48 Responses

1. Anonymous at 5:21 PM

   You found the only website I have ever seen contesting the higher level of testosterone in blacks

   TGGP

   Higher testosterone leads to more violence and a higher proportion of violent people. If Africa had the income of Latin America, they should build a prison system like the US, to lock the black criminal class and protect the other blacks from them

2. Anonymous, I agree that the sort of Bono & Geldof plans for saving Africa don't work too well, but I don't know of any evidence showing that testosterone is a major problem. I'm not saying I know for a fact it isn't, just that I don't know of any evidence either way.

3. Anonymous said:

   >> Don't you think that your career will be at risk?

   I don't really worry about that too much. I can always find another job. In the meantime, I'm hoping to avoid living one of those "lives of quiet desperation" that seem so popular in academia…..

   But as it happens, my career has improved since I started working on the 'Macroeconomics of IQ' about five years ago. I've published in good journals, presented at good conferences, and my work is read and cited by other academics.

   The ongoing work of Putterman and Weil, the work of Galor and Moav, and the work of Greg Clark all show that these supposedly off-limits topics at the nexus of culture, genetics, cognition, and very-long-run growth are pretty popular among academic economists these days….

   Low hanging fruit….

4. “Africans have low IQ and high testosterone levels.”

   No, they don’t.

5. Garett Jones

   Are you going to explicitly say that the IQ in Africa is 2 SDs below the US average and make a connection between this fact and the low incomes of Africa? Don’t you think that your career will be at risk?

6. Shameless self-promotion:

   My 2006 J. Econ Growth paper with psychologist Joel Schneider on IQ and long-run economic performance runs Bayesian-model-averaging robustness tests and finds that national average IQ differences can do some heavy econometric lifting (link in my name).

   The average IQ score in SSA is about 2 standard deviations below the U.S. mean, and one standard deviation below the mean of African-Americans. Nutrition, genes, culture: All may play a role in explaining IQ differences across groups. Test bias, not so much, as we discuss in the literature review.

   Interpreted naively, our results suggest that if you can take national average IQ from SSA levels to East Asia levels, we predict that a country should grow 10X more productive.

   Of course, this is a macro result—it was my first paper on the topic. My work since then has been about finding microstructure behind this macro result.

   So far, I’ve found that smarter groups cooperate more in Prisoner’s Dilemmas (JEBO 2008) and they’re more patient in experimental and real-world settings (work in progress); I’ve also found a channel that can explain why IQ matters more for groups than individuals in a Kremer-style “O-Ring” model. I’ll be presenting the latter at the AEA meetings in a few weeks….

7. TGGP

   I aggree. My point is that the real problems of Africa are low IQ and high testosterone and those should be addressed even though they can’t be named due to liberal sensitivities.

   If we follow the SWPL mindset we’ll make Africa’s poverty permanent while the SWPL’s will keep their funding for ever. So SWPFs must be called back to reality and show some results. To do so, they need to address IQ and testosterone, without naming it

8. Two additional, non-academic, books worth considering:

   Rivoli’s “Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” is a good story of cotton farm to 2nd hand t-shirt market in Tanzania that is useful to understand the barriers Africa faces in global commerce.

   I also love Michael Holman’s novel “Last Orders at Harrods” about Kenya during the visit of the World Bank president. (Satire is always better than econometrics!)

9. disparately <- desperately

10. A country’s GDP per capita can be effectively predicted with just two variables: economic freedom and IQ. Details:

    http://rpongett.phpwebhosting.com/gdp.html

    Ergo, to raise incomes, those are the factors that must be improved. Increasing economic freedom requires figuring out how to bring about political change in the factors listed here:

    http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/topten.cfm

    …while increasing IQ requires better infant nutrition (in the short term) and a better understanding of the genes that influence IQ (in the long term.) Unfortunately, as adult IQ is ~80% genetic, improved access to education will not be effective by itself.

    I would disparately like to see black africa do better, and it’s very discouraging to see the root causes not being addressed due to PC concerns. If you are willing to confront and explore some of these issues, then while you may generate controversy, you will actually do something meaningful to address the real problems. I wish you courage.

