All this reminded me of a delightful thread we had here at CT a while back, in which Trane suggested we could all come up with translations of our own favorite poems. In slightly amended fashion, I suggest the following: on 21 March, World Poetry Day, I will open a thread where everyone can post a poem of their own making or their favorite poem by someone else – and in both cases with or without translation into English/Globish. Go write, people!

Reddy defends the position that economics is a profoundly value-entangled science, and that “Good theory is theory which illuminates the world, and good theory cannot start from a-priori premises which are disconnected from the world. Good theory has to start in part from observation from the world.”

I agree with every word Reddy says, but am a bit puzzled why Mehrling sees Reddy’s position as ‘a strong position’. In my view, if it is regarded (by economists?) as a ‘strong position’, that is just because economics has so forcefully tried to distance itself from any evaluative or otherwise ethical concerns; but in truth, economics has never been value-free, it has only fooled itself that it could be so. I’m really glad that Reddy is contributing to a better understanding of economics as value-entangled. Can’t wait to read the result of his INET project, “a book making a broad case for the resurrection of normative reasoning in economics”.

I haven’t been following the coalition negotiations in detail, so mainly want to open up space for those of you who want to discuss whatever you want to discuss regarding the new coalition. Just three brief observations below the fold.

First, the austerity measures that have been haunting many other European countries, had in Belgium not yet been politically decided upon, let alone executed, since after the elections the outgoing government is not legitimized to make such decisions. So the wave of social protest that we have seen in neighbouring countries over the last year can now be expected in Belgium (soon after the outlines of the coalition agreement became public, the first protest was organized). Belgium is a close runner-up to the Euro-countries that are in Real Trouble, so if the government wants to lower the interest rate on its debt, it will have to do something about the trust the financial markets have. In the meantime, the outgoing prime minister did something which seems quite smart: he strategically used the difference between the (relatively low) interest rates which savers get for their money and the (high) interest rates the government has to pay to refinance its debt on the international markets, by collecting money domestically with the Belgian households (who have significant savings: the Belgian state is not rich, but many of the people have lots of savings). Shouldn’t that be a strategy that more Euro-countries in trouble can use?

Second, while this government has kept out the nationalist parties, and in that sense the tensions between the Francophones and Dutch-speaking politicians should not weigh too much on the political agenda, there is at the symbolic (and the practical??) level a black spot, since the prime minister, Elio di Rupo, speaks rather poorly Dutch. Several Flemish politicians (and not only the Flemish nationalists) have expressed concern how a prime minister of such a divided country can do his job well if he can’t effectively communicate in the language of 55-60% of the population. My personal view on this is very simple: In general, all jobs come with requirements, and it seems to me an eminently reasonable requirement that any minister of the Belgian federal government, but most definitely the prime-minister, should have a functional (though by no means perfect) command of Dutch, French and English. Whether or not di Rupo meets that criterion, is for the future to show us. In any case he has promised to improve his Dutch, and asked for patience.

Third, di Rupo is gay, and openly gay. As far as I know, nobody makes a big deal about that. It doesn’t seem to play any role whatsoever (correct me if I’m wrong). I think this is fantastic. That’s just how it should be: not an issue.

In any case, the big news for today is that Belgium FINALLY has a government. For the time being, the language quibbles and the social protests can’t spoil the feeling of relief that surely many Belgians must feel.

A religiously-inspired progressively-leaning magazine is starting a new series, namely asking people which book “provides support, or is a book to which one often returns”. And the answer cannot be the Bible. I actually don’t think I can answer this question. Most fiction, with very few exceptions, I’ve only read once. Non-fiction I read is either informative (like King Leopold’s Ghost, or Joris Luyendijk’s book on the Middle East), or else it is scholarly, but then I don’t think I see it as providing (moral) support or as an inspirational book. Of course, I’ve opened A Theory of Justice or Inequality Reexamined or Justice, Gender and the Family many times, but that’s mostly because I want to return to the arguments to examine them. Moreover, most of the (non-professional) reading I do is on blogs and the internet.

So what, if anything, could be similar to an atheist as the Bible is to a Christian? I really don’t know. But if I’m forced to give an answer, I would say: I prefer talking to people over reading books if I need (moral) guidance or support, and if I need inspiration or some distance and non-analytical reflection, I turn to poetry. I still have, ripped from a student’s magazine when I was studying in Göttingen in 1994/5, a page with a Poem written by Nazim Hikmet, translated in German – a poem to which I have returned many, many times:

Leben
einzeln und frei
wie ein Baum
und brüderlich
wie ein Wald
ist unsere Sehnsucht.

