As a teenager, my somewhat idealistic ideas were dismissed with the line: “You don’t understand the economics of the situation.” Studying economics seemed the most direct response.
Economists may work in universities, for the Government, and in private corporations. The vast global inequalities have always struck me as being intensely unfair and the biggest ethical issue we face today; so now I’m an economic consultant working in international development. I’m a director for a niche not-for-profit Oxford-based consultancy, Mokoro Ltd, specialising in policy, public financial management, land and aid effectiveness. I work on projects for organisations such as UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
I’m currently engaged on two projects: a strategic evaluation for a large UN agency, and an assessment of an education fund in Africa.
I’m a generalist. I’ve worked in international development for 15 years, but I’ve also worked in transport, and as a risk analyst in the insurance industry. I don’t do academic economic research: I’m always engaged on a task that’s externally set, a question to be answered, with institutions willing to pay to know the answer. I’m a jobbing economic consultant who needs to come up with tangible recommendations fast.
I like the challenge of varied work. Most of my work is broadly in the area of aid effectiveness, though I have a particular interest in education in sub-Saharan Africa. I’ve looked at ways of supporting the social sector in Zimbabwe, and programmes to improve childhood nutrition in Botswana; and I’ve written policy papers on public financial management.
I always work in teams, though most of my time is spent working on my own. Depending on the project, a typical day could be spent largely at my computer: analysing data, writing a report, interviewing people remotely, or pulling together a presentation. Or I could be out in the field, speaking to civil servants, ministers, development partners, and implementing agents, trying to sweet-talk bureaucrats into giving me relevant data, working in a team with a mix of nationalities and areas of expertise.
When I’m working on a country-specific project, I try to read the newspapers of that country. This helps to contextualise my work and puts things in perspective. I was doing some work on the education sector in Zimbabwe during lockdown. The work was delayed because the teachers kept going on strike over their pay. The knee-jerk reaction is to think: “Middle-class teachers, they have it a lot better than many Zimbabweans.” But inflation had caused the value of their pay to plummet to such an extent that their daily wage didn’t cover the cost of a bus ride to school or the price of a loaf of bread. That’s the cost-of-living crisis taken to a whole different level.
Economics involves analytical examination of how the world really is and what has worked in the past. It seems that we have become more binary in our thinking: no single policy will always work in any situation. You have to analyse what’s really going on, and then seek appropriate solutions. How a policy is applied, and if it’s done in a timely fashion, and the specifics of the economy — these details matter.
The basic Keynesian view is that government should be austere in boom times and expansionary in recession. I see more evidence that this works than the reverse.
Economics is a way of thinking. It is often defined as the allocation of scarce resources, which usually means money, but can also mean time or specific resources.
It helps to have a mathematical bent, but I think the most important skill is the ability to take abstract concepts and apply them to the world, and vice versa: distil abstract laws from observing how the world works. Being genuinely interested in taxation policies is useful, too.
Economics operates on models, which is like a map of the situation. You can’t include everything in the model: it would be too complicated. So you choose the features that you think are relevant to the situation. Some models exclude highly relevant factors. For example, the poll tax was a complete disaster. If you read optimal-taxation theory written in the 1980s, you’d come away with the impression that a poll tax is the optimal tax because it’s the most efficient. But it’s only efficient in a very narrow economic definition of what efficiency means, minimising distortions.
If a wider definition of efficiency is given, a poll tax looks less efficient, and if you take into account equity, then it looks less and less like a good idea. Then, of course, there’s the political dimension, which can’t be ignored when you’re looking at economic policy.
Professor Dasgupta makes a good case for including nature in economic models [Interview, 18 June 2021]. It comes into some economic models as a “public good”. The “tragedy of the commons” is a famous economic example, where a common resource is over-used because individuals maximise their own benefit without regard to the consequences for the group. But normally nature is exogenous: it’s simply not considered.
How could faith and philosophy not play a part in my work? I’m always struck, when visiting countries in Southern Africa, how strong a role faith plays in people’s lives, almost universally.
Christianity offers the view that everyone matters. The poor matter as much as the rich, and no one is excluded on the basis of status or tribe or religious adherence. This was a radical challenge in Jesus’s time, and it remains challenging now.
If we really believed that the factory hand in Asia mattered as much as a professional working in the UK, we’d make different decisions, wouldn’t we? For a start, we’d be more careful about what we bought, and certain shops and brands that currently thrive wouldn’t even exist. So, collectively, we don’t believe this — perhaps it’s beyond our imaginative grasp. But, in God’s eyes, we are all equal, and it’s the meek and poor who are blessed, not the rich and educated. This is a constant challenge.
I grew up in south London, the youngest of three children. We went to church and had family who were clergy, but I never regarded our family as particularly religious until a friend commented on it. It didn’t feel like we were religious compared with some families I knew. We only said grace on Sunday, and rarely discussed scripture, though we did discuss women’s ordination.
Today, I live in rural France with my husband and children. Over the past decade, we’ve lived in eight homes in four different countries. Now we’ve finally settled down and bought a house. After a rather nomadic existence, it feels good to put down roots and be part of a community. It’s lovely having a bit of stability, and having my books around me again.
A good book makes me happy; and a project finished, with another on the way, a roaring fire, and the prospect of good friends over for supper; homemade marmalade; my husband bringing me tea in the morning; and my children, of course.
Greed and wilful stupidity make me angry — and the twisting of the truth for selfish or banal reasons.
My favourite sound is contented silence, or the cheerful rattling noise Lego bricks make as they are scooped up and fall. Laughter and lively conversation are good, too.
I tend not to dwell on the future. It’s hard enough, living in the present — but taking an historical perspective can help. In the short term, it’s easy to feel that everything is doing downhill; but if you compare our world to even a hundred years ago, with huge inequality, suffering from the scars of a terrible war, the Great Depression round the corner — it feels our future isn’t too bleak.
What I pray for most often is strength. What I should pray for is compassion and humility.
I’m tempted to choose to be locked in a church with a saint or a philosopher. But, thinking about it, the potential to have a good conversation is what counts; so I’ll choose John Maynard Keynes.
Elizabeth Hodson was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
mokoro.co.uk