YouSaid · the spoken record

Nathan Nunn

lines on the record: 68
first: 2020-07-29
most recent: 2020-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that shaped my worldview in terms of opportunity, thinking about opportunity, thinking about policies that affect mobility, thinking about policies that affect inequality. And I think the reason is I think I have experience growing up in a family that was definitely lower income or very low income. And having some insight into what that does. If you grew up in upper middle class, upper class family, that's something that you just don't realize is just how hard it is for an individual that's at the lowest rung of the ladder within the US to move up. You basically can't make any mistakes. So I think that's one thing that my history has taught me.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So hopefully that makes sense. So, I think we can predict who's going to which societies are going to have higher levels of per capita income 20 years from now.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think one important thing here is thinking about levels or growth rates. So Jeffrey Sachs's statement, it sounds like, is about growth rates. So we can't predict which is going to be the next country that's going to grow successfully over the next 10 years, even though I don't know if that's true. But let's say that that's true. We can predict, you know, if you had money, I'm sure you would bet on certain countries having a higher level of income over 10 years from now than others. I think we have a pretty good sense of which countries will have higher levels of income. So the persistence isn't about growth rates. I don't know of any actually studies that look at growth rates in the past and growth rates today because you're going to have convergence and all these sorts of things. But it's about levels. So the way you think of it in the solo model, it's underlying characteristics, which are going to change the steady state level of per capita income and differences.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, but it was, it did have all of these kingdoms historically, which makes it similar to in terms of its history of state formation to Japan or to China and kind of more similar to that. It was kind of geographically a terrible place sandwiched between China and then Japan. But it was able to survive, actually. That's actually a testament to the Korean society. And if you look at things like architecture, food, academics, I think Korea has always been extremely sophisticated. And so there are periods of colonization. And so I have to go back and look at the data of Korea from the early 20th century or 19th century. But I think that explains a lot of it, I would guess. So I would say there are these latent characteristics. That aren't reflected in per capita income.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think these are all just like motivations. Like they're kind of internally motivated. They're norms. There's values. And so South Korea has these values of individual achievement, but then overlaid with values of collectivism, like wanting to have individual success go towards the greater good, which was the success of the country. And so that, I think, again, coming from individualistic background was eye-opening to me.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the importance of culture actually living in South Korea. The culture in South Korea is very different. Obviously, South Korea is a dramatic success story. And I think a lot of that has to do with just what South Koreans viewed as important. So education, working hard, allegiance to the company. Those things were all hugely important. I have a lot of very close friends in South Korea. And until recently, they would never take vacations. So you would get vacation, but it would be very shameful or against the norms if you actually took them. Same with Saturdays, you would always work on Saturdays. And then just the drive for education was amazing. So there's a saying in Korea, I might not get exactly right. But if a high school student sleeps five hours a night, they'll fail. They need to work so hard they're only sleeping four hours a night.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And then the one thing one needs to know or keep in mind the research I was doing was about the composition of trade or the composition of FDI. So we'd want to know FDI that produces which types of products. But otherwise, I agree completely that the pattern of FDI or where foreign investment is and in which industries and which countries should also be predicted by the ability of a country to enforce contracts.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It might, yeah, yeah. I think FDI, we have less data, the data is less precise and we don't have trade countries around the world are charging tariffs on these products. So you have imports very, very precisely documented. FDI, I think that's not broadly known.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they're going to be producing lower end products, right? And so I don't think that's actually not inconsistent with what they've specialized in historically. And so, which is manufacturers, but lower end manufacturers. So I think that would be my best guess at this point.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they're very good at trade. But yeah, I could look at China. That would be super interesting to go back and look at China. I think there's two things. One is if you thought that the contracting environment in China was not good, which is not a given, just because you have an autocratic regime doesn't mean that you have mechanisms for dispute resolution and you're able to enforce contracts and that things are dependable and reliable. But let's say that China isn't as good as other countries, Western countries at contract enforcement. It's not as dependable. What you would expect then is for China to specialize in goods that are not contract intensive. And so they're still specialized.