Jobs in Africa

The African Economic Outlook (here) came out this month. It predicts continued 5% growth overall, with about 7% in the west and only 3-4% in the north and south. For Nigeria, and my former students should pay attention, it points out that most of that growth is NOT in the oil sectors: agriculture, trade, and ICT growing fastest. It also advises countries to invest more in the value added industries. Given that the vast majority of my intro economics students and even the people on the street in Nigeria not only could but did tell me the same thing on multiple occasions, I'm less impressed. It's a right answer, of course, but more needs to be done to identify why it isn't happening when everyone already knows it's the right answer and to take the political economy more seriously.

Oh, and as an aside, take a look at this graph from the AEO:

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how gears work. The bottom two would turn just fine, but the Human Rights gear is pushing the Unequal Access gear counter-clockwise while the Exclusion gear is pushing it clockwise. From a graph standpoint, this undermines the presumed point that each of them exacerbates the others. It suggests maybe that a poor human rights record makes unequal access not as bad, or that unequal access improves human rights...

Teal argues that the increase in education supply in Africa is a good thing, but only provisionally. The question is: why is more education good? It's good from a human rights/development perspective, clearly. But whether increased education will bring people out of poverty depends in part on whether or not there are jobs available that demand the increased skills.

"Without the factories the dramatic increase in the primary educated work force will indeed see little economic gain from their education. The recent increases in the demand for education beyond the primary level certainly suggests that both students, and their parents, are aware that low levels of education have little value in the job market place. Focusing on meeting that demand rather than focusing on why that demand has arisen may well be to miss the critical problem facing educational policy in Africa."

One of the informal jobs I saw often in Nigeria is that of the porter. People, usually boys, wandered the Jimeta market with wheelbarrows, offering to carry my purchases. The Sudanese government, however, has decided that it is in the public's interest to create a monopoly on wheelbarrows in Khartoum. Porters are not allowed to own their own wheelbarrow, but must rent them at high fees, ruining what little income they were getting from a pretty thankless job.

El Alaoui, Aicha, Elhadj Ezzahid, and Jallal Eladnani (2013). "Estimating NAIRU: The Moroccan Case", MPRA Paper No 56815.
In intermediate macro we are introduced to the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU). The idea is that if the level of unemployment is lower than NAIRU, you can expect inflation to increase, and to decrease if unemployment is higher. They estimate that the NAIRU has decreased from around 13% in 1998 to about 9% today. There is no explanation for why this happened and the policy conclusion - Morocco needs looser monetary policy based on the fact that the unemployment rate was consistently higher than NAIRU - does not capitalize on the fact that inflation has been remarkably low and sometimes negative since late 2009 or discuss the bank's mandate, goals, or governance.

Drop and give me 20

I mentioned that there was a police checkpoint with a fairly long line. They checked every car and had the motorcyclists get off their bikes to walk them in. If you weren't holding onto a bike, you had to keep your hands in the air. 

I also got some videos of some people who somehow annoyed the guards. Pity the iPad camera can't zoom worth 8 bits of beans. The guards made them frog hop across the road and back again with their hands on their heads. As usual, some of the police stood around with some pretty mean guns, fingers always near the trigger.

We passed through without incident.

One guard threatened to flog a guy with a long, thick looking whip. With our windows rolled up, we couldn't tell what the provocation was, but the guard's intent was pretty clear. The fellow finally complied and frog hopped for a bit, then was allowed to return to his bike without other punishment.

I sit back wondering at the comparative situation. I've complained at the TSA checkpoints before for violating my civil rights. I think that's what it constitutes and I don't believe the US government has the authority to do what they are doing. In both cases there are guys with machine guns staring at me like I'm wearing a shirt from Target because someone else did something heinously wrong. One government lets strangers with minimal qualifications grope me, the other lets strangers with minimal qualifications force me to frog hop. Frankly, I think I'd rather frog hop. On the other hand, TSA isn't allowed to beat me without some pretty serious provocation - I have the protection of at least some law to sue the government back if things get out of hand.

Big Bag of Ethical Endorsements

Tabarrok endorses GiveWell's endorsement of the Against Malaria Foundation as a good charity to give money to. This sparked a debate in the comments about whether you should really give money to just one charity or to many and why we give in the first place. One argument (Landsburg's) says that if your contribution is small relative to the size of their total budget and if you are primarily seeking to do the most good with your money, you should only invest in one charity. Your small donation won't run into diminishing marginal returns, so there's no reason to diversify. On  the other hand, if you are concerned about other things, you may want to do something else:

• if I receive increasing marginal utility to the number of organizations I give to (up to a point), then I'd rather give a small amount to several organizations than a larger amount to only one; [translation: I feel like I'm a better human being because I give to 10 organizations than if I only donated to one]
• if I am uncertain which problem is the worst, it makes sense to donate to several organizations working on different problems (say, measles, climate change, and gender discrimination); [Note: if this is your difficulty, you might want to check out the Copenhagen Consensus, whose Nobel Laureate panel agreed child hunger was global problem #1)

Boudreaux meanwhile endorses Caplan on the perceived moral difference between nepotism and nationalism:

Despite its mighty evolutionary basis, almost everyone recognizes moral strictures against familial favoritism.  Almost everyone knows that “It would help my son” is not a good reason to commit murder, break someone’s arm, or steal. ...
Nationalism, in contrast, is widely seen as an acceptable excuse for horrific crimes against outgroups.  Do you plan to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians?  Just say, “It will save American [German/Japanese/Russian/whatever] lives” – and other members of your tribe will nod their heads.  Do you want to deprive millions of foreigners of the basic human rights to sell their labor to willing buyers, rent apartments from willing landlords, and buy groceries from willing merchants?  Just say, “It’s necessary to protect American jobs” in a self-righteous tone, then bask in the admiration of your fellow citizens.

Yglesias endorses cash donations, even as a way to teach children about the value of giving well:

Food drives do teach a lot of valuable lessons to kids. Until, that is, you learn that giving $10 will buy twenty times as much food for poor people aswould donating $10 worth of canned goods. Once you actually know the facts, then all it seems like you're doing is teaching kids to be too lazy to scrutinize the world. ... We shouldn't be teaching kids that it's okay to be indifferent between helping one family and helping twenty families. It's a huge difference!

Cook endorses de Tocqueville:

The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire … principles. There is no religion which does not place the object of man’s desires above and beyond the treasure of earth, and which does not naturally raise his soul to regions far above those of the senses.

Because in part that is my tradition as well, I wondered at Wronging Rights  perceiving religion solely as being in conflict with human rights. I pointed out in my comments that this in part stems from a confusion about what is meant by "religion". I wrote in part: