Question

Good Economics for Hard Times, Banerjee and Duflo address sources of great anxiety across the world.  They argue that the resources to address these problems are there.  What we need, they say, are ideas that will help us reach across the disagreements and distrust that divide us.  They argue for an intelligent government interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect.  

Drawing upon the readings and lectures, give examples of such interventions

Answer 1

Measures undertaken by NGOs in order to send a migrant to work in the city, helped the local village community to prosper and enhance their scope of growth. Thus such interventions have helped increase the median wages of such migrants and helped the next generation prosper economically.

That economists and policymakers should focus on people based policies in order to implement change and focus on economic development measures, rather than economic growth. Policy interventions could go a long way in providing an impetus and promoting government interventionism in order to collectively grow and develop. The policies should be founded on the basis of maintaining the dignity of individuals such as teachers not discriminating based on intelligence level of students.

Via preserving community interests and building community centric development areas where villages in rural areas are de-centralized so that they intervene in local matters and help the local economy grow and prosper and its citizens get a decent living. Society collectively should manage and design the policies in order to implement change and thus an effective social policy is all important to bring about social change.

Of replicating the Chinese and South Korean models in developing economies where the government intervened in small scale industries which had huge potential for growth via exports. By focusing on intervention via banks and providing capital and improving access to capital to much needed industries.

That there should be clearly defined interventions which have measurable objectives so that the results and difference in difference estimators are easy to calculate and deliver the necessary impact. The studies for example in the case of bed nets being very useful in preventing malaria have improved the health status significantly in African regions.