So give me poetry and people if I need inspiration or support. And you?

Two related things perhaps worth mentioning.
First, in the Netherlands a very interesting initiative started a few weeks ago (independent of Occupy Wall Street, but obviously not independent of the same global problems in the financial sector): the Sustainable Finance Lab. It’s an initiative by an eclectic group of academics, mostly economists (some more mainstream, some more heterodox), and one small ‘green’ bank (Triodos), to bring together people interests in debating what the real problems are with the financial sector and what needs to be changed. So far there have been 2 meetings (last Monday and the Monday before), which were 4 times oversubscribed according to the organizers. I’ve attended both meetings and it’s been very, very interesting – in fact, on issues of economics I haven’t seen anything as interesting so close to home for a long time, and that’s probably because people who normally don’t speak to each other are sitting in the same room and sharing their views. Bankers, academics, students, ex-investment bankers, journalists—they all share their views in a respectful atmosphere, but it’s clear they do not quite have the same perception of how urgent change is needed, and indeed what type of change is needed, or what the causes of the problems are. I’ll try to remember posting something about the Sustainable Finance Lab after the first series of meetings is over (end of this year), but in the meantime, for those of you who understand Dutch, you can read my analysis (criticism) of the first two meetings here. I’d be interested to hear if any similar initiatives have been taken in other countries.

Second, both the debates at the Sustainable Finance Lab (where some of the self-criticism by some economists gives me a strong, but also somewhat ironic, déjà-vu feeling), and the article ‘Economics has met the enemy and it is economics‘, published in The Globe and Mail last weekend, remind me so much of the debate we had as economics grad students on the relation of economics with the economy and the rest of the world. If you think there is something deeply wrong with the economic system (or at least some aspects/sectors of it), you just cannot not pose the question whether there is also something wrong with the discipline that studies, influences, shapes and to some extent legitimizes that system (not necessarily in that order). Whole generations of economists, including me, have been educated with the clear message (dogma, if you want): There Is No Alternative. At best, you can tinker at little at the margins. So I couldn’t help wondering: now that the people are on the streets, will a new generation of young economists, who haven’t given up on the discipline yet, stand up and demand it to change so as to make sure it serves the people’s true needs, all people equally, including those who have yet to be born? Will they organize ‘Occupy Economics’?

The last months were filled with one attempt after the other to find a coalition, all in a climate of the absence of trust between the two main linguistic groups, and also in what I’d call the ‘bad-divorce-atmosphere’. With that latter I mean that if one listens to the interpretation or explanation of a certain event by either the Flemish or the Francophones, it is just like listening to two spouses in the middle of a very ugly divorce: it is as if they live in two completely different realities. This, in fact, is probably the factor that makes me most pessimistic regarding the odds that the two linguistic groups will stay in the same country in the long run: just like a bad marriage, they no longer have enough valuable things in common, and their common past may no longer be enough to keep them together.

So now, in this mess, another event was just announced that may cause Belgium to sink even deeper: Yves Leterme, the Christian-Democratic former Prime-Minister, who has been been running the daily affairs for the last 15 months waiting to be succeeded by the new PM, has announced that he is moving to the office of the OECD.
Together with his team, he has been taking care of daily affairs in Belgium, in very difficult economic times, and I believe the general judgement is that he did so quite well, especially given the difficult circumstances.

I see two possible scenarios. Either his exit is the pressure that breaks the bowl, the negotiations which are not going anywhere stop, and we go for new elections or yet another new set of parties negotiation (but haven’t we had almost all possible combinations by now?). Or the negotiating parties understand how precarious the situation now is, and this gives them a reason to find the compromise that they have had such a hard time finding over the last 15 months. Either way, the departure of Leterme is a shock to the political class, and we’ll have to see in the mid-long term whether it will turn out a good thing or not. In the short term, it definitely is only adding another problem on the existing heap of problems.

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach

One could be inclined to believe that this is merely a teaching book, and it is with that assumption that I read it; yet there is also something in there for scholars of the approach. They will also discover some new claims and statements – some of which I endorse, and some of which I contest.

Nussbaum describes the capabilities approach as a new theoretical paradigm in the development and policy world, which poses the questions: “What are people actually able to do and to be?” Put differently, the capabilities approach asks which genuine opportunities are open to people. By starting from this question, we will shift the focus of policy and development analysis from resources (incomes at micro-level, and GDP per capita at national level) to people’s capabilities: the substantive freedoms or opportunities that are created by a combination of the abilities residing inside a person (like capacities and skills) with their social, economic and political environment.

