Aid as piano recital
Lant Pritchett’s defense of foreign aid comes down to this metaphor
I see the aid industry a lot like a piano recital. It’s kind of boring and it’s tedious and most of the people are wasting their time. But every now and again by God we make a difference and when we do make a difference it really transforms economies and lives for a very long time….
Laura Fresci elaborates:
For Pritchett, what aid does best is to “form the base of the pyramid that creates the possibility of the top.” And the power of successes in development—the rare policy insight, or the competent handling of a potentially disastrous crisis—is so great, and has the power to transform so many lives, that those successes justify the existence of the whole flawed movement, many times over.
I think that in one respect this is a positive way to view foreign aid: in open-ended, experimental terms. It also emphasizes that development is about knowledge, education and competencies. The (often unintentional) social and economic dividends result from investments in the generation and application of knowledge.
Welcome back, Jeune Street!
These two recent posts are connected … one of the challenges in documenting outcomes of a project for CIDA, for example, is identifying and measuring the intangible benefits that don’t lend themselves to numbers … and spending an inordinate amount of time auditing the financial numbers.