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Esther Duflo is the most obviously deserving Nobel Prize in Economics pick in decades. Major substantive contributions to development economics coupled with bei

Esther Duflo is the most obviously deserving Nobel Prize in Economics pick in decades. Major substantive contributions to development economics coupled with being absolutely the vanguard of the credibility revolution. The article seems to motivate criticism of RCTs in only the barest manner: "what of external validity?" No shit, Sherlock, which is why the credibility revolution also argues for frequent and cross-contextual replications. "RCTs present ethical quandaries in re denying the control group the benefits of a presumed good intervention". Again, duh. The problem is these presumed good interventions often aren't which is why the most resounding impact of RCTs is not proving treatments successful beyond our wildest dreams, but rather finding a series of disappointing and in some cases devastating null effects. Bringing up deworming is especially rich in light of the serious concerns raised by deworming RCTs about the value and effect. It is also weird to talk about the credibility term solely or entirely in terms of RCTs. As economists often say RCTs are the gold standard, but there exist many silver standards and causal inference writ large and a broader concern with well identified pseudo-experimental or observational work has also developed thanks to the same forces and same people credited here. Thank god for Esther Duflo. Oh, and her husband is a half decent economist too, I guess.

mrosett 7y ago
RCTs are obviously a valuable tool for economics, and it deserves a bigger role than it's gotten historically. After the Nobel Prize, RCTs will probably get more attention than they merit for a while. Ultimately, there's a very limited set of economic topics that they can be used to illuminate. Based on the discussions I've had with economists since early October, I feel like we're about to see a lot of effort to push them to and beyond their limits, at the expense of the silver standards you mention. Mind you, I don't think that's a huge problem, and it's better than the original state of zero RCTs. But academia has its own fashions, just like anywhere else.
dwoozle 7y ago
Esther Duflo is so good that she got her husband the Nobel Prize. If Banerjee hadn’t married her and started coauthoring so much with her, Sendhil Mullainathan definitely would have been the third winner.
harry8 7y ago
Study with Esther now! https://www.edx.org/bio/esther-duflo https://www.edx.org/bio/esther-duflo Amazing I can type that. The net ain't all bad.
- samvher 7y ago
  They offer a "MicroMasters" on EdX [0] basically covering a lot of this RCT work. I can recommend it (I've completed it), I work as a data scientist and have learnt quite some new statistics tricks (and a lot about causal estimation) from some of the courses. [0] https://micromasters.mit.edu/dedp/ https://micromasters.mit.edu/dedp/
billfruit 7y ago
I am in general skeptical that statistical experiments will give use much insight into complex behavior. I think building theoritical models is the better approach to study complex systems, since then we will can explain why a certain behaviour shall manifest. Do astrophysicists use controlled trials to study the universe?
- daxfohl 7y ago
  There's the "shut up and calculate" thing within particle physics. I don't know how seriously it's taken.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    What? Shut up and calculate is an interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in general, and is probably most common as a backup to the Copenhagen interpretation. It doesn't have much to do with theory building at all, as most theory involving QM doesn't need to concern itself with exactly why QM works despite its strange philosophical meaning.
- samvher 7y ago
  Those models aren't worth much if you don't test them, so these efforts will have to go hand in hand. The way it tends to go now is RCT -> try to explain findings by hypothesizing about mechanisms -> think about an RCT that can test this hypothesis -> repeat. It's a slow and expensive process and not always successful, but I would say that it's progress.
  - billfruit 7y ago
    I would say testing is a small part of building models: building models should essentially be driven by theory, not by experiments.
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      Stare upon the FRBTheory wiki in delight then, here are ~50 different theories describing the same thing: https://frbtheorycat.org/index.php/Main_Page https://frbtheorycat.org/index.php/Main_Page As a generous guess at most 40 of these models are wrong, since they all describe basically the same few events with vastly different mechanisms. I guess that majority of interesting but wrong models is what you are after?
inception44 7y ago
Abhijit Banerjee was her doctoral advisor. He tutored her not the other way around. If you get any chance to read their famous book Poor Economics, you will find almost 70% RCTs were conducted in India. Classical Indian bias.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  What is it with India and economics? I have personally known many Indian economists, I see a lot of books written in Hindi about finance and other economic topics, and apparently many studies are conducted in India. There is something going on here, maybe a trend that will be remarked on a century from now.
  - bildung 7y ago
    India is quite a bunch of people :) If the academic output per capita is the same worldwide, then India alone would contribute 17% of the worldwide output of financial/economic publications.
  - bakuninsbart 7y ago
    I guess there is a bias that keeps perpetuating itself. I've made the same experience with Italians. On the other hand, here in Germany economics seem to be quite niche (and terrible), while our CS, Math and Engineering research is world-class.
- newyankee 7y ago
  do you mean anti-Indian or pro-Indian ?
pergadad 7y ago
I find the article and your comment somewhat disturbing. We really get into an ethics field here and I very much hope that they have ethical review panels as psychology or sociology have been using for decades. But that aside, what I find disturbing is the economic couching of basic human questions: do you need economic long-term effects that can be proven to provide deworming to poor children? Is that what we have arrived at - wellbeing is not even a concern. A fictional economic greater good is the measure of success, the health and comfort of poor people is not? I'd say there is really a need for soul-searching among economists - to rethink why capitalism has brought so much property but also leaves so many people in poverty, and why it has taken such radical forms that in the richest country on earth thousands starve and tens of thousands die of treatable medical issues - and millions more in a global view.
- sfink 7y ago
  I'm guessing you have a situation where vast numbers of people are not getting some treatment, you choose a manageable small subset to study, and only treat half of those. What's wrong with that? The alternative is not treating everybody in the continent, it's studying something else and treating nobody. Why would a researcher have the money and resources to treat everyone? (It does seem fair to offer the treatment to everyone involved in your trial after it's over.)
- benjaminclark 7y ago
  I don't think this is a fair interpretation of the poster above or Duflo & Banerjee's work. It is an unfortunate, but nevertheless true, statement that in the world today, we don't have an allocation of resources which allows for the most basic healthcare for all children. Let alone a broader set of healthcare services, free education, clear water, preventing malnutrition etc. Those who want to make practical improvements quickly with those limited funds available (from developing country governments, foreign aid, charity, etc.) need to make effective use of those funds. I don't think it is a stretch to say it is a moral obligation to make sure those funds are put to good use. Doing RCTs is quite key to identifying the most effective approaches whether the goal is lives saved/$, incremental years of education/$, malaria cases reduced/$, etc. With that data, you can direct funds to the most efficient cause in any given area. Duflo & Banerjee are quite modest about any judgement on whether the focus should be on improving quantity or quality of life and how one should measure quality of life. Their books are quite clear that one's one view of preferences doesn't necessarily line up with those who you are trying to help. And one last point, yes, of course, their work would go through ethics review panels. Basically anything with human subjects does and their work would obviously qualify.
samvher 7y ago
I'm not quite sure how to place your comment, maybe because the term credibility revolution is new to me. Yes, RCTs are used to test and provide evidence, and the null results can be very informative. But I think the external validity point made in the article is absolutely fair. Note that I work in RCTs so I'm definitely not opposed to the approach, but I think there are still a lot of improvements to be made on this - in the field people really do generalize findings quite aggressively. This is "practical" because you need to make decisions when setting up new projects and RCTs are incredibly laborious, expensive and take a lot of time to complete. I'm also surprised about your remark about deworming because it is generally touted as one of the big wins in the field of RCTs, by the RCTs people - Michael Kremer frequently mentions it and so do Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee in their courses on EdX. The concerns that you refer to don't tend to be mentioned (I think they should be!). Totally agree that Esther Duflo is fantastic and that the contributions of these people go beyond just RCTs, e.g. Esther Duflo's work on the returns of education in Indonesia.
- duxut_staglatz 7y ago
  See [0] for the "credibility revolution" [0] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.2.3 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.2.3

