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| Harvard_Dropout |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 02:51 AM
On December 12th, 1999 Lawrence Summers, Chief Economist for the World Bank wrote an internal memo that was leaked to the press...
The Memo
DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP
Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:
1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest
wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. 2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are
so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste. 3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.
The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.
Postscript
After the memo became public in February 1992, Brazil’s then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: “Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional ‘economists’ concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility. To me it would confirm what I often said... the best thing that could happen would be for the Bank to disappear.”
Sadly, Mr. Lutzenburger was fired shortly after writing this letter. Mr. Summers, on the other hand, was appointed the U.S. Treasury Secretary on July 2nd,1999, and served through the remainder of the Clinton Administration. Afterwards, he was named president of Harvard University.
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| Jayahos |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 06:17 AM
This issue is surfacing time and again and haunting Mr. Summers every time he resumes a new responsibility. Students protested against him after he joined Harvard as president in 2001. The memo, so far as I know - was written by one of his subordinates who later accepted that fact, and was dismissed as a technical mistake rather than his policy directives.
Once this subject has come up here, it will be worthwhile to have more insight into his action and views afterwards as deputy Secretary and Secretary of the Treasury. Is there any link between his enviable success and that MEMO? I wish he signed that MEMO by mistake!
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| Paschim |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 06:41 AM
Lant Pritchett, the real author of that memo is also now at Harvard, at the Kennedy School of Government. His quote from the link below is educational:
"I strongly recommended that he say I had written it and he had just signed it. Larry said no, that wasn't his style. Whatever he signed he would take responsibility for. He took the flak...."
http://www.harvard-magazine.com/archive/01mj/mj01_feat_summers_2.html
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| ashu |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 08:43 AM
Further along the link provided by Paschim:
"In my mind it was a deliberate fraud and forgery to discredit Larry and the World Bank," Pritchett says. He interprets the incident not as an indication of bureaucratic insensitivity, but as "bureaucrat stands up for junior colleague for 10 years for something he never did."
To understand the significance of that in a Nepali context: Compare that action to Ram Saran Mahat -- the then Finance Minister a few years ago -- publicly blaming his sachib and underlings at the Finance Ministry when Mahat had to revise the national annual budget a few days after he announced it.
Surely, even Nepali higher-ups can learn something of value from Larry Summers.
Not everyone likes Larry Summers.
He can rub and has rubbed some people the wrong way.
But due to his straightforwardness, his ability to ask sharp questions, his formidable intellect and his being genuinely concerned about the betterment of his students, colleagues and of those who report to him, he inspires all-consuming loyalty.
With Larry at the helm, I, for one, am delighted that Harvard University is in excellent, capable hands. He will shake that place up, and make it an even better university in a few years' time.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| Harvard_Dropout |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 09:41 AM
Ashu:
I would like to beg to differ with you on the issue of Harvard University being in good hands with Larry Summers on the helm. Flight of several of the top academicians and researchers from Harvard to Princeton and Columbia can be contributed directly to the not so democratic management style of Larry Summers. I was a student of Professor Jeffery Sachs and recently of Professor Pritchett too at KSG. However, now that I have left Harvard and returned to where I belong, I am not at all convinced that Larry Summers is the most appropriate person to lead Harvard in these very challenging times. Like you, I too want Harvard University to produce the very best at the Cambridge/Allston Campus and Longwood Medical Center.
At the end of the day, I still think Larry Summers is a Rat.
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| Tripin |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 10:42 AM
Dropout,
Why are you so much concerned about Larry Summers since your name says you're already dropped out of Harvard?
Did you drop out because president Larry Summers was a rat?
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| SMR |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 11:14 AM
Ashu and others,
When Larry Summer came to Harvard, he made education reform at Harvard his highest priority. First, he asked both the right and the left to be tolerant of each other’s views. It was quite a change for Harvard.
Among other things, Harvard was suffering from a chronic problem of grade inflation; according to one article it was almost leading the pack among the leading schools. In 2001, the report says more than 90% of its seniors at Harvard graduated with Honors, an astonishing revelation for many.
Further, Larry asked its faculty to be more scholarly and true to its mission: teaching and academic research. He also started to go vigorously after the younger crop of faculty. Larry himself had gotten tenure at the age of 28.
It made many senior and older faculty pretty disappointed and so some left. According to the Provost of the International Studies at Duke, they “raided” a few senior faculty from Harvard. There was one senior faculty at Harvard who was undertaking a lot of consulting type of work around the world, and under pressure he left too. Larry’s emphasis on young faculty and academic research was getting in the way of his soft work, some say.
Last summer, Larry Summer “dared” to ask his star faculty, Dr. Cornel West, to do more scholarly work and publish academic papers and spend time on campus. Mr. West, removed from his academic activities, was spending time with the likes of Alan Sharpton (presidential candidate), Louis Farrakhan (a million men march), collecting $ 10,000 a pop for his more than 100 a year lectures, been busy cutting RAP CDs and claiming them to be of academic values, while at the same time he was drawing big bucks from the university and enjoying the cache of being at Harvard.
Most importantly, Dr. West cried foul and, with the help of Alan Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, went after Larry on the ground of racial discrimination. They also had organized some demonstrations, the acts many academicians found despicable.
Well, now Mr. West is at Princeton, and I say more power to Larry Summer on this count.
Larry’s success or failure has yet to be played out at Harvard. He is sharp like hell and a bit maverick. But I would not underestimate him. I don’t have quite the credentials prejudge him. I am not disappointed so far, but I need more information before I start dismissing him.
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| SMR |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 11:37 AM
Grade Inflation:
(It is rrelevant to my earlier posting.)
02/07/2002 - Updated 10:48 PM ET
Ivy League grade inflation
Who makes the grade?
Evidence of grade inflation at Ivy League schools:
In 1966, 22% of Harvard undergraduate students earned A's. By 1996, that figure rose to 46%. That same year, 82% of Harvard seniors graduated with honors.
In 1973, 31% of all grades at Princeton were A's. By 1997 that rose to 43%. In 1997, only 12% of all grades given at Princeton were below the B range.
Source: American Academy of Arts & Sciences
When a report found recently that eight out of every 10 Harvard students graduate with honors and nearly half receive A's in their courses, the news prompted plenty of discussion and more than a few jokes. But is grade inflation worth worrying about?
Really smart students probably deserve really high grades. Moreover, tough graders could alienate