Corruption-Economic Growth Nexus: Limitations of the Waterboarding Strategy of Argument

In Enock Twinoburyo I have good company. When I blasted Andrew Mwenda for his arm-chair pseudo economics, some of the reactions were that I could have made the same point in a gentle manner.
On the matter of  civility and intellectual discourse, I resort to the strategy of good old John Maynard Keynes who once said that "words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking". That is the pillar of my blog.
Enock and I are squarely on the same side on the corruption-growth nexus story. I need to add one more thing: the so-called citations (so-called because they are not studies but countries) that Mr Mwenda makes in his wild assertions are cherry-picked.
The strategy that Mr Mwenda employs in his argument is taken from the script of typical policemen in a Banana Republic - pick any in Africa - who pick their victims, torture them until they confess to some preconceived position ( in the US they do waterboarding!).
In this strategy, one picks countries that are likely to fit a preconceived narrative, then go ahead and pick the numbers that will sit well with the narrative, and quickly conclude a "thesis". I call this an attitude in search of justification; and it is not science.
The ethical way of going about it is to gather as much evidence as possible - as Enock tries to do given space limitation in a newspaper Op-Ed - and carefully follow it in whichever direction it takes you.
That is what economist Paul Collier does in The Bottom Billion (if one is not patient to read the book, the New York Times published a good review of the same). Recall that one of the four traps that Collier discusses is one of governance; and in there is the corruption monster!
That is what Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson do in "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" ( if one is not patient to read the book, here  is a very comprehensive review of the same).
I can go on and on, but the bottom line is: bad ideas such as those that Mr Mwenda is peddling in his argument about corruption and growth need to be ruthlessly repudiated.  


      

Andrew Mwenda a Dunning-Kruger Effect Victim

Sometimes the media is careless. This is especially on account of being sympathetic to their own or somebody perceived to be their own. I don't know about you, but I do not consider Andrew Mwenda to be a journalist; and I know for a fact that he is not an economist.

I think Mr. Mwenda has careless opinions, especially on matters economics. Take for instance his latest outburst that there is no relationship between corruption and economic growth.

It is easy to see where the problem is. Because Mr. Mwenda is lazy, he doesn't appreciate the fact that an economy's growth function does not have a single variable. I guess his point is that if you run a regression of economic growth as the dependent variable (the one to be determined) and corruption - whichever way you measure it - as the independent variable (the one determining), you will find no relationship.

In reality, the growth of an economy has many determinants. Numerous studies that I have seen where corruption is one of the explanatory variables find that it (i.e corruption) is a major contributor in a negative sense to the economy's performance. See for instance here, and here purely for illustration. 

But trust Mr. Mwenda - neither a journalist nor an economist - to let facts and logic interfere with an opportunity to sound profound and draw attention to himself!

I think I know where the problem is. Mr. Mwenda suffers from the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect. This is basically a cognitive bias where a quack suffers from some self-perception of having a much higher intellectual ability. The converse of this is where highly skilled individuals underestimate their competencies and in the process assume that what is obvious to them is obvious to others.

 It is therefore bizarre that the Daily Monitor refers to Mr. Mwenda as a "veteran" journalist. As far as I can tell, journalists intermediate news and information; they are not a source of news. In this case Mr. Mwenda has company in the Daily Monitor when it comes to laziness. I see no journalist, leave alone veteran; instead I see a careless pseudo-pundit. 

The Shilling in a Crisis? What Crisis?

Punditry and pseudo punditry have been getting a lot of acreage in the print media, and lots of air time on TV and Radio (of course being hosted by DJs and not any serious economics correspondents) telling us how our currency is in a crisis.
In today's Business Daily, I argue that all that is nonsense. While I think my case is compelling, I am not sure whether people will let logic and evidence persuade them away from their preconceptions and misconception on this subject.