mrosett 7y ago

RCTs are obviously a valuable tool for economics, and it deserves a bigger role than it's gotten historically. After the Nobel Prize, RCTs will probably get more attention than they merit for a while. Ultimately, there's a very limited set of economic topics that they can be used to illuminate. Based on the discussions I've had with economists since early October, I feel like we're about to see a lot of effort to push them to and beyond their limits, at the expense of the silver standards you mention. Mind you, I don't think that's a huge problem, and it's better than the original state of zero RCTs. But academia has its own fashions, just like anywhere else.

dwoozle 7y ago

Esther Duflo is so good that she got her husband the Nobel Prize. If Banerjee hadn’t married her and started coauthoring so much with her, Sendhil Mullainathan definitely would have been the third winner.

harry8 7y ago

Study with Esther now! https://www.edx.org/bio/esther-duflo https://www.edx.org/bio/esther-duflo Amazing I can type that. The net ain't all bad.

samvher 7y ago
They offer a "MicroMasters" on EdX [0] basically covering a lot of this RCT work. I can recommend it (I've completed it), I work as a data scientist and have learnt quite some new statistics tricks (and a lot about causal estimation) from some of the courses. [0] https://micromasters.mit.edu/dedp/ https://micromasters.mit.edu/dedp/

billfruit 7y ago

I am in general skeptical that statistical experiments will give use much insight into complex behavior. I think building theoritical models is the better approach to study complex systems, since then we will can explain why a certain behaviour shall manifest. Do astrophysicists use controlled trials to study the universe?

