A more useful aid debate

Ken Opalo highlights recent entries on the great aid debate from Bill Gates, Jeff Sachs, Bill Easterly, and Chris Blattman. Much has been said on this debate, and sometimes it feels like it's hard to add anything new. But since having a monosyllabic first name seem sufficient qualification to weigh in, I will. First, this part of Ken's post resonates with me:

I think most reasonable people would agree that Sachs kind of oversold his big push idea in The End of Poverty. Or may be this was just a result of his attempt to shock the donor world into reaching the 0.7 percent mark in contributions. In any event it is unfortunate that the debate on the relative efficacy of aid left the pages of journal articles in its current form. It would have been more helpful if the debate spilled into the public in a policy-relevant form, with questions like: under what conditions does aid make a difference? What can we do to increase the efficacy of aid? What kinds of aid should we continue and what kinds should we abolish all together? (emphasis added)

Lee Crawfurd wrote something along these lines too: "Does Policy Work?"  Lee wrote that on Jan 10, 2013, and I jokingly said it was the best aid blog post of the year (so far). Now that 2013 has wrapped up, I'll extend that evaluation to 'best aid blog post of 2013'. It's worth sharing again:

The question "does policy work" is jarring, because we immediately realise that it makes little sense. Governments have about 20-30 different Ministries, which immediately implies at least 20-30 different areas of policy. Does which one work? We have health and education policy, infrastructure policy (roads, water, energy), trade policy, monetary policy, public financial management, employment policy, disaster response, financial sector policy, climate and environment policy, to name just a few. It makes very little sense to ask if they all collectively "work" or are "effective". Foreign aid is similar. Aid supports all of these different areas of policy....

A common concern is about the impact of aid on growth... Some aid is specifically targeted at growth - such as financing infrastructure or private sector development. But much of it is not. One of the few papers which looks at the macroeconomic impact of aid and actually bothers to disaggregate even a little the different types of aid, finds that the aid that could be considered to have growth as a target, does increase growth. It's the aid that was never intended to impact growth at all, such as humanitarian assistance, which doesn't have any impact on growth.

I like to think that most smart folks working on these issues -- and that includes both Sachs and Easterly -- would agree with the following summaries of our collective state of knowledge:

  •  A lot of aid projects don't work, and some of them do harm.
  • Some aid, especially certain types of health projects, works extremely well.

The disagreement is on the balance of good and bad, so I wish -- as Ken wrote -- the debate spilled into the public sphere along those lines (which is good? which is bad? how can we get a better mix?) rather than the blanket statements both sides are driven to by the very publicness of the debate. It reminds me a bit of debates in theology: if you put a fundamentalist and Einstein in the same room, they'll both be talking about "God" but meaning very different things with the same words. (This is not a direct analogy, so don't ask who is who...)

When Sachs and Easterly talk about whether aid "works", it would be nice if we could get everyone to first agree on a definition of "aid" and "works". But much of this seems to be driven by personal animosity between Easterly and Sachs, or more broadly, by personal animosity of a lot of aid experts vs. Sachs. Why's that? I think part of the answer is that it's hard to tell when Sachs is trying to be a scientist, and when he's trying to be an advocate. He benefits from being perceived as the former, but in reality is much more the latter. Nina Munk's The Idealist -- an excellent profile of Sachs I've been meaning to review -- explores this tension at some length. The more scientifically-minded get riled up by this confusion -- rightfully, I think. At the same time, public health folks tend to love Sachs precisely because he's been a powerful advocate for some types of health aid that demonstrably work -- also rightfully, I think. There's a tension there, and it's hard to completely dismiss one side as wrong, because the world is complicated and there are many overlapping debates and conversations; academic and lay, public and private, science and advocacy.

So, back to Ken's questions that would be answered by a more useful aid debate:

  • Under what conditions does aid make a difference?
  • What can we do to increase the efficacy of aid?
  • What kinds of aid should we continue and what kinds should we abolish all together?

Wouldn't it be amazing if the public debate were focused on these questions? Actually, something like that was done: Boston Review had a forum a while back on "Making Aid Work" with responses by Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, Howard White, Ruth Levine, and others. I think that series of questions is much more informative than another un-moderated round of Sachs vs Easterly.