I just published a new article in the Review of Political Economy, “Nobel Rebels in Disguise — Assessing the Rise and Rule of the Randomistas,” which assesses the theoretical and empirical foundations of the use of randomised control trials in Economics, and its impact on policy debates in development economics and in the aid industry.
Author: Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
Lecturer in International Development.
Along with Kai Koddenbrock and Ndongo Samba Sylla, I recently published the pre-print Beyond Financialisation – The Need for a Longue Durée Understanding of Finance in Imperialism on OSF Preprints. This is part of an ongoing research project we are working on and we welcome any comments on the paper!
As a member of the Debt Justice Working Group of Progressive International, I recently published this statement on what I find essential for any progressive international fight for debt justice: An Anti-Imperialist Call for Debt Justice.
It was great fun to discuss the big questions in development economics with Prof. Dan Banik on his podcast In Pursuit of Development. Listen to it and read more about it here.
I had the pleasure and honour of debating ‘A New International Development Paradigm. Do the Sustainable Development Goals Drive Global Progress?’ with Dr. Fred Muhumuza (Makerere University) and Prof. Dr. Aram Ziai (University of Kassel) at the Online Summer Academy for Pluralist Economics, August 2020.
The blurb for the panel:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations are considered a universal benchmark for development around the world. But is it realistic to have such a benchmark for countries/regions whose societies are structured within different local contexts? During this discussion, the panelists will share their perspectives on what development is, on the relevance of the SDGs, and on what a new development paradigm could look like in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic has revealed the poverty of our economic theory. Rupture with the old paradigm is the only route to recovery.”
Read my piece with Carolina Alves on Progressive International’s blog.
My work with Carolina Alves on Heterodox Economics is now translated to Spanish and published in the Colombian journal Ensayos de Economía. Download the full Spanish article or read the working paper in English. Thanks to Orlando Nikolai Santos Alvarado for the translation.
I wrote a blog post with Surbhi Kesar for the Institute for New Economic Thinking on the Economics discipline’s lack of capacity to understand racial inequalities, based on survey data.
I wrote an article on how COVID-19 exposes weaknesses in the dominant Economics narrative, and how heterodox economics offer important alternatives, with Carolina Alves for the Review of Agrarian Studies. Here’s the abstract:
In this article, we argue that societies’ unpreparedness and inadequate responses to the Covid-19 pandemic expose weaknesses in the foundations of the dominant economic paradigm. We document how economics came to disembed itself from broader societal analysis and how this has influenced public policy in problematic ways, leading to privileging of efficiency over resilience. We then go a step further to consider the role of economic evidence in public policy more generally. Furthermore, we demonstrate how heterodox economics can enrich our understandings of our economies’ weaknesses and of how to build a more resilient and just economy. We conclude that we need an explanation of the crisis that is capable of seeing the economy as more than just markets and as embedded in society; one that is capable of linking the causes and consequences of the pandemic to our systems of production and distribution.
Read the full paper.
A diverse reading list on pandemics compiled with Devika Dutt, Surbhi Kesar and Farwa Sial.
