Angus Deaton's article, just published in @TheIndiaForum on 'randomization in the tropics': https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/randomization-tropics-revisited @ramreddy

As frequently, I disagree with Deaton on certain points, for instance his rosy view that, "Economics is an open subject in the sense that good studies that produce new, important, and convincing evidence are usually judged on their merits."..but I agree on most others made here.

"It is not true that an RCT, when feasible, will always do better than an observational study."

"(a) RCTs are affected by the same problems of inference and estimation that economists have faced using other methods, and (b) no RCT can ever legitimately claim to have established causality."

"The imposition of a hierarchy of evidence is both dangerous and unscientific. Dangerous because it automatically discards evidence that may need to be considered, evidence that might be critical."

"In the US, drugs require positive RCTs in order to be licensed, yet prescription opioids, such as OxyContin, have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in the last twenty years."

"The Industrial Revolution is often described as having come about by endless tinkering, not by randomization, which would have got in the way of purposeful trial and error."

"Using poor people to build a professional CV should not be accepted. Institutional review boards in the US have special protection for prisoners, whose autonomy is compromised; there appears to be no similar protection for some of the poorest people in the world"

Deaton of course favourably cites friends from his side of the debate within the discipline, such as Easterly and Ravallion. Others are not mentioned at all.

But where I get off the boat comprehensively is where he uses his otherwise sound critique as the basis for an apologia for structural adjustment!!!

Rightly noting that the '70s literature on shadow prices on project assessment in developing countries led inevitably to the conclusion that one had to attend to the large and not just a small, he then proceeds to say...

"The remedy was to switch from the small to the large, to fix the distortions first, and to get the macroeconomy right before doing project evaluation. Structural adjustment was the result."

"The better macroeconomic management in many countries around the world, the better understanding of monetary policy and central banking, as well as of the costs...

of exchange rate undervaluation and commodity price taxation have all contributed to better growth and poverty reduction, especially given time to operate".

The footnote in support of this bold claim cites only a 2019 NBER working paper by Bill Easterly. Really? Is that all? There IS a larger literature on structural adjustment & its effects; in particular on growth (weak or -ive, as opposed to inflation or current account balance).

It would seem that Deaton is no different from anyone else: his priors (what ordinary people might call prejudices) determine his reading of the 'evidence'. @rodrikdani @criticaldev

We cannot have either a rejection of the macro- or a selective and casual reading of the evidence about it. @rodrikdani @criticaldev

One might note that by *describing* certain macroeconomic policies as 'better' and later concluding that they must have helped..

...Deaton has turned an empirical proposition into one that is analytically (I.e. tautologically) true. This is a good rhetorical strategy but is intellectually exactly meaningless.

In calling the claim 'bold', I am therefore referring to the closest reconstruction of a non-tautological variant, dropping the descriptor 'better'.

I am also not unaware of Deaton's strongly stated post-'Nobel' views (prejudices?) against aid, on the ground of its supposedly adverse effects, a topic on which he has not himself as far as I am aware devoted very much prior professional (e.g. econometric) work.

A demand for high-quality evidence for some purposes, and shooting from the hip for others?

Correction: I agree on many points, not most.