Do Books “Work”?

It might seem obvious to some of you reading this that it might be possible to learn something from a book. But as a recent review for RISE by Paul Glewwe and Karthik Muralidharan found, researchers have actually so far failed to show rigorously that there is any improvement in test scores in developing countries after handing out textbooks to schools. There have now been four different Randomized Controlled Trials showing no improvement (and for four different reasons).

So when might books “work”? A new paper from the World Bank proclaims to answer just this question: “When Do In-service Teacher Training and Books Improve Student Achievement? Experimental Evidence from Mongolia.”

Their answer, somewhat disappointingly, seems to be “when it happens in Mongolia”. More constructively, though books alone seem to work, they work better when combined with teacher training, reinforcing Glewwe and Muralidharan’s conclusion about the importance of complementarities.

But that “there are complementarities” isn’t a very satisfying conclusion by itself. The more comprehensive hypothesis being developed for RISE by Lant Pritchett is: “when there is an accountability framework which is coherent for learning” - that is, when all of the relevant actors are held accountable for common goals through clear delegation of those goals, and have the resources to accomplish them. We’re hoping that this accountability coherency system diagnostic can be a useful tool for thinking through systematically what it is about specific contexts that mean that interventions work in some places and not others. What is it about Mongolia which means that providing books alone can be enough, in contrast to those other studies in Kenya and Sierra Leone? It just might be a coherent accountability system.

This post was first published on the RISE blog

The Emerging Middle Class in Africa

Apparently I missed this, but a book I contributed to back in 2012 along with colleagues at OPM was published by Routledge in October last year, edited by Mthuli Ncube and Charles Leyeka Lufumpa at the African Development Bank.

It's a snip on Amazon at only £27.99, or you can read it on Google Books here.

I'm not sure which is my favourite review;

"This book is uplifting, methodologically and intellectually sound, and rich in policy prescriptions. A must read for researchers, educators, policy makers, and global partners. As AERC (www.aercafrica.org) Executive Director, I am heartened by this policy and intellectually rich book"
-Lemma W. Senbet, Professor and Executive Director, African Economic Research Consortium and The William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance, University of Maryland, USA

or

"a timely topic, by genuine experts" -Paul Collier, University of Oxford, UK

Cheers Paul.

The Routledge Handbook of African Politics

If you were looking for a definitive overview of African Politics, you could probably do worse than this new volume, edited by Nic Cheeseman, David Anderson, and Andrea Scheibler. 32 chapters covering the State, Identity, Conflict, Democracy, Development, and International Relations.

For more, here is Andi writing at Democracy in Africa:

The Handbook, published last month, is the product of a collaboration between 35 established and emerging Africanist academics. Three years in the making, the Handbook is arguably the most comprehensive overview of African politics currently available on the market and we hope it will become a standard reference book for students seeking to understand the development of, and transitions within, contemporary Africa. ... 

Self-recommending. (And a 20% discount here)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

My favourite quote so far: 

“When I was small and would leaf through the Old Testament retold for children and illustrated in engravings by Gustave Dore, I saw the Lord God standing on a cloud. He was an old man with eyes, nose, and a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that always gave me a fright, because even though I come from a family that was not particularly religious, I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious. 

Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit... Either/or: either man was created in God's image-- and God has intestines!-- or God lacks intestines and man is not like him... 

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.”

"What's killing us"

Alanna Shaikh's new book is a nice quick fun read, packed full of things I didn't know on almost every page.

Some (on reflection, almost a little too extensive?) highlights:

Fifty-two percent of the women in Gabon are overweight, and so are 50 percent of the women in Zimbabwe and 53 percent of the women in Botswana. And obesity isn’t limited to Africa. Forty percent of the women in Thailand are overweight, as are 49 percent of the women in Bhutan (location 120).  

TB is our biggest global pandemic, though it doesn’t always make headlines. One out of every three people on this planet is infected with TB bacteria. (location 258) 

Each year, nearly 8 million children under the age of 5 die from disease. Six conditions cause 90 percent of those deaths: neonatal (early infant) illnesses, pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, and HIV/AIDS. Most of the deaths could be prevented, and it wouldn’t be all that expensive to do so (location 376) 

And, surprisingly, better access to drugs isn’t the most important issue. What’s really needed are more health care providers with better skills. About 75 percent of child deaths are in Africa and Southeast Asia (location 379) 

