Foreign Dispatches

Ethnic Fractionalization and Economic Development - More

I've just had the good fortune to discover this 2002 Harvard Institute
of Economic Research paper, written by (amongst others) William
Easterly of "Africa's Growth Tragedy" fame. What I particularly like
about the new and more comprehensive data provided by this paper is
that it does an even better job of capturing the amount of diversity in
a given society, going beyond linguistic diversity to consider other
markers of differentiation like race/ethnicity and religion.

We provide new measures of ethnic, linguistic and
religious fractionalization for about 190 countries. These measures are
more comprehensive than those previously used in the economics
literature and we compare our new variables with those previously used.
We also revisit the question of the e¤ects of ethnic, linguistic and
religious fractionalization on quality of institutions and growth. We
partly confirm and partly modify previous results. The patterns of
cross-correlations between potential explanatory variables and their
different degree of endogeneity makes it hard to make unqualified
statements about competing explanations for economic growth and the
quality of government.

The mark of a good paper like
this one (unlike the sort of junk turned out by race cranks), is that
the authors go out of their way to avoid making exaggerated claims
about the scope and implications of their work. Nevertheless, one thing
is clear from the data provided: the link between heterogeneity and
poor growth is, if anything, stronger than was implied by Easterly and Levine's 1997 paper.

By
the way, I couldn't resist pointing out the following information, for
those who've ever doubted that Nigeria is a far more diverse place than
India, in spite of the fact that the latter country has 8 times as many
inhabitants as the former. For ethnic, linguistic and religious
diversity, the numbers for India were 0.4182, 0.8069 and 0.3260
respectively (with a higher number meaning greater heterogeneity). For
Nigeria, the corresponding numbers were 0.8505, 0.8316 and 0.7421,
higher in all categories, but tremendously so for both the ethnic and religious measures. Looking over the data, not a single country on earth matches Nigeria for heterogeneity - not even Indonesia or Papua New Guinea!

TIME Europe | 'We Want Our Country!' (1965)

An extremely interesting Time magazine article on what was then
Rhodesia, written at about the time Ian Smith was about to make his
unilateral declaration of independence. This article really does give
one plenty to think about, especially in light of the events that have
occurred since then.

Ethnic Diversity, Social Sanctions and Public Goods in Kenya (PDF)

Yet another paper that demonstrates the powerful influence ethnic tensions can have on good governance.

Abstract: This paper examines ethnic diversity and local
public goods in rural western Kenya. The identification strategy relies
on stable, historically determined patterns of ethnic land settlement.
Ethnic diversity is associated with lower primary school funding, worse
school facilities, and poor water well maintenance. The theoretical
model illustrates how an inability to impose social sanctions in
diverse communities leads to collective action failures. We find that
school committees in diverse areas do impose fewer sanctions on
defaulting parents. We relate these results to the literature on social
capital and economic development, and discuss implications for
decentralization in less developed countries.

This is an especially timely find, especially in light of a recent Samizdata post
by Perry de Havilland bringing to mind the ill-fated breakaway Republic
of Biafra. Nigeria is an obscenely diverse place, with some 515
languages (as compared to a mere 400 in India) and no one ethnic group
with a clear plurality in terms of population; no one who has lived
there for a decent amount of time could ever underplay the centrality
of ethnic rivalry to the politics of the country.

Looking back on the last 30 years, it seems obvious to me that it really would have been for the best if Biafra had
been allowed to go its own way, though I think poor decisions made by
Biafra's leader, Chukwuemaka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, had a greater role to
play in Biafra's failure to secede than most Igbo people are willing to
acknowledge today. Portuguese, Rhodesian and apartheid South Africa's
recognition of Biafran independence was also a major setback for Igbo
independence efforts, as it guaranteed that hardly any other country in
Africa would extend the same recognition. Some friends simply aren't
worth having (a notion Jonas Savimbi would also have done well to heed).

