful critiquing Prof. Clark's work, he's grading my Growth Field exam next week, but I have similar questions about his work. The professor does a great job of carving out the negative space of whatever topic he's writing about. In his papers, he tells his readers what can't explain the phenomenon. He leaves us hanging, though, on what can explain it. For example, take cotton mills in the 19th century. Many of the countries to develop early, did so via the textile industry. So the mills are important for understanding why some countries are rich today and some aren't. Why was productivity in Indian cotton mills so much lower than in England in the 19th century (jstor link)? Clark demonstrates it wasn't because of differences in schooling or the skill of managers or differences in technology or anything else you can think of. What caused the productivity differences then? Dunno and Clark doesn't provide the answer either. He does defend himself, though:

These lessons from the mills will undoubtedly seem to some as merely destructive of conventional wisdom on underdevelopment without suggesting any replacement. Nevertheless, identifying the effects of the local environment or culture on the labor force as the source of the poor performance of textile mills in low-wage countries is a significant advance in understanding development. For if we can isolate one factor as supremely important, no matter how poorly we comprehend that factor at present, we are in a much better position to direct future research on economic growth.