The first chapter offers, through the narrative of the life of Vasanti, a poor Indian woman, an illustration of how the capability approach conducts social evaluations. Chapter two proceeds to offer a more detailed description of the approach, which contains a characterization of the nature of the capability approach which I haven’t found in Nussbaum’s earlier work, and which will interest not only students but also scholars of the approach. According to Nussbaum, there are two different purposes of the capability approach, namely as a theory of social justice, and for comparative quality of life assessment, whereby Nussbaum’s work exemplifies the first purpose, and Amartya Sen’s work the second purpose. The two purposes which Nussbaum distinguishes are obviously closely related, and she argues that both share some essential elements: (1) the principle to treat each person as an end, rather than looking at averages; (2) to focus on choice or freedom rather than achievements; (3) to be pluralist about value, which entails that different capabilities are incommensurable; (4) to be deeply concerned with entrenched social injustice and inequality; and (5) and to give a clear task to government and public policy.

Nussbaum uses the capabilities approach in constructing a theory of basic social justice. As we know from her previous work, Nussbaum has developed a theory of universal fundamental political entitlements. Those entitlements are given, in general terms, by a list of ten central capabilities: Life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one’s environment (pp. 33-34). These entitlements impose duties on the governments, who must ensure that all people meet minimal thresholds of those capabilities. In addition to the use of the capabilities approach for thinking about social justice, the approach has also been used by Amartya Sen for purposes of quality of life assessment, which also led to a change of the development debate (most famously illustrated by the analyses presented in the Human Development Reports).

Chapter 3 elaborates in more detail on the capabilities approach as a development theory, and gives an overview of the work that Amartya Sen and his collaborators have been doing in development economics. Nussbaum rightly notes that in economic policymaking we need a ‘counter-theory’ for those policies that focus primarily or exclusively on material well-being, or, at the aggregate level on economic growth. It would have been informative for the readers, though, if more had been said on the capability-like initiatives that have already been developed in recent years: more and more economists are trying to measure capabilities (or decent proxies), more and more statistical offices are interested in the approach, and trying to see what difference it makes in practice. Moreover, significant progress has been made by the economists of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative to develop multi-dimensional poverty measures. It would have been good for an introduction to the capability approach to at least have flagged this work on measurement and the increasing acknowledgement of the capability framework by economists, since the results of their studies one important way to judge to what extent the capability approach makes a difference in practice.

Chapter 4 then moves on to discuss a number of philosophical questions in what Nussbaum regards as the second pillar of the capability approach, namely a theory of social justice. Nussbaum provides a helicopter view of the many philosophical questions that need to be addressed if one wants to develop a capability theory of justice: the selection of relevant capabilities, the question of justification, its differences with informed-desire accounts of welfarism and with social contract theories, and questions of stability and implementation. Nussbaum also includes a few pages on the question whether the capability approach should be seen as a deontological approach or rather as a consequentialist theory. The exact characterization of the capability approach is an interesting philosophical question, but, in my view, it is also a question that is highly unlikely to interest the broad and non-specialist readership of this book. Moreover, from a scholarly-philosophical point of view much more needs to be said on this issue then is possible in an introductory book. For example, does the capability approach fit the categories of deontological vs. consequentialist theories in the first place? Some guidebooks to ethical theory classify theories as deontological, consequentialist, or as being an alternative to these two classical families. Perhaps the capability approach, at its most general level, belongs to the latter category?

In the following chapters, Nussbaum discusses a range of questions that have been much discussed in the capability literature, or are of special importance for this field. Chapter 5 focuses on the questions of cultural diversity and the approach’s claim to universality. Chapter 6 addresses the important question of global poverty and global injustices, drawing on Nussbaum’s earlier work in this area, especially in Frontiers of Justice. Chapter 7 traces the historical roots of the capabilities approach, including Aristotle and the Stoics, Adam Smith and Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill and T.H. Green. Chapter 8 surveys a number of topics and issues that have recently been taken up by scholars working on the capabilities approach, such as disadvantage in affluent societies; gender issues; disability, ageing and the importance of care; education; animal entitlements; environmental questions; and constitutional law.

The book has two appendices, which are both for very different reasons quite intriguing, and mainly of interest to scholars. Appendix A is entitled ‘Heckman on Capabilities’, and discusses the work of the economist James Heckman on human capital and the economics of early childhood interventions. Nussbaum argues that Heckman’s work should illuminate and enrich the capabilities approach, and that bridges should be build between those working on the capability approach, and the work done by Heckman and his team. Yet Heckman’s use of ‘capabilities’ really is only the internal side of how capability scholars understand the word; it is about skills, talents, character formation, and personal potential for achievement. So I am puzzled to why Heckman should be considered a privileged discussion partner for capability scholars. He uses the term ‘capabilities’, but he is really doing research on something quite differently (incidentally, I think that research on early childhood intervention is very important, but that’s another matter). In educational studies capability scholars have at length and in great detail explained why we should move from a human capital to a human capability framework if we want to move beyond an economic approach to education. So rather than going into dialogue with a line of research that uses the same term but focuses on something much more narrowly than the capability approach does, shouldn’t scholars of the capabilities approach engage in dialogues and build bridges with those who are pursuing very similar research under different terminology, such as for example the ‘social indicators’ movement in Europe that has existed since the 1970s, or the work done in development ethics that started primarily in Latin-America a few decades ago?

Appendix B analyzes and assesses Amartya Sen’s distinction between well-being freedom and agency freedom. Nussbaum doesn’t use this distinction, and believes that “the distinction is obscure and not useful to one who, like Sen, has rejected (on good grounds) utilitarian notions of well-being” (p. 200). Nussbaum believes that by focusing on capabilities rather than functionings, and by giving some capabilities, such as practical reason a central place on her list of fundamental entitlements, that there is no need for the distinction between agency freedom and well-being freedom. Instead, she argues, “because what is valued is the freedom to do or not to do, agency is woven throughout” (p. 201). Yet many philosophers working on the capability approach, such as David Crocker, have endorsed the distinction between well-being and agency, and find it a useful distinction. For example, agency can also refer to certain sacrifices one may want to make to one’s own well-being out of commitment to collective values (e.g. the environment or the quality of the public debate), or out of commitment to the value of the quality of life of other people (e.g. the decision of an adult child to care intensively under difficult circumstances for her terminally ill parent). To my mind, there is epistemic value in separating the well-being of those people from their agency. The reason why they made certain choices out of their capabilities is not because they are not interested in these options and hence choose what they prefer for themselves; rather, they choose certain options despite what they would prefer if the only thing they would consider was their own well-being. Hence I do find agency versus well-being a useful distinction, both to understand personal choices but also to analyze population-level phenomena, such as the decrease in well-being of informal intensive care-givers who have made a deliberate choice to care by themselves rather than having someone else care for their dependents. It would be a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature if Nussbaum would expand her arguments from the mere 4 pages in this appendix, and would engage with the arguments by the capability scholars who have argued in defense of Sen’s agency/well-being distinction.

So what is my main point of disagreement with Creating Capabilities? This book succeeds well in providing an accessible introduction to the capabilities approach. Yet introductory books, especially those written by leading scholars in the field, tend to skew the understanding of a theory into their own favorite interpretation. It is important to highlight that other understandings are also around. In my discussion of the chapters I have already pointed at some aspects where not everyone would agree with the interpretation which is given in Creating Capabilities. Yet in my view the most significant point of disagreement may well be the description of the capabilities approach itself. Nussbaum sees it as a theory with two legs – theorizing about social justice on the one hand, and comparative quality of life assessment on the other. In the former she is the most prolific author, in the latter Sen is the most canonical figure. Yet I think it is possible to describe the capability approach in more general terms, namely as a theoretical framework that entails two core normative claims: first, the claim that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance, and second, that freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people’s capabilities, that is, their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value.

This general description can then be developed into a variety of more specific normative theories, including, most famously, Nussbaum’s (partial) theory of social justice and Sen’s account of comparative quality of life assessment and development, but also as the basis for (or part of) social criticism, ethnographic studies, policy design in the area of family policies in welfare states, or even –potentially- as part of the design of a revolutionary blueprint of a post-capitalist economic system. By describing the capability approach as being either focused on social justice or on comparative quality of life issues, Nussbaum is not sufficiently recognizing the large varieties of ways in which the approach is currently already used, and underestimating its potential. To my mind, the capability approach should be defined in more general and abstract terms, as a theory with a scope potentially as wide reaching as utilitiarianism. Philosophers should think of the capability approach as ‘capabilitarianism’.

