MattAndrews: Institutional reform in development. Outcomes as a doorway to better governance indicators Yesterday I did a post on creating outcome measures that could be useful in facilitating focused governance indicators. I focused on child health and suggested that we look at the survival rates of children to see where countries are experiencing good or bad governance. I took some steps: First, I argued that we need a theoretical frame for the indicator that ties principals to agents in the production of welfare.
Hence the statement, Citizens grant public organizations the authority to ensure optimal provision of child health care, in whichever way appropriate, reflected in the cost efficient production of the highest possible survival rate of all children under five. Second, I suggested that we construct a measure that reflects effectiveness (what level of service is produced, for example) as well as equity (how many citizens have access to the service) and cost (how much do citizens have to pay). This is not a governance indicator. The Observatory of Economic Complexity :: Why study classical economic thought? Simon says economists should study the history of economic thought.
I'm with him: my masters' dissertation was on Malthus's theory of unemployment. But this poses the question: why bother with the wrong ideas of dead men? One answer is that they weren't always wrong. Marx was right about quite a lot. And sometimes, the difference between the classics and modern economists is not that the latter are right and the former wrong, but rather that they address different questions.
In fact, in one sense economists are only now rediscovering what the classics knew. This raises the question: in what ways has economics progressed? What's more, even when the classics are wrong, knowing why can sharpen our understanding. And herein lines another reason why the classics matter. Mariana Mazzucato - home. THE CLUB OF ROME (www.clubofrome.org) Gapminder. Anarcocapitalista.com - Teoría Económica. Development Issues. Economics. Gapminder. International Development Economics.