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I would expect it to persist. And there is some work. So, Pamela Kampa has a paper in the review of economic studies that shows persistence, at least up until the contemporary period. And yeah, so I would expect it to persist actually. And then one thing about that in this form of persistence, which is, you know, one would have to look at, but a plausible story is once you have women participating in manufacturing, low-end manufacturing, for example, or light manufacturing, then you develop a comparative advantage in that, right? And so then the norms then affect your comparative advantage, which women working affects the demand because that's what you're good at, that's what you export, and then that affects the supply. So there's an equilibrium where women work and you specialize in female friendly products. And another equilibrium where women don't work and you specialize in other products which are less female friendly. And so one would be”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think part of the answer to that question is we really overestimate the amount of gender equality in Western societies. And so we think, of course, we're developed, we're great, we must be great on all these dimensions. We've made so much progress over the last since World War II. But I think that's kind of overestimating just how great we are. And so once you account for these things like income, then why we're not better than we should be, I think, is explained by the plow.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep, yep, yep, yep. That's exactly right. So, yeah, so it's coming back to like, well, how much of this is this going to explain? And are there other factors? And so if you go far enough north, there's going to be less plow use. So that's one thing to keep in mind. But I think the other one is, well, there's something else that's been changing, which is we've had increased gender equality, which is due to my view due to economic development. And then women being pulled out of the home, right? And so over the last 50 years, there's been this dramatic increase in female labor force participation within the United States, within Europe, right? But actually, if you actually look at the data, even now, the level of female labor force participation rates, which is 60%, 70%, that's actually much lower than African countries, which are much more poor, for example.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hundreds or thousands of years. And then you have industrialization, and then those same norms are applied to factories or to service jobs. So that's the link basically to female labor force participation today and using the plow thousands of years ago.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that mechanism is basically, if we look at agriculture historically, some societies used an implement called a plow, and others use a hoe or a digging stick or other implements. So the plow is great. You can turn over a lot of soil, and that kills weeds, aerates the soil, prepares it for planting. You can do that very quickly. But it requires a lot of upper body strength to control the plow or to pull an animal that uses the plow. So what you see, because there are biological differences between men and women, that that difference, even though it might, it doesn't mean that women can't use the plow, caused men to specialize in agriculture and then women to specialize in home production, where you have who agriculture, there was more mixing. And so what the data that we've looked at seem to indicate is, well, that generated norms that is just natural for men to work outside the home and women to work inside the home. This is over.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Between schools of different rankings once you kind of are at the stage I am at, you realize it's amazing research at all different types of schools. And so that this vertical difference that we kind of have in our minds as graduate students isn't really there and so clean and so strong. But I haven't answered your question. So I don't know why there's more mobility. Maybe, yeah, but maybe it is related to your GRE question or the fact that, yeah, or the fact that tuitions are so high in the US, but I don't have a strong sense.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, actually. And if there's more concentration than in other fields, I think there is, actually. So talking to people in other fields, economics is extremely hierarchical, that the difference between the first and the fifth is huge. In other fields, it's more horizontal. And you would just go to different schools based on maybe focuses. And so I don't know if it's about one could think about expectations being important that perceptions about the students that would go to a school that's outside of the top 10, for example, and maybe advisors being less likely to write really strong letters or to get behind an individual just because of perceptions about how vertically structured the discipline is. And I think one other thing possibly too, which is related to that, I think really in grad school, you overestimate as a student the different”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, so why aren't there people more like me? I think the reason is right now we're in an equilibrium. And I think although there's policies which are undergoing right now that threaten to change this, where the best talent from all over the world comes to U.S. schools and top five schools, let's say, are these certain U.S. schools? So there are lots of other Canadians. There's great Canadian graduate students, but they just tended not to stay in Canada. And so they would come for their PhD to the United States to Harvard MIT, other schools.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the advantage was, so there were things I needed to catch up on. The advantage was exactly less pressure, and I would have been happy just having a job at any school. So then that really frees one up to just do what they love in terms of research, right? Rather than do what they think has the higher probability. I think in the particular cohorts I was in, I think this has changed for Toronto, so I don't want to say anything negative about Toronto now. At the time, I think we were a bit behind in terms of applied empirical analysis. And in particular, all the tools that were developed, and this was in the early 2000s that were developed recently to deal with causality. So to really be strategic and sharp about and creative about instruments and RD and all these tricks we use to identify a causal relationship. So I felt I was a bit behind in that, actually.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take risks or to do things that are completely different than what's being done currently. But ideally, we want scientists to do that.