Will the project "Growth Teams" receive receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?
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Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.
Brief project description
There are poor places in the world, not poor people. The fundamental challenge is how to boost productivity and human welfare in the places where poor people live, and the most powerful way to do that is through economic growth. In recent decades, economic growth accelerations in various countries have yielded gains in welfare and living standards 1,000-4,000 times as large as the most effective anti-poverty programs.
Growth Teams empowers developing country governments to problem solve for economic growth. We support developing country governments to translate the plethora of research and policy reports they receive into tangible actions on the ground. We provide technical support and managerial guidance to government staff and leaders to take these actions, and to monitor, learn from, and iterate on them–akin to a “lean startup” approach. Ultimately, we want governments to be able to create their own “flywheels” for promoting economic growth.
Here's the mechanism by which the applicant expects their project will achieve positive outcomes.
Evidence shows that the same growth policies have vastly different impacts across countries (e.g., Special Economic Zones), and that many policies in developing countries are not implemented as intended, or at all. Hence, the ability of governments to implement (i.e., translate strategy into action) and to learn over time matters hugely for economic growth.
We empower developing countries to problem-solve for economic growth. By facilitating them to take consistent action and to learn by doing, government agencies that we work with, such as ministries of industry and investment promotion agencies, will attract more job-creating investment and unlock constraints in high-potential sectors.
This will enable economic diversification over time, thus creating higher-quality, higher-paid jobs at scale–which in turn drive income gains and prosperity for people in poverty. The development experiences of countries like Botswana, Malaysia, Mauritius, South Korea, and Taiwan are testament to this.
Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18AIgxjx6SQdCKVZSMCHfM8PJVk6fp9ejgffBA4Y2e7U/edit
Sep 20, 3:31pm:
Sep 20, 3:49pm:
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The big places I'd expect this to go wrong: 1) no government wants their management help, 2) govt will accept help superficially but are inflexible, 3) the policies are shit.
We started our first project with an African government’s primary growth-focused agency in May 2022 --- If that's not misleading somehow, it seems like they have an in, which somewhat mitigates 1. I can't evaluate their policies on account of not being an economist, but I assume Clearer has already inspected their bodies of work.
First, we have developed initial definitions of what success looks like for us, which we will refine over time. Second, we have devised a number of metrics that correspond to these definitions of success that we can reasonably track and can indicate to us (especially when triangulated against one another) where our model is doing well and where it needs to be adjusted.
This is a rather higher standard than most of the projects are using. If Clearer Thinking is capable of monitoring and evaluating their work, this is potentially really good.
Looks like @ScottAlexander gave these guys their seed grant in late 2021 so this is a new organization likely still trying to figure out what they are doing. I don’t think that is bad and the prior validation of the recent ACX grant bodes well when they don’t have a lot of tangible results to offer yet.
@BTE Nice catch! ACX's brief summary of what they're trying to do gave me a better idea of what they're hoping to do- embed in specific countries for the long haul, as @GregJustice discussed below.
I'm... still unclear how they intend to do that for the kinds of durations this would require for $50k and where $50k would go in trying to move towards it. If there's a country involved already, I guess it isn't advertising- maybe it's their end of doing the initial discussions and meetings which end in their advisor being paid by that country? Is it running a matchmaking operation?
Is that all taken care of, and what they're actually doing is producing the policy analysis synthesis requested by and supporting the advisors (which would fit with the emphasis on this in the application)?
Big update towards a positive thing existing in here though!
@jbeshir Looks like these guys have been working for Tony Blair for sometime. I imagine they have built a valuable network of relationships in developing countries over that time they gives them strategic advantages others don’t have.
@BTE I think their credentials are definitely the best part of the application! I actually wonder a bit if there's a concise summary of how their project differs from what the Tony Blair Institute at which they previously worked was trying to do, which uses much the same kind of language:
Our global team works in more than 20 countries across four continents to support leaders with strategy, policy and delivery. From Covid-19 to the war in Ukraine, the tech revolution to the net-zero transition, our experts and thought leaders provide fresh analysis, practical policy solutions and embedded support in response to the world’s biggest challenges – all driven by the progressive vision and insights of our Executive Chairman Tony Blair.
@jbeshir Funding from ACX is a great point, I’ll probably sell off a bit in light of it.
This app doesn’t sound like the ACX summary though, they talk about themselves as a general consultancy. From the expected outcomes section, “our moonshot–what this is all about–is to contribute to the economic growth acceleration of multiple low-income countries (moving those countries from lower-middle income $1,000-4,000 GDP/capita to high-income status of >$13,000 GDP/capita).”
The pitch to take all the existing recommendations collecting dust and sifting through it all to get the actual best course of action feels reminiscent of the XKCD bit on competing standards (https://xkcd.com/927/)
On a more serious note, they don't seem well positioned or qualified for their proposed role. Advisers that enable large-scale changes tend to be people with deep, long-lasting ties to the specific country they're trying to serve. The "Chicago Boys" established themselves specifically in Chile for decades before gaining influence, and even then only gained power after the '73 coup. Albert Winsemius started his career with Singapore and the PAP almost immediately after decolonization. Both were successful because they specialized in a country, and also because they had the ear of the leaders of their respective countries from the start of their regimes. Neither of the applicants here focus on any specific country, nor do they propose to in their app, which is not promising if eventually getting large changes implemented is the goal.
If they're instead trying to fill a mid-level shorter-term niche, then its hard to evaluate whether they have anything to add without listing specific projects. Absent specifics we should probably default to the outside view, which is that they'll perform like the other consultants they cite making slide decks that end up on a shelf.
There’s nothing substantive in this.
They had some policy roles, they think growth is good (it is), they say “more reports” won’t help and then ask for money.
Not saying it’s a total shell corp grift— but they don’t propose a single deliverable, outcome, or anything.
If all they can produce is an NGO job application and interview-speak and no concrete things they will do, they should just go work at an NGO and I can’t imagine why anyone would fund this.
“Given this scale of impact, if there is a low single digit probability (i.e. 0.1-1%) that we play a critical role in sparking a growth acceleration in just one country, our work would be highly cost-effective relative to cash transfers and other micro-interventions currently endorsed by many in the Effective Altruism community.”
That’s not even what low single digit means 🤔
Loads of magical thinking and zero specifics, arguably more grifty than the AI lobbying that’s trading at ~0️⃣
”we have both driven efforts to bolster the capabilities of government agencies to take action for growth. Kartik has been embedded with, among other government bodies, Ethiopia’s apex industrial policy agency and a state Industries department in India. Jonathan has been embedded with Rwanda’s investment promotion agency. Hence, we have substantive experience in bringing the idea of “industrial policy as process” to life in real-world government settings.
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help us understand your (or your team’s or organization’s) ability to execute this specific project, such as past successes, past projects, products you’ve built, research you’ve published, or relevant professional and volunteering experience.
We are not able to share the various outputs that we produced during our past professional experience in this field”
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