11. Anonymous 4:37, your plan sounds very risky and unreliable. How do we know those pesticides won’t cause other harms that outweigh the benefits? And have we actually seen an instance where testosterone levels were decreased leading to appreciable positive results?

    In contrast consider micronutrient enrichment, as this worthwhile Canadian initiative does. They’ve been widespread in the first world for many years now and apparently gave a significant boost. Another lesson we’ve learned is that lead contamination can cause significant harm. A significant amount of the social dysfunction associated with the “Great Sixties Freakout” may be due to lead.

    I don’t expect either kind of initiative to transform sub-Saharan Africa into Hong Kong, but it’s a good idea to take incremental steps toward a better world when possible.

12. I also see very little discussion on sexual behavior that privileges and rewards the “Big Man” (see the Obamas). I once read that in Africa 75 percent of the labor involved in farming is done by women, which implies that for most males sexual access to women is not heavily involved with economic production. More likely it is related to political power.

    When male sexual access is not closely tied to economic production, then men have little incentive to be economically productive. So, the single most important social technology that Africa could adopt is universal and rigorously-enforced monogamy.

13. to anonymous at 8:31

    I accept the fate of paying taxes to sustain unproductive people like this blog readers in their utopian dreams. I am just proposing a way to effectively benefit africans without compromising the funding for your research and your trips to europe to discuss Africa.

14. Africans have low IQ and high testosterone levels. Thus their inablity to run things and their high levels of violence, not only in Africa but whetever they live

    But we have a problem. We are talking about a Yale Class, so anything that hints at such ideas is anathema. So I propose two solutions:

    1) You are not sincere about solving African problems. You only want money for “research” and conferences around the world paid by the US taxpayer. SO stick to the view of the first comments and criminalize references to IQ by race, for example. You get the money, people will pay you to go to Paris discuss Africa and the problems will remain, so you will have a permanent problem meaning permanent funding

    2) You are sincere about solving Africa’s problems. SO you must address low IQ and high testosterone without naming it. The use of some pesticides reduce testosterone. In a low testosterone society, as Japan, this can be dangerous. But in Africa it is exactly what we need. You can justify it by citing the necessity of fighting hunger and deforestation (higher yields meaning less need to cut the forests). The distribution of food causes the even lower IQ poor of Africa to have even more children. Stop it. Use the money to give credit to whatever the market choses. The lower IQ africans won’t have the ability to have credit so it will go to higher IQ africans, benefiting society the most. You can justify it using microcredit, Grameenn, Yunus, all that SWPL stuff

15. Neither Griff nor GNXP (run by two dark-skinned Indians) are “racist” websites in any meaningful sense of the term. That is, unless, by “racist”, you mean willing to discuss, that over the course of 5000 generations divergence and under vastly different selective pressures, the possibility of divergent evolution of our species across some traits. But that would just make you a rabid anti-science zealot, no more serious than a creationist.

16. To elaborate further, China was ruled for a long time by Mao, one of the most destructive heads of government in history (though Mugabe is giving him a run for his money). His replacement with Deng may be likened to removing your boot from the neck of an otherwise healthy person. Sub-saharan African countries are not such a healthy person and despite repeated changes in government, even ones that generally follow standard neo-liberal theory rather than more obviously suicidal policies, that fact has not changed.

    Colonialism is quite a poor explanation. As mentioned, Africa was relatively poor before colonialism and the least heavily colonized areas in the center of the continent are also the least well off. Ethiopia and Thailand stand out as countries that avoided colonialism, but are they much better off than their neighbors? Hong Kong remained a territory of the UK until relatively recently, and has been one of the world’s greatest success stories. South Africa didn’t have the sort of violent overthrow of colonialism that other countries had and as so much of the old colonial system and actors remain, it may be considered still quite “colonized” compared to its neighbors, and it is also far less impoverished. People also snark that Botswana is today a colony of De Beers and Mauritania (admittedly part of north Africa) is run by South Asians.