Shoddy Reasoning About Outsourcing

Via a post by Edward Hugh, I came across this BBC article
on the Indian state of Maharashtra's attempt to position itself as a
low cost centre of medical services catering to patients from the
developed world. The article was interesting in as far as it
demonstrated that the potential gains from international trade in
services extend even to areas the naive might have thought immune to
foreign competition. Nevertheless, it was something said in the course
of the argument that paticularly caught my attention.

Many people from the developed world come to India for the
rejuvenation promised by yoga and ayurvedic massage, but few consider
it a destination for hip replacements or brain surgery.
Yet that's exactly what the government in the Indian state of
Maharashtra hopes will happen soon.
Together with the state's business sector and private health-care
providers it recently launched the Medical Tourism Council (MTC) of
Maharashtra.
Its aim: to make India a prime destination for medical tourists.
At its swish offices in central Bombay, also known as Mumbai, members
of the council explain the concept.
Bombay, they argue, has private hospitals on a par with the best in the
world. Many of the surgeons at hospitals such as the Hinduja are
leaders in their field, working with the best equipment available.
But they can provide their expertise at a fraction of the price that
comparable surgery would cost in Europe or the United States.
[...........]
For the MTC, its plans are the next chapter in globalisation and the
outsourcing of work to India.
As Sanjay Agarwala, the Hinduja's chief neurosurgeon, says: "Wherever
you can offer better services at a more competitive price, that is the
place that is going to win in the end."
But others question who the winners will really be.
Dr Rama Baru is a health academic in Delhi.
She believes that the marriage between the interests of Western medical
tourists and a handful of private hospitals is at "a very superficial
level as far as the medical care industry in India is concerned".
Contrary to the claims of the council, Dr Baru believes there will be
no trickle down of money to the impoverished public health system,
which currently receives just 0.9% of India's gross domestic product.
The MTC's plans may well benefit the doctors and patients involved, but
it is currently unclear how a country that still suffers from malaria
and TB will reap the rewards of a new wave of medical tourists coming
to India. (emphasis added)

That
highlighted bit was so chock full of economic ignorance that at first I
was at a loss as to where to begin. One would think the benefits of
this trend would have been obvious to both Dr. Baru and the BBC, but
apparently the economic sophistication of both of these parties extends
no further than the concept of a static cake, with any gains for one
group only possible at the expense of another. The emergence of
healthcare providers catering to the international market ought to be
applauded, even if it brings no immediate dividends for the public
healthcare system, as more affluent Indians will be in a better
position to pay for any healthcare they desire out of their own
pockets, regardless of what the government does; in addition, the
foreign demand will stimulate domestic demand for more doctors and
hospitals, from which Indians also stand to benefit. Even if one buys
into the notion that healthcare and public healthcare
are necessarily identical, which I certainly do not, it is still true
that a larger economy means larger government revenues, which means
more money to spend on healthcare, even without raising the percentage of India's GDP devoted to the public healthcare system.

What
I do have a problem with is not the prospect of patients from overseas
flying into Maharashtra to get cheaper hip replacements and heart
bypasses, but the notion of any sort of "public-private partnership" to
bring this about - such initiatives all too often turn out to be covers
for the coddling of particular private sector interests at the expense
of others. Private Indian medical services providers ought to be able
to make the business a viable one without public assistance, while I'm
sure the Maharashtra state government has more than enough difficulties
as it is catering for the very basics of good government, like
enforcing the law and guaranteeing an efficient, impartial judicial
system.

