What Lant Pritchett thinks about innovation
Development economist. Research director of RISE at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, formerly of the World Bank and the Harvard Kennedy School, and a founder of Labor Mobility Partnerships. He argues that letting people move across borders is the largest unexploited gain in global welfare, and that rich-country aid agencies have quietly abandoned the goal of making poor countries prosperous.
Lant Pritchett did not write this page.
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3 dated positions, 2023, in their own words. Our reading of what Lant Pritchett has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsTherefore, we have the perverse situation that the richest people are hiring some of the most talented and technologically sophisticated people on the planet to engage in innovation aimed at driving down the demand for labor—the major and often only asset of the world’s poor.
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Their wordsBut, whether it makes financial sense or not for the individuals involved, they are responding to distorted prices, not scarcity, and the world is not better off from their invention and innovation.
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Our readingPolicy can manufacture a false necessity, and false necessity is the mother of wasteful invention.
Their wordsThere is an old saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” but it is also true that policies can create false necessity and false necessity can be the mother of costly, resource consuming, dumb inventions.