17. Kurt9, poverty is the default state of mankind. First-world levels of wealth don’t just fall from the sky. China was actually wealthier than the West for most of history, the “Great Divergence” after the Industrial Revolution was just a temporary aberration from the normal way of things. Sub-saharan Africa, in contrast, has been poorer for about as long as recorded history.

18. Oh, and don’t forget “The Road to Hell” by David Maron

19. Perhaps reading “Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark might help those who are confused.

20. Fyi to Chris Blattman, a racist website has linked to your post. Hence all the creepy comments.

21. When I was a kid, China was as poor as Africa is today and India was worse. China and the rest of Asia (except for Japan) was seen as hopelessly backward and inherently incapable of developing. India was that place that had the kids with the swollen bellies (or was that Indonesia? I forget). Today, China is the fastest growing economy and large parts of it are near first-world standards. And the other places are way better today than they were then. Perhaps whatever these countries have done, particularly China, is what the Africans should do.

22. Africa’s Problems: Corruption, tribalism, selfishness, militarism, kin selection, disease, rape, murder, ignorance, impulsiveness, short-sighted gain, the selfish gene, etc. etc.

    Oh, hell, just send them money.

23. Here’s Jason Molloy on Race Differences in IQ

    Here’s Griffe on the Smart Fraction Theory of IQ and the Wealth of Nations .

    Most of Africa’s problems can be explained by low IQ. Things don’t get done.

24. Lynn and Vanhanen “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”

25. I have a pointer here. I once took a similar course in grad school. I must say it was the worst course I’d ever taken, since I was only the second African to graduate from the department. I was a bit disapointed at the exchange with my teacher who seemed rather resolute about making points which I am sure he was clueless about. Since you travel to Africa quite frequently, I am sure you will not fall for some the existing theories in developmental economics. The field is so underdeveloped it made me hyperventilate a few times in class. But please please do avoid theories that lean heavily of geography.

26. Ayittey?????

    Mamdani????

    Is yours an economics class or just a casual search of Afro centric writers?

27. Here’s my somewhat idiosyncratic take.

28. Ha-Joon Chang’s “Bad Samaritans” is a must read for this class… Would also recommend Empty promises: the planned failures of global capitalism.

29. What caused the financial crisis? A perfect storm of a hundred problems.

    Why is Africa poor? A perfect storm of a thousand problems.

30. Too many to include in one post…they include Dele Olojede,Fred Kwoba,Karen Craggs,Taban lo Liyong,Judi Wakhungu,James Shikwati,John Mukum Mbaku,Basil Enwegbara,Akinyi June Arunga,Kofi Akosah-Sarpong,Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie,Moelesti Mbeki,Demba Moussa Dembele,Deborah Bräutigam,John Mulaa etc. etc…

31. I would perhaps put on a few chapters from Jared Diamonds “Collapse” as well. I personally find the book better than “Guns, Germs, and Steel”.
    Other scholars who could be relevant for the course is Blessings Chinsinga from Malawi and Mylene Kheralla from (I think) Egypt.

    I won’t recommend any specific parts of their research, but both sure do put interesting perspectives on several issues. Especially political economy.

32. I echo the comment on Mushtaq Khan. He really knows what he is talking about.

33. What about Axelle Kabou’s “Et si l’Afrique refusait le développement”? I’m not sure about it’s English title, but it’s easy to find, I guess. It was written in 1994, but when I read it about two years ago, I felt this was one of the books everyone should read on Africa/development. Plus, she is black and from Africa (Cameroon? But I’m not exactly sure)

    Coming up, I think in January, is “Dead Aid” by Dambisa Moyo. It might fit.

34. Dude, why don’t you just assign the CGD website? :)

    I would make more of the course focused on macroeconomic management and structural reform of key sectors. Making a substantial reduction in poverty in Africa requires westerners (including Yale undergraduates) to start thinking about Africa in terms of investment flows, rather than aid flows. You might also want to talk explicitly about managing extractive industry revenues.

    Finally, you should make sure your students should know what the role of the IMF in developing African countries is and what is the role of the MDBs. That’s the single most common development misconception I encounter.

35. I was about to complain about including Sachs’ The End Of Poverty, but now I see it is scheduled for the first “critical review”. Well done.

36. I’m not sure this is what you’re looking for, but you could consider having your students watch Jacqueline Novogratz’s TED talks somewhere in weeks nine through eleven.

    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jacqueline_novogratz_invests_in_ending_poverty.html

    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jacqueline_novogratz_on_patient_capitalism.html

37. Arundhati Roy’s essays in the Politics of Power are very readable but well-reasoned criticisms of national and international development in the context of large infrastrucutre in India…and Roy in neither white nor male.

38. You might include some of Nana Poku’s work on the HIV/AIDS crisis. Amy Patterson also has some interesting stuff on the role of African civil society in combating HIV/AIDS (Patterson, HIV/AIDS in Africa (2006)).

39. Topic 4 and 5: your students could really benefit from reading something by Mushtaq Khan here; ticks the non-white (he’s from Bangladesh) and definitely non-conservative boxes.
    All of his articles can be retrieved from his website: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/mk17/

    In particular, for topic 4 I recommend:

    The Efficiency Implications of Corruption, Journal of International Development 8 (5): 683-696, 1996. [http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/mk17/Docs/Corruption%20JID.pdf]
    or
    Determinants of Corruption in Developing Countries: The Limits of Conventional Economic Analysis, in Susan Rose-Ackerman ed. Handbook on Economic Corruption. Edward Elgar. 2006. pp. 216-244. [http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/mk17/Docs/Khan%20Drivers%20of%20Corruption%20in%20Developing%20Countries%20SRA%20edits.pdf]

    Relevant for topics 5 and 12 is ‘State Failure in Developing Countries and Strategies of Institutional Reform’, in Tungodden, Bertil, Nick Stern and Ivar Kolstad (eds) Towards Pro-Poor Policies: Aid Institutions and Globalization Proceedings of World Bank’s Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, 2002. Oxford : Oxford University Press and World Bank 2004. pp. 165-195.

40. I am so jealous I cannot be in this class.

41. The Banerjee Duflo combo strikes two criterion in one paper.

42. Two points.

    First, why Jared Diamond as opposed to William H McNeill? McNeill tends, in my opinion, to be more scholarly, and ultimately to have deeper insights than Diamond.

    Second, I would recommend parts of Nazih N. Ayubi’s book “Overstating the Arab State.” While the book deals mostly with the Middle East, she has some interesting sections on structural adjustment in the Maghreb.

43. Unfortunately I don’t go to Yale, but have read Sachs’, Easterley’s, Collier, and Rodrik’s books(I assume of course that you are referring to their more popular books). Is there any way you could provide course materials for someone who just wants gain the knowledge? Say lecture slides and reading assignments? The greatest thing ever would be video/audio of lectures. Development Economics is so awesome.

    Sohaib Hasan

44. I’m not sure how useful this is, but I maintain a small database of syllabi and reading lists in feminist economics. There’s a subsection for gender and development courses, where you might find some material by and about women. It’s here.

45. Abhijit Banerjee’s “Making Aid Work,” would be great for the “aid” sections of the course. It is a debate from the Boston Review around the role of randomized trials in guiding development policy. Banerjee strikes first blood, with responses from eminent economists like Jagdish Bhagwati, Robert Bates, Nic Stern, Angus Deaton, and others.

46. Sen would help diversify geographically. Plus his development as expanding freedom stuff is great for people who are starting to think about development.

47. There’s a Macro Development book by Pierre Richard Agenor and Peter Montiel. Agenor is from Haiti.But I’m not sure his view are that different from mainstream development. And maybe the content is too hard for undergrads…anyway maybe you should look at it…

48. There’s a Macro Development book by Pierre Richard Agenor and Peter Montiel. Agenor is from Haiti, but I’m not sure his view are that different from the standard “rich white academic”…maybe you can look at it.