Jan 31, 2010
Causation Vs. Correlation!
From The Economist January 14th 2010
“Liberal democratic governments can make all manner of blunders, but they are less likely to commit mass murder. Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has famously argued that no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine. And research by those three CFR scholars found that poor autocracies were at least twice as likely as democracies to suffer an economic disaster (defined as a decline of 10% or more in GDP in a year). With no noisy legislatures or robust courts to hold things up, autocracies may be faster and bolder. They are also more accident-prone.”
I wonder how someone who states that “…no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine.” wins a Nobel in anything let alone theology…..I mean economics. This is the argument you attributed to the economist Amartya Sen. Does Mr. Sen and The Economist for that matter not understand the dangers associated with conflating causation and correlation? Large famines are largely functions of climate, external demand, and agricultural subsidies. Are they related to free press? Doubtful if there is a linear connection. Are they related to fair elections? Probably but this is a correlation that I would not get passed peer-review.