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit. I think it does affect how I approach economics. I think one thing about having the Canadian background and in particular going through all of my schooling, including grad school within Canada, is that you're very removed from the centers of knowledge within US economics. So namely Cambridge, where I'm at now. So in some ways, that forces you for better or for worse to think differently or think independently relative to what's going on within the US. So I think that helped me during grad school actually. And I think the other thing is when you're in this pressure cooker of grad school within Cambridge, let's say, you know, there's a lot of pressure and so you can't help but to think about your career and you can't help but to think strategically. And I think a lot of that often or that often goes against research. So you're less likely to”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's exactly right. And so that's kind of the point I'm trying to make is there are Canadian products, so let's call them products around. We actually often don't know they're Canadians because just because we fit in pretty well. So even within economics, Ariel Pekas, David Carr, there are individuals that don't have a label of Canadian on their forehead. And they just kind of merge in. So I haven't looked at products, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are more products than the average American could name that are Canadian.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. So it depends on what you mean. So, I think international brands that there might be some brands that we don't know about. And so the BlackBerry, for example, so maybe people do know Bombardier. And so that's one thing. And the other one is whether you include individuals. So maybe Canadians know this, but others don't, is there's a large number of singers, Celine Dion, for example, Shaniah Twain, particularly Avril Levine, which are Canadian. And so that's kind of one of our primary exports, but also comedians, so like Mike Myers, for example, Jim Carr.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the peaks, right? Yeah, exactly. So I like it. It's fun. There's memories that bring me back to the first road trip we did when we went to visit the Cuba kingdom and it was in this SUV that we rented. And we had these tapes playing with Congolese music. And that was great. We even had air conditioning for about 10 minutes. And then the tape machine caught on fire and the air conditioning broke down. But that music still reminds me of that trip, which was a two or three-day trip, or actually a four or five-day trip round trip into the interior, which was my first trip to the Congo. What I don't like is it's usually associated with dancing, and I'm a very stiff rigid person that's not skilled at dancing.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, favorite movie. That's a good question. Favorite movie. In the past, it was dazed and confused. I must have watched that in university. About 100 times, I won't talk about why that was the case. More recently, Black Panther, or there's a show called, I believe it's called The Queen of Catwe. And one reason I like those is they portray African society in a more positive light, which is more realistic, I think. And I think that's super important. I think there's a lot of implicit bias towards Africans, African Americans, which comes out in media, in movies or television shows. So I like those because those were empowering and showed African cultures in a positive light.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, I think what would be, and you can kind of see this in my recent research, know how to do research that's more descriptive and that's softer or that's, or where the data collection is softer. So in other words, we never learn, and I don't know of any courses that teach development economists, when you go to a society, how do you interact with people and ask questions face-to-face? How do you run focus groups? How do you learn in ways other than surveys? And so we haven't done that. How do you ask questions about the social structure, about their beliefs, their values, norms, these things that are kind of invisible unless you ask about them? How do we do that? What should one think about? How are these societies structured, these sorts of things? And so that we, you know, we've taken a very scientific approach where what's the treatment? What are the outcomes? But there's all this contextual stuff which traditional anthropology looked at.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's overrated. I think it does measure some things like your ability to jump through this hoop and learn this information, which is pretty much useless, which is how to solve these tricky logic or math problems. And so that's useful. But I think the problem is in order to do that, you have to basically take a summar off and study for the GRE. And if you're financially strapped or come from a disadvantaged background, that has a huge, huge cost. So I think it's there's a bias, a socioeconomic bias that is much worse than the benefit.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But a tiny, tiny slice. And the other thing is those are the countries that are societies that are most accessible. So when we start our work, and so I guess I could be preachy and say, oh, well, we went to the DRC and that was remote, there was no one had been really working in central DRC. But now we've been there for seven years and we're not going anywhere else. So we're falling into the exact same trap.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's definitely a problem. I think we see this even more in other fields, such psychology, where you only run experiments or behavioral econ, where you only run experiments amongst Western university students. So development, you can say, oh, we're doing better. But then, like you say, it's Nairobi, a few places in India, Uganda. And so there's a lot of Africa where experiments aren't done. And the reason is, like you say, it's huge, huge fixed costs to get things set up. And so if you're a graduate student and you want to run an experiment, you could go without any connections, try and figure things out and set up a site. Or you could, you know, code up a survey, send it to IPA or another organization that's already somewhere and just run it there. But I think the big problem is, yeah, that we are learning about developing countries.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. So, I guess it depends by who. So I think amongst those that the perceptions or how they're rated by those that developed it, I think accurately rated, I think amongst individuals that like to jump on to the next, you know, the next big thing, like machine learning or RCTs, I think those individuals are overrating it. So I think it's a tool that's helpful, but it's not the only tool that one would ever want to use for the rest of their life.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably underrated as well. So the big thing, it's cold, but you have the canal, which you can skate up and down the canal. So many people actually commute into their government jobs on skates, traveling five, six, seven, eight miles. So that would be pretty cool. I've never done that.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if I'm trying to remember, the field is wider, the end zone is deeper, and you only have three downs instead of four downs. So you have much, much more passing. So if you like the running game, then you'll like the NFL. But I think these long bombs are much, much more common within the CFL. And so, and they also had, I don't think this is a reason, but I remember they had a media campaign arguing that people should watch the CFL. their logo at one point was our balls are bigger which is true so but”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's one theory, except I think one way to think of it is there's been massive conversion within Africa. So now if you asked in many countries the fraction of people that are Christian, it's going to be like 97%, right? Or if they're not Muslim, which would be the other main religion. And that's, I think, without any really deep ties to the West. So think of like Massachusetts, where I live, conversion rate is much lower, but we'd think that Massachusetts is more integrated with Europe, for example. So I think the logic of that is right. But I think what we've seen is mass conversions of Christianity and even the development of more indigenous Christian religion or Christian hybrid religions, which have also taken off. So you don't need actually a lot of connection with the Western world to have the spread of Christianity.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I would say I'm similar to Joe. It's not so much Christianity. Well, actually, maybe I'm not so similar to Joe Henrik. I think the biggest effect were on these medieval policies of the Catholic Church, the broke down lineages and extended family units and created the individual. So I think that's important. Joe also talks about moralizing gods and an afterlife being important. So I'm still undecided about how important that is compared to these policies of the Catholic Church that created an individualistic psychology. And I would also say if we think of just purely economic development today in the contemporary period, I definitely don't think it's the case that one needs to convert to Christianity to be successful. I think that would be kind of confusing causality or confusing correlations we observe historically with causality today.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That it was, and this is probably related to individualism in the program of the Catholic Church, is we learned it was okay to break from tradition and to question the previous generation. And I think once you do that, you can deviate from the traditions, from the traditional structures, you can have the scientific revolution, you can have a lot of innovation. And I think that was also important. And I think that's important for the industrial revolution, for example. And that's something he makes a big point about. And I think that's very complementary to Joe Henrik's view that the policies of the church created the individualistic psychology.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, I think we don't know the exact details for exactly why. But I think there is something about weird societies that led to the rise of Western Europe, definitely. And I think that's the original, or not the original, because you can always go further back in time. That was an important impetus, was why did Europe diverge from the rest of the world? He talks about the breakdown of clans, which I think is important, and the breakdown of the extended family unit, the church disallowing polygamy, the church disallowing cousin marriage, and all these things help to maintain these lineage structures. And that led to individuals being important. And that really is kind of the definition of individualistic culture versus collectivist culture. I think the one other thing that's important is Joel Mokure talks about in his recent book is that we learned”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard because we don't really take that into account. You can get a lot of false positives. And you can over kind of, and part of that comes from overestimating the effective number of observations that you have.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think it has an important lesson, which is we have to really be careful when we're thinking about societies or people or anything really institutions, policies. Because in the cross-section especially, actually not only cross-section, but in the time series, there's a lot of correlation across observations, right? And so, you know, if you looked at, for example, the eastern DRC, those groups, those individuals there are going to have a lot of the similar experiences as just across the border in Rwanda. And they're going to be culturally somewhat similar. The further you move away, the more independent they are, but the closer spatially you are, the more correlated they are. So if we're looking at any correlations and there are these omitted factors, then if you're close to one another, then your error terms are going to be more similar, right? And so that's basically an important point of that paper. If you don't take that into account.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. I guess you mentioned Zanzibar, so I've done archival research in Zanzibar. They have great archives there, which are funded by UNESCO. And you can do great things like swim with dolphins and turtles. And there's the old stone town there as well. So, yeah, and so that's another great place. South Africa is also great, Cape Town and Stella Bosch. That's a very posh part of Africa. That's very, very pleasant. Actually, what I really enjoy is just going back to the DRC, different parts of the DRC kind of on a regular basis. And that's given that you develop bonds with different people, that's kind of really nice to see them, see how they're doing over time and that sort of thing.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Individualist cultures. So I think it's just a culture where the individual is less important. You're more embedded in the community. There's social relations. And I think that's nice. It's nice to experience that coming from a Western society for a month every year.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's really, really great. So we were, you know, the first time we went as a team. This was James Robinson, Sarah Lowe's Jonathan Weigel in 2013. We were pretty apprehensive. You hear a lot of stories about the DRC. You hear it sounds like a very unsafe place, et cetera. But one thing we didn't realize or weren't expecting was just how lovely and wonderful the people are and how, and it turns out it's not unsafe in general. It depends on different locations. So in the east, definitely near Goma, it's obviously much, much less safe. But I think for me is wonderful is the sense of community. And because the places we go are places that haven't been touched to a large extent by foreign aid or NGOs or tourism, I think we're treated, you know, just like any other individual within the community. And that's one thing that I think is in the psychology literature, it's often referred to as collectivists versus.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actions taken to punish that individual. And I think that relies on the strength of indigenous informal institutions or social structures that prevent that. So in Latin America, it seems like the reliance are on these more modern formal institutions, which aren't as good as other countries. And then the other thing about Latin America, I would say there's extreme inequality. So we see this in national Gini coefficients. And that's different than countries where you're very close to subsistence and the scope for inequality is much less. And so I would just guess that that has a big part to do with it as well. But those are all just conjectures.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. I haven't thought about that. Let me, you know, and also I obviously know less about Latin America. One is I'm not sure that it's related to trust. I think it's related to whatever tools and mechanisms a society can employ to constrain activities, which we call crime. So I can tell you more about what happens in sub-Saharan Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo where I spend much of my time. So there you wouldn't think that the formal institutions are better than in Brazil, for example, right? I think the police force is less well functioning. But the crime rates, and we were very surprised when we first went to the areas where we stay, are extremely, extremely low. And so what is it? It's not through formal mechanisms, but it's through informal mechanisms such that you could almost think of as mob justice, that if one person commits a crime, there's going to be informal”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think one is if you just look at the data, although I don't have a straightforward. Trust tends to be increasing the levels of education of an individual. So that would be one policy recommendation is we can increase education levels. For low levels of income, trust is increasing in income. It's kind of hump shaped. But then that's this chicken and egg problem as well. Well, how do we generate economic development that then results in greater levels of trust? So when you have economic development, you're going to have more interactions between individuals. You're going to have more successful interactions, positive sum interactions. People will learn that they can trust one another. And I think that that's going to be part of the benefit. But I think that's, you know, it's really related to how do you spur economic growth so that lots of activities are positive some rather than just zero sum and so that we have growth and increasing share of the pie. And then we can cooperate and realize there are benefits to cooperation and that lead to higher levels of trust.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. So that's the big development question. What should any developing country do to try and develop? I think one thing.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Arguably also be beneficial. And this is related to who gets the rents because then you would have more outside options, more choices for each country, particularly these landlocked countries.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's interesting. So it depends on the number of your outside options, actually. So you can think of a country like Niger, Burkina Faso. There are a few different countries which they could go through to get to the coast. And so maybe that will, you know, if you had multiple lines of dense railway network, then there are going to be outside options and they can capture more of the rents. So yeah, so but that point is valid. That might not be enough. And related to this is, well, if you also develop a network infrastructure, transportation infrastructure that connected different countries within Africa better. So if you look at the network right now, what you see is the railway network, which exists, which was primarily established during the colonial period, is basically meant to get resources from wherever in Africa to the coast and then ship to Europe. So it's not well established to allow African societies to trade with one another. And so that would”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good question. The obvious thing would be a transportation network that's improved beyond what they currently have, particularly railways, so that landlocked countries can transport their goods to the sea. And we know that sea transport is much cheaper, much more effective.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep, yeah, yeah, that's right. So there's a ton, I think when I was in grad school, this was like one of the great questions that the profession was trying to deal with. So there's a lot of explanations. So one is pure geography. So malaria is bad, for example. Sleeping sickness is bad. And those are more prevalent closer to the equator. That would be the Jeffrey Sachs view. The other one is, well, history is important. And those places for the Asmagla Johnson Robinson view is those places had less settlement of Europeans. And so then an extractive strategy was employed rather than a strategy where you built local institutions and trying to improve the society. So personally, I think there seems to be more evidence for the historical view, although I don't know that one story explains everything. I think there's a lot of other reasons why historical geography would have been important.”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That so it's a strong empirical regularity for sure that absolute difference or distance genetically between societies explains the absolute difference in income. So you see that very, very strongly. I think this doesn't tell us anything about the importance of genes for per capita GDP or for economic success. So I think if two societies are very similar genetically, what it means is they've had a very similar history, right? So the time since their last common ancestor split is not going to be very distant and so they would have experienced a lot of common shocks, would have lived in common geographies, would have had similar forces that affected cultural evolution, societal evolution. And so I think that's what that's picking up basically is the importance of history and how that affects culture institutions. And so they really don't know in that paper what is this vertically transmitted trait?”
2020-07-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Nathan Nunn on the Paths to Development · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source