Lifting the definition of the capabilities approach to this higher level of generality also has consequences for the question what the ‘essential elements’ of the approach are. Recall that Nussbaum argues that these are the following elements: (1) to treat each person as an end, rather than looking at averages; (2) to focus on choice or freedom rather than achievements; (3) to be pluralist about value, which entails that different capabilities are incommensurable; (4) to be deeply concerned with entrenched social injustice and inequality; and (5) and to give a clear task to government and public policy.

Yet I think this suggests a consensus that does not exist. Not all ‘capabilitarian theories’ will necessarily endorse the view that we should only focus on choice or freedom. Seeing the capability approach as the umbrella, or a family, of normative theories opens up space for more paternalistic accounts of policy making that defend a mix of capabilities (freedoms) and the functionings (achievements), which Nussbaum’s version clearly rejects. Similarly, by dragging the description of the capability approach to a higher, more general, plane, it allows for capability theories of justice that see the role of the state as very limited but rather give the most significant duties of justice to non-state agents. This enlargement of the scope of the capability approach could drastically increase the contribution it can make to non-ideal theorizing of justice, as well as to ethical theory and practice in general.

I always thought that this 5% figure was odd, since it didn’t correspond at all to my observation at the special-needs-daycare/school of my son or in online parent support groups or in accounts of families affected by ASDs that I read, where many parents report to have several children with an ASD. I noticed just way too many children who also had siblings with an ASD to make that figure of 5% correspond to reality. And now, there’s a study just published in Pediatrics, confirming my observation: if a parent has a child with autism, the chance of a sibling also developing an ASD is almost 20%. That’s what the authors found in a large American sample, and I don’t see any reason why it would be different for other parts of the world.

Not sure how that will change the way we look at autism (if it will make any difference at all), but I find it a striking (but not surprising) figure.

Famines are horrible, and are made worse by war, lawlessness, bad or nonexisting governance, and population growth (there is some accessible background material at the BBC Africa sites). These aspects make it harder to think of solutions to prevent this from happening yet again in the future, but that is not the worry of people currently starving. They need food, water and medical care, and they need it now. But once these horrible pictures get off our screens again, and the people who are now starving are either buried or are trying to rebuild their lives, we should not forget returning to searching for a sustainable solution to global poverty reduction/elimination. Let’s invest more in that discussion here on CT (to be continued).

Upon a joint recommendation of the editors of the American Economic Review and the four American Economic Journals, the Executive Committee has voted to drop the “double-blind” refereeing process for all journals of the American Economic Association. The change to “single-blind” refereeing will become effective on July 1, 2011. Easy access to search engines increasingly limits the effectiveness of the double-blind process in maintaining anonymity. Further, it increases the administrative cost of the journals and makes it harder for referees to identify an author’s potential conflicts of interest arising, for example, from consulting.

So, how good are these arguments?

The cost/efficiency argument I cannot fully judge (since I have no access to information on production costs), but it seems reasonable that double-anonymous reviewing entails additional costs since some papers will not be properly anonymized, and this needs to be checked etc. But, I’d say, this is a cost well worth paying for the sake of fairness and for making sure the best pieces get published, hence for the sake of quality (on which more in two minutes).

The argument that search engines make it easy to identify the authors could be countered by introducing rules or norms to the author, the editors, and the reviewers. The authors should not put their paper online, and if they do, they should submit it for review under a different title; if the paper is accepted, the title can still be reversed to the original one, if one explains to the editors that the change had been for the sake of preserving the fully anonymous review. The editors should ask the reviewers not to undertake any effort to identify the author, just as they currently ask the reviewers to treat the submission confidentially, hence not to distribute it or talk about it with others. And the reviewers can contribute by understanding that double-anonymous review is essential to safeguard both fairness and quality-control in reviewed publications (one which more in one minute), and hence that it goes against the academic ethos.

The third argument which the AEA offers is that dropping double-anonymous review would make it easier “for referees to identify an author’s potential conflicts of interest arising, for example, from consulting”. Pardon me, but why is this the referee’s duty? Isn’t it the duty of the journal to explicitely demand from paper submitters that they reveal any potential conflict of interest, from the paper submitters to voluntarily submit such information, and from the economics profession to severely punish authors who cheat this ethical code? (shaming may do).

So the arguments offered by the AEA are not very strong, to my mind. More importantly, there are two arguments against dropping double-anonymous review: a fairness and a quality-enhancing argument, and both are closely related.

We know from the scholarly literature on implicit bias that all human beings implicitly (and thus non-intentionally) discriminate against certain groups. (Harvard University has a whole center devoted to this field of research). In academia, this translates itself in a bias against women (and most likely other groups too, such as people of color and ethnic/linguistic minorities, but I’ve only studied the literature on gender discrimination; our notoriously smart CT readership will surely know more about this and complement/correct me). If one needs an entrance to this literature, a good place to start is the literature collected by Feminist Philosophers, who have been conducting the gendered conference campaign as a measure to counter this implicit bias in academia. See also this and this post at Feminist Philosophers which are directly on the issue of why anonymous reviewing is important.

Implicit bias can explain what some studies found, namely that women are more likely to get published under a double-anonymous review system than under a single-anonymous review system where the author’s identity is disclosed to the reviewer. Inside Higher Education refers to some of those studies, most outside economics. These discrimination studies can be and have been criticized on methodological grounds, so perhaps we don’t know 100% for sure that women and other groups are discriminated against if their group-affiliations are known. But the evidence suggests that it is very likely – and why take the risk? Peer-reviewed publishing is so crucial in an academic’s career, and especially if it concerns top-journals as the AER, that there is a strong argument to do everything one reasonably can to ensure that the process is fair and that reviewers and editors judge submissions only on the quality of the work, rather than on implicit discrimination triggered by non-conscious stereotypes associated with the group the author is affiliated with, such as her sex, university, country of residence, linguistic group, etc.

And what is wonderful – fairness and quality-enhancing go hand-in-hand, since the reviewers will not be distracted by these irrelevant features when judging the quality of someone’s work. Hence even if a journal only cares about the quality of what it publishes, it should opt for the double-anonymous review process. Fairness is another motivation (for me the much more weightier). But those who do not care about fairness at all should take note that the argument for double-anonymous review can also be made on grounds of quality-enhancement only.

Note 1: Most of these arguments were raised in an e-mail dicussion among Associated Editors and Board Members of Feminist Economics over the last days; the editors are setting up a petition to urge the AEA to revise its decision. To be continued.

Note 2: I have not used the AEA’s ‘double-blind’ terminology but rather use ‘double-anonymous’, since disability scholars have argued that the term ‘double-blind’ is offensive, see e.g. here.

All the editors who took part in the roundtable observe that it is increasingly difficult to find referees. This confirms my experience as an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics, and also reflects the crazy number of requests I get to review papers from all sorts of journals, and also on papers where I strongly doubt I have special expertise. So I’ve been wondering for a long time: is this system sustainable? Is there a way to reward referees, or another way to create positive incentives for refereeing (whether material or immaterial)? Or is there no need to ‘fix the system’?

On Sunday, I’m flying to Cape Town to teach a course on the capability approach, and afterwards I will head to Otjivero to try to better understand the effects and desirability of the basic income grant (BIG), and to gain a better grasp of the overall nature of the project. My South-African colleague Ina Conradie, who is a senior development scholar with many years of experience in development work in South Africa, is joining me; in part we are also interested in finding out to what extent this could be a desirable poverty-reducing policy for South-Africa.

In 2009, some of our readers posed some critical questions regarding what would happen if this were implemented on a national scale since a nation-wide BIG could just drive up rents and not lead to any improvement in the lives of the worst-off. Another concern was the fact that the study was not independently conducted, and hence did not meet generally accepted quality criteria for scientific practice. No new data were collected on these social indicators when the experiment ended, but I’ve heard that this may be caused by the fact that there has been large migration into Otjivero (e.g. from family members normally living elsewhere) – I’ll find out more about this when I’m there.

Apart from these concerns emerging from our discussion in 2009, I have two further worries. One relates to fertility effects: if we give a BIG to each individual, also to the mothers or fathers of newborns, then there will (at least in theory!) be a financial incentive to have babies. I am one of those people who believes that (at current global fertility rates) it would be better if there were less babies on earth, so if this empirical hypothesis were true, that would be an undesirable unintended effect (which could perhaps be ‘solved’ by additional measures, such as limiting the number of grants the parents can claim for their children to two). Another issue relates to the question whether we can safely assumes that the positive effects in Otjivero would also hold in other communities; perhaps Otjivero has specific characteristics that are beneficial for a BIG to lead to these effects (like a homogenous community, or a certain culturally/religiously-based set of shared values)?

I’m not sure I’ll find the answers to these questions in Otjivero, but in any case I’ll try. What else should I try to find out in Otjivero? I’ll report about what I learnt when I’m back.