We’ve already seen dramatic decreases in child mortality. From 1960 to 1990, child mortality in developing regions was reduced by half. Continuing to bring down the number of child deaths is largely a case of continuing to do the stuff that works and targeting the areas of child mortality we haven’t made progress in yet (location 380) 

70 percent of the deaths in children under 5 years old could be prevented or treated with simple, low-cost interventions (location 395) 

The real cause of maternal mortality is gender discrimination. In the U.S., for example, maternal mortality didn’t improve as the country grew richer. It improved in the 1920s, when women finally gained the right to vote. You can see the same pattern in other countries; as women gain political rights and greater decision-making power, maternal mortality decreases (location 454) 

Maternal mortality doesn’t improve along with other health issues; it improves only when women begin to be treated equally (location 458) 

Based on current projections, antibiotics will stop working in 10 years. Completely. (location 495)

 Recommended. 

Herbert Gintis reviews Taleb's "The Black Swan"

I was shocked that OJ Simpson was acquitted of a murder he obvious committed. I am shocked that most Americans do not believe in evolution. And I am dumbfounded at the widespread success of this really stupid piece of pseudo-literature ... 

It would be lovely to have a sensitive exposition of great unexpected events, such as the fall of the Soviet Union, Black Monday, and the shooting of Robert Kennedy. This woeful volume is not it. I can't image what anyone finds valuable in The Black Swan. This too is a completely unforseen event, but is also difficult to explain in hindsight.

Ouch.

Three Free Books (and the economics of publishing)

All self-recommending; 

Lant Pritchett, The Rebirth of Education: From Universal Schooling to Universal Learning
Ernest Bazanye, The Ballad of Black Bosco
Julian Gough, Jude in London

What particularly caught my interest is Julian Gough's trust-based online publishing model. You get the book for free, and he asks for a tip once you've read it, if you enjoyed it. Now before you all say "that's what Radiohead did with In Rainbows," NO IT IS NOT. Radiohead asked for payment up front. Gough wants it after. That means all the risk is on him, not you. How on earth are you supposed to know how much you think the thing is worth before you've listened to it / read it?

Or in Gough's publisher's words:

we're aware of a bigger threat than piracy - oblivion. It is not easy, in this cash- and time-poor age, with free forms of entertainment abounding, to persuade people to spend money on an unknown book. Yes, a great book affords many hours of enjoyment and enrichment; indeed, adorns the shelves and the mind for a lifetime. Thus valued (i.e. using the crude calculus of 'hours of enjoyment and enrichment afforded'), a great book ought to cost far more than, say, a ticket to the cinema or the opera. But it doesn't, and among the reasons for this is the fact that a book - particularly a new, unproven book - comes with a grave risk: that, far from the hoped-for intellectual, moral, emotional and spiritual nourishment, it will bring nothing but asphyxiating boredom and hair-yanking irritation - with the pain only prolonged by that dreadful duty to finish felt by so many readers. And, of course, the worse a book is, the longer it takes to get through. What if you were unlucky enough to pick up an infinitely bad book? It would take all eternity to read it. Films and operas are different: the potential rewards may be less, but so are the risks. They're over in an hour or two, and even if they've bored or annoyed the pants off you, at least they've got you out of the house.

All of which is timely given a recent lecture by author Ewan Morrison lamenting that;

within 25 years the digital revolution will bring about the end of paper books. But more importantly, ebooks and e-publishing will mean the end of "the writer" as a profession. Ebooks, in the future, will be written by first-timers, by teams, by speciality subject enthusiasts and by those who were already established in the era of the paper book. The digital revolution will not emancipate writers or open up a new era of creativity, it will mean that writers offer up their work for next to nothing or for free. Writing, as a profession, will cease to exist.

Now back to those three books. One of these authors is not like the others. He is an academic, with a salary from an institution for teaching, research and writing. His salary, and his ability to write books, does not rely directly upon those books making a profit.

Can we learn from academia and build new institutions to support artists in the new era of free online publishing?

I think that Morrison's diagnosis and analysis of the falling price of online content is correct, but I am far more optimistic that we can create new funding models to support music and literature. I hope I am right.

The Manga Bible

I've been meaning to read the bible at some point. For literary purposes or something. But I'm too lazy. Until ARISTOC bookstore came to the rescue with this. Recommended.

Access for Africa

Chris Blattman thinks that publishers should "allow textbooks and academic volumes more than a few years old to be printed copyright-free in Africa".

No need Chris.

I just bought a second-hand book on a Mombasa street corner which was DHL'ed from Europe, which obviously makes far more sense.