Diagnostics before Prescription
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4029596 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dani Rodrik (0000-0003-2173-5762, Harvard University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 33-44 |
| Publication date | 2010-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Economic Perspectives (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0895-3309 • E-ISSN: 1944-7965 |
| Publisher | American Economic Association (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1257/jep.24.3.33 |
| OpenAlex | W2139961313 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 44 |
| References cited | 14 |
Development economists should stop acting as categorical advocates (or detractors) for specific approaches to development. They should instead be diagnosticians, helping decisionmakers choose the right model (and remedy) for their specific realities, among many contending models (and remedies). In this spirit, Ricardo Hausmann, Andres Velasco, and I have developed a "growth diagnostics" framework that sketches a systematic process for identifying binding constraints and prioritizing policy reforms in multilateral agencies and bilateral donors. Growth diagnostics is based on the idea that not all constraints bind equally and that a sensible and practical strategy consists of identifying the most serious constraint(s) at work. The practitioner works with a decision tree to do this. The second step in growth diagnostics is to identify remedies for relaxing the constraint that are appropriate to the context and take cognizance of potential second-best complications. Successful countries are those that have implemented these two steps in an ongoing manner: identify sequentially the most binding constraints and remove them with locally suited remedies. Diagnostics requires pragmatism and eclecticism, in the use of both theory and evidence. It has no room for dogmatism, imported blueprints, or empirical purism
Blueprint · Categorical variable · Eclecticism · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Machine learning · Management science · Operations research · Pragmatism · Computer Science · Economic Growth and Productivity · Engineering · History · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy
Effects of the Development Bank’s First-Tier Financing on Mexican Export Companies
The Demand for Production Inputs as the Reflection of the Level of Property Rights Protection
Education in perennial crisis
Mapping Indian Foreign Economic Policy
The Three Regularities in Development
Making universal education a priority for sustainable development
Are growth diagnostics biased against the poor? Evidence from the Millennium Challenge Corporation
Killing Two Birds With One Stone? A New Pragmatist Perspective on the Rigor‐Relevance Gap in the Literature on Capacity Building Projects
Fifty years of capacity building
Data transparency and growth in developing economies during and after the global financial crisis
Tackling the UK’s regional economic inequality
Development and US Troop Deployments
Independent Professional Bureaucracies and Street-Level Bribery
The Unburdening of Lack of Evidence
The Evidence for Free Trade and Its Background Assumptions
Back in Business
The Role of the State in the Big Picture of Economic Development
Industrial policy for sustainable human development in the post-Covid19 era
Development (paradigm) failures
The methodology of normative policy analysis
Gendering capital
Data Transparency and Long-Run Growth
When Democracies Deliver
China’s approach to malaria control and elimination
Policy experimentation and innovation as a response to complexity in China’s management of health reforms
A Large-Scale Field Experiment to Reduce Nonpayments for Water
Figuring it out
Public sector reform as problem-solving? Comment on the World Bank’s Public Sector Management Approach for 2011 to 2020
Reading economics
Disagreement and Learning about Reforms
Albert O. Hirschman
Collective‐unconscious apologetics of plutocracy and oligarchy
Commentary
Measuring national entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa
Varieties of functional income inequality in Latin America
The post-2013 reform of EU cohesion policy and the place-based narrative
The Chinese Ideology
Empirical Political Theory
Comprendre l'émergence économique
Foreign-Funded Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa
Voluminous, Repetitive, and Intractable
Des « modèles de développement » aux « mondes du développement
Political economy of road maintenance
Opportunity Gap Analysis
The structure of protection in developing countries
Getting Interventions Right
Second-Best Institutions
Ending Africa's Poverty Trap
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Development as Freedom
Development (paradigm) failures
The methodology of normative policy analysis
Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise
Reform without Losers
International Development
Problems of Industrialisation of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe
Instruments of development
| Unique citing works | 44 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,75 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 40 |