Comments

Hi Terence I was not planning any further comment on this blog posting, but your breathtakingly naïve or else deliberately misleading – can’t decide which it is - reply has changed my mind. You state, yet again, and this time with even more force, that I am claiming conspiracy and you repeat your view that, essentially, whatever any of the high-profile researchers and institutions say is the reality, then this is the reality, period. I confess to being amazed at how hard you are trying to rubbish my views to the point where you make such silly statements about conspiracy. The fact is – and I think you MUST know this – research results are skewed all the time in the service of hidden agendas. Are you really quite unaware of high-profile researchers like James Ferguson and James Scott who pretty convincingly show that a yawning gap generally exists between the declared objective of any particular policy intervention and the hidden political agenda that lies behind that particular policy intervention? You seem unaware, or else unwilling to concede in your current position, that all of the big development agencies have political agendas and often aggressively pursue these agendas irrespective of the facts and that this very often involves manipulating research results, (or asking the researchers to do it for them) in order to get support for the policies they were always planning to put into practice anyway. Have you not seen ‘Inside Job’? Was it a conspiracy that so many academics took big bucks to write wrongly supportive reports for the Wall Street’s big banks, or was it simply an accident on their part? In nearly all my postings here I also linked to my own research outputs in which I try to make my case, yet you ignore this completely, clearly don’t consult any of my outputs, and then continue to state that I provided no evidence. I am stumped as to how to respond to this tactic. Is this really what a blog should be doing? I thought it was all about constructive debate and the willingness to listen to heterodox views and fairly represent these views to the audience. I am so reminded of my time in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s as a young PhD student collecting data on small business policy there, and having discussions with many visiting Russian economists in the same dormitory. So many of them argued that central planning was basically fine, just had a few problems around the edges, and the evidence they quoted for this view was the large amount of supportive research emerging from the research units attached to or funded by the Communist Party. My view, and others there, was that this research simply could not be trusted since everyone knew that the incentives to manipulate the data in order to come up with supportive views - foreign trips, nice apartment, access to hard currency, career progression, etc – were simply so strong. Moreover, there was also a lot of quality research to show that just such a scenario was indeed playing out and that the incentives did pervert the course of research in Russia in order to build up a false picture of the success of central planning. And yes, I was called a conspiracy theorist for suggesting such outrageous things were very likely going on and that we needed to be very careful what some researchers were saying and why! I guess I can’t win, then and now…… Milford

Hi Dennis, Your project to convert waste to energy sounds very interesting. I have been doing research on waste management and in particular garbage removal in Port Moresby and astounded by the lack of a policy and limited support or support that is taking forever. Look forward to hearing more on your project soon. Keep up the good work. I also have some ideas of addressing the problem, starting small and getting traction to upscale and address the bigger issue. All the very best. Now that JICA is already working on the Baruni Landfill feasibility that should at least pave the way for better dumping but the heart of the problem lies with each of us being responsible at home, as a start to having a healthy city and environment.

Hi Milford, Sorry for my slow reply - last week was hectic. To be clear, I'm not calling you a conspiracy theorist (of the 'George Bush ordered 9-11' type) and yet you are alleging conspiracy everywhere, from David Roodman conspiring with CGD's funders to write a less critical book, to USAID and the World Bank seeking to impose microfinance on developing countries for the benefit of donor country vested interests. Likewise, you allege that the DFID funded review finds that the evidence base for microfinance was lacking. Agreed. But all sorts of development work goes ahead with an insufficient evidence base. Sometimes this is the by-product of vested interests conspiring to shape policy (this certainly seems to have been an issue back home in New Zealand for aspects of the the NZ aid programme in recent years). But it can also be a by-product of mistaken beliefs and the zeal that so many people (not just of a free market bent) bring to matters development. As for evidence -- you have provided a lot of links. But nothing to substantiate the claims that really need substantiating at this point in time: your allegations against Roodman and Karlan. The DFID funded review, Roodman's book, and the papers I linked to above all benefit from the fact that the evidence for their arguments is clearly accessible. Sure, it's harder to do this when writing a blog comment, but not impossible, as I hope readers will agree on the basis of my initial blog post. Cheers Terence

Just a note that Australia is <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/citizenship-for-sale-government-explores-pricebased-immigration-system-20150503-1myvwk.html" rel="nofollow">now considering something similar apparently</a>!! Was in the news this morning...

Social structures in our society are breaking down faster than we think because of ignorance by generational behaviour thing. Free education is abused by implementors and legitimate processes are undermined by nepotism. Corruption disorients good governance. In the last 20 years the has been a mixed bag of leaps and bounds really because we tried too hard, became too greedy, or our policies were simply inferior. More so just a fast lane thing. Never mind how we got here we burst on regardless

I agree the Commonwealth Secretariat should have made the book available gratis as a downloadable PDF file, as is now the practice of the World Bank. As it is, even the PDF version will set you back £35. However, you can at least view the whole book page by page online, <a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/commonwealth/social-issues-migration-health/migration-and-development_9781848599239-en#page1" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

Hi my name is Tracey . I was online and I googled jobs for economist in PNG and came across this. I think Mr Cornish, my current lecturer got this job. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone behind this scheme and the australian government. I am more than thankful for Mr Cornish I have learnt more than I would probably have if it wasn't for you guys. Thanks again 🙂

Thanks for the review Carmen. Even if the book was amazing (and by the sounds of it, this is perhaps not the right word to use), the price is a major disincentive. Amazon are retailing for $108. I work for a small non-profit and we're currently research a project on migration and development yet this type of barrier to access means I'll never get my hands on a copy. If researchers want their work to be engaged with seriously, they have to do better.

I'm not sure they have been publicly released. If you write to CARE Cambodia - and for CAVAC maybe through DFAT/Aid section at the Embassy - they will send you a copy. At one stage, CARE had the debt report available on their website, but it doesn't seem to be there now.

I just have a comment here that Microbusiness activities dominating the informal sector of PNG means that people are involved in income earning activities just to cope with their daily living. They do buying and selling for their own interests, rather than for the interest of the community/province/nation as a whole. However in fact, entrepreneurial activities are for the benefit and interest of the community as a whole. So more people involved in enterprise means that the benefit of their activities will be seen changing the community as a whole, rather than self-interested activities of the microbusinesses. Hence, if the Provincial and National Governments of PNG allow more entrepreneurial activities than just generalising microbusinesses, I think PNG will show a big improvement in its SME sectors. Entrepreneurial activities are the activities that quite directly contribute to the Provincial and National Budgets in terms of taxation. So more of these activities will benefit the government, hence the government has enough cash to spend on other areas of priority....(Magin Mirem. student @uog. 2015).

Hi Ian, Excellent article. You and others may be interested in DFAT's contribution to a successful effort to raise excise taxes on tobacco in the Philippines. In its first year of implementation (2013), the new law raised about $1 billion in additional revenue for health care. In addition, smoking prevalence dropped for the first time in 15 years. A report on the politics of introducing the reform is available <a href="http://www.odi.org/publications/8455-philippines-aid-political-analysis" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Thanks.

There are so many plans that are filling up the cabinets of the National Planning Department. We have a Capitalist economy which states, people struggle to get up there; and only few are up there and the majority are below; the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Papua New Guinea is a Melanesian society, based on collectivism rather than indvidualism. I would like to refer to The Melanesian Obligatory Network by Father Clower (UPNG, Civics & Ethics, 2014), that malensian societies, people goals, dreams, efforts, achievements, are reflected in the group dynamics rather than oneself. A man's fortnight pay is for the whole family and relatives, and not just himself. So the Melanesian society obligatory network can be seen a horizontal rather than vertical which is going up. If we can get the plans inclined to our way of doing things, I believe we will see this country move forward. See Malaysia & Japan, they develop developmental planning accroding ot their culture and ways of doing thing, that's why they have changed rapidly compared to us PNG, who are living in a melanesian culture and trying to practice western concepts in development.