daxfohl 7y ago
There's the "shut up and calculate" thing within particle physics. I don't know how seriously it's taken.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  What? Shut up and calculate is an interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in general, and is probably most common as a backup to the Copenhagen interpretation. It doesn't have much to do with theory building at all, as most theory involving QM doesn't need to concern itself with exactly why QM works despite its strange philosophical meaning.
samvher 7y ago
Those models aren't worth much if you don't test them, so these efforts will have to go hand in hand. The way it tends to go now is RCT -> try to explain findings by hypothesizing about mechanisms -> think about an RCT that can test this hypothesis -> repeat. It's a slow and expensive process and not always successful, but I would say that it's progress.
- billfruit 7y ago
  I would say testing is a small part of building models: building models should essentially be driven by theory, not by experiments.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Stare upon the FRBTheory wiki in delight then, here are ~50 different theories describing the same thing: https://frbtheorycat.org/index.php/Main_Page https://frbtheorycat.org/index.php/Main_Page As a generous guess at most 40 of these models are wrong, since they all describe basically the same few events with vastly different mechanisms. I guess that majority of interesting but wrong models is what you are after?

inception44 7y ago

Abhijit Banerjee was her doctoral advisor. He tutored her not the other way around. If you get any chance to read their famous book Poor Economics, you will find almost 70% RCTs were conducted in India. Classical Indian bias.

whatshisface 7y ago
What is it with India and economics? I have personally known many Indian economists, I see a lot of books written in Hindi about finance and other economic topics, and apparently many studies are conducted in India. There is something going on here, maybe a trend that will be remarked on a century from now.
- bildung 7y ago
  India is quite a bunch of people :) If the academic output per capita is the same worldwide, then India alone would contribute 17% of the worldwide output of financial/economic publications.
- bakuninsbart 7y ago
  I guess there is a bias that keeps perpetuating itself. I've made the same experience with Italians. On the other hand, here in Germany economics seem to be quite niche (and terrible), while our CS, Math and Engineering research is world-class.
newyankee 7y ago
do you mean anti-Indian or pro-Indian ?

pergadad 7y ago

I find the article and your comment somewhat disturbing. We really get into an ethics field here and I very much hope that they have ethical review panels as psychology or sociology have been using for decades. But that aside, what I find disturbing is the economic couching of basic human questions: do you need economic long-term effects that can be proven to provide deworming to poor children? Is that what we have arrived at - wellbeing is not even a concern. A fictional economic greater good is the measure of success, the health and comfort of poor people is not? I'd say there is really a need for soul-searching among economists - to rethink why capitalism has brought so much property but also leaves so many people in poverty, and why it has taken such radical forms that in the richest country on earth thousands starve and tens of thousands die of treatable medical issues - and millions more in a global view.

sfink 7y ago
I'm guessing you have a situation where vast numbers of people are not getting some treatment, you choose a manageable small subset to study, and only treat half of those. What's wrong with that? The alternative is not treating everybody in the continent, it's studying something else and treating nobody. Why would a researcher have the money and resources to treat everyone? (It does seem fair to offer the treatment to everyone involved in your trial after it's over.)
benjaminclark 7y ago
I don't think this is a fair interpretation of the poster above or Duflo & Banerjee's work. It is an unfortunate, but nevertheless true, statement that in the world today, we don't have an allocation of resources which allows for the most basic healthcare for all children. Let alone a broader set of healthcare services, free education, clear water, preventing malnutrition etc. Those who want to make practical improvements quickly with those limited funds available (from developing country governments, foreign aid, charity, etc.) need to make effective use of those funds. I don't think it is a stretch to say it is a moral obligation to make sure those funds are put to good use. Doing RCTs is quite key to identifying the most effective approaches whether the goal is lives saved/$, incremental years of education/$, malaria cases reduced/$, etc. With that data, you can direct funds to the most efficient cause in any given area. Duflo & Banerjee are quite modest about any judgement on whether the focus should be on improving quantity or quality of life and how one should measure quality of life. Their books are quite clear that one's one view of preferences doesn't necessarily line up with those who you are trying to help. And one last point, yes, of course, their work would go through ethics review panels. Basically anything with human subjects does and their work would obviously qualify.

samvher 7y ago

I'm not quite sure how to place your comment, maybe because the term credibility revolution is new to me. Yes, RCTs are used to test and provide evidence, and the null results can be very informative. But I think the external validity point made in the article is absolutely fair. Note that I work in RCTs so I'm definitely not opposed to the approach, but I think there are still a lot of improvements to be made on this - in the field people really do generalize findings quite aggressively. This is "practical" because you need to make decisions when setting up new projects and RCTs are incredibly laborious, expensive and take a lot of time to complete. I'm also surprised about your remark about deworming because it is generally touted as one of the big wins in the field of RCTs, by the RCTs people - Michael Kremer frequently mentions it and so do Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee in their courses on EdX. The concerns that you refer to don't tend to be mentioned (I think they should be!). Totally agree that Esther Duflo is fantastic and that the contributions of these people go beyond just RCTs, e.g. Esther Duflo's work on the returns of education in Indonesia.

duxut_staglatz 7y ago
See [0] for the "credibility revolution" [0] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.2.3 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.2.3