A Speech by Thabo Mbeki

I've just come across this speech that was to have been delivered on
the 5th of November 2003 by Thabo Mbeki, at the University of Toronto.
What is noteworthy about the speech from my point of view isn't so much
the political vision outlined in it, but the sheer erudition it bears
witness to: there are references to Hegel, to Francis Fukuyama, to Ben
Okri, and to Paul Collier, amongst others; there is an awareness, rare
amongst political types, that the "globalization" about which so much
is made today is in some ways little more than a return to where the
world already was in 1913, albeit without the labor mobility of that
era. One expects, of course, that Mbeki, like any other prominent
politician, will have had some help in writing the speech, but it still
speaks true to life, given what I've heard about the man; he has a
Master's degree in Economics, is said to be an intensely bookish sort,
and is visibly lacking in what is euphemistically referred to as the
"common touch", i.e., a penchant for cheap soundbites guaranteed to
please the crowd. Mbeki's intellectualism, while commendable in my
book, makes it all the more mystifying that he should go in for such
strange theories about AIDS. It would be one thing if he were the sort
of man of whom it could be said "he doesn't really know what he's
doing", but that is the very last thing one can say about Thabo Mbeki;
his highly competent management of the South African economy puts paid
to any notion of a man too limited to understand what's at stake. The
only explanation I can think of is that he has an emotional block or a
phobia of some sort where AIDS is concerned.
NB - This BBC article
gives a bit of insight into Mbeki's background. Incidentally, it also
helps a bit to dispel the cheap propaganda that Mandela was a dangerous
"communist", as so many conservative apologists loved to argue in the
1980s; Mandela's ideological disagreement with the South African
Communist Party member Govan Mbeki (Thabo's father) was so intense that
the two men didn't speak to each other for the first two years of their
imprisonment on Robben Island. Some much, then, for Mandela's
"communist" sympathies.

Stupid Linguistic Nativism

One has to be really insecure and/or have too much time on one's hands
to engage in the sort of "language purifying" nonsense that seems so
common in France and Germany.

As the world celebrates International Mother Language Day
on Saturday, Germany's language purists bemoan the relentless onslaught
of Denglish. But a German watchdog has hinted that a turnabout might be
in sight.
When burger giant McDonald's recently dropped its famous English slogan
"everytime a good time" for its TV advertisement in Germany and
replaced it with a very German "Ich liebe es" (I'm lovin' it), an
audible whoop of joy was heard in the language purist camp in the
country.
After years of all-out war against the rise of Denglish (a mixture of
German and English), the Institute for German Language (VDS) --
self-appointed guardian of the sanctity of German language -- is
celebrating.
"We have detected a trend reversal," Walter Krämer, chairman of the VDS
told dpa news agency. "The fast-food chain McDonald's is once again
advertising in German for its products, even other companies and
concerns have rediscovered German for their slogans," he said.
[...........]
Spectacular moves to clean up GermanThe VDS has been
up in arms against the encroachment of English words in the German
language for the past six years and is known for its often eccentric
ways to achieve its aim.
Last year the watchdog symbolically auctioned the German language on
Ebay. Within two days, the highest bid lay above ten million euro,
following which the Internet auction site stopped the trade.
The organization also attempted to sue the supervisory board of
Deutsche Telekom for its "nonsensical use" of English words like City
call, Holiday plus Tarif and German Call. The institute also awards a
prize for the Sprachpanscher (language debaser) of the year.

Give
me a break, why don't ya? What's with all the militaristic talk of
"relentless onslaught" and "all-out war"? English is a Germanic
language with more than half of its words of either Romantic or other
origin, but you don't see anyone going around ranting about an
"onslaught" because terms like weltanschauung, avant garde, nabob
and so forth have made their way into the language, do you? The
argument against this sort of linguistic purity crap is the very same
one as that against TV production quotas and "cultural exceptions" -
anything that is attractive in its own right doesn't need protecting.

The R Project for Statistical Computing

Linux and Apache may get all the limelight, but there are other
open-source projects out there that are truly impressive. One such
effort is the R Project,
which is essentially an alternative implementation of the S language
and environment, the best known implementation of which is S-PLUS.
If you're the sort of person who needs to carry out the odd bit of
hypothesis testing, time-series analysis, regression or analysis of
variance (ANOVA), I'd heartily recommend taking a look at R before
parting with hundreds of dollars for S-PLUS: you'd be surprised just
how much you can do with this piece of software. Heck, there are
actually things one can do with R that simply can't be done with its extremely expensive sibling.

When You Praise the T-34, You're Praising Bolshevism!

In the comments to this Brad DeLong post on the Eastern Front in World War 2, John Emerson says something that is both hilarious and true:

"Man, toast, you really don't like the T-34, do you? When
the T-34 was introduced, it wasn't a Camry. It was best tank in the
world. As time passed, the Germans introduced a few boutique tanks
which were individually superior, and this strategy would have worked
if tank warfare were a series of one-on-one duels.
However anti-Soviet one might be, it's irrational to believe that every
single thing the Soviets ever did was inferior. You don't become a
Stalinist by saying nice things about the T-34. "

Indeed. The T-34 was an excellent battle-tank. Not everything the Soviets built was crap - even if most of it was.

Breyten Breytenbach

The response in some quarters to my posts on real South African history
(as opposed to the propaganda dished out in school during the apartheid
years) has been less than enthusiastic, with histrionic and
self-pitying cries of "racism" ringing out where reasoned, factually
supported arguments might have been expected. This is a pity. It is
simply an absurdity to accuse me of "racism" for pointing out that most
of the voortrekkers were not culture-bearing
supermen bringing enlightenment to dark savages, as has until recently
been the portrayal of events. To say that they were for the most part
poor and illiterate peasants is in no way an insult - so were most of
anyone's ancestors until the 20th century - and there is a tacit racism
in taking umbrage at my pointing out that what separated the Afrikaners
from the Xhosas and Zulus they encountered was pretty much their
possession of firearms and their whiteness, which afforded them better
treatment from the British than the "natives" on many crucial occasions
in the early-to-mid 19th century; after all, what is so insulting about
being compared to Zulus, unless one still buys into the notion of
"civilized" whites and "savage" blacks?
But let us leave all that aside for now, as I wish to point to an
example of an Afrikaner who fought for the right principles and paid a
big price for doing so, the poet, writer and painter Breyten
Breytenbach. Let it not be said that one can assume all Afrikaners were
racists or cowards when it mattered the most.

BREYTENBACH, Breyten (1939-), South African poet, prose
writer, and painter, was born in Bonnievale in the Western Cape and
studied fine art at the University of Cape Town. He left South Africa
for Paris in the early 1960s, and when he married a Vietnamese he was
not allowed to return. He co-founded Okhela [Zulu: ignite the
flame], a resistance group fighting apartheid in exile. On an illegal
trip to South Africa in 1975, he was betrayed, arrested, and sentenced
to nine years of imprisonment for high treason. Released in
1982 as a result of massive international intervention, he returned to
Paris and lived alternately in Paris and Gorée, Senegal, where he
founded and headed a fine art workshop for African artists. His work
includes numerous volumes of poetry, novels, and essays, many of which
are in Afrikaans, many translated from Afrikaans to English, and many
published originally in English. He has won five CNA (Central News
Agency) Awards. He recently returned to South Africa to take an
appointment in creative writing at the University of Natal. (emphasis
added)

One consequence of the risks Breytenbach was
willing to take, and the price he paid for taking them, is that when he
talks today about the rights of the Afrikaan-speaking minority, he has
a moral weight that none of the old National Party types, not even FW
de Klerk, can ever hope to muster. What a pity it is that more than a
few Afrikaners are unable to emulate his example even today, and face
honestly the true nature of the system they enthusiastically supported
for so long.

Free Mathematics Texts!

Now, I'm sure this isn't exactly everyone else's cup of tea, but for all admirers of the queen of the sciences, this find by Jacques Distler will seem like coming into an unexpected inheritance. Why, there are texts covering algebra, number theory, topology, and even grubbily practical stepchildren like applied mathematics! What more could you possibly want, chopped liver?

Would-be logicians will especially appreciate Stephen G. Simpson's lecture notes on mathematical logic, which are surprisingly complete for an "incomplete set," Robert B. Ash has 3 online books covering first-year graduate algebra, algebraic number theory and commutative algebra, while J.S. Milne has notes on a broad range of algebra-heavy topics, including algebraic geometry, elliptic curves and class field theory. I've only touched on the subjects that catch my fancy, but there really is a tremendous amount of other material to be found by following the links on the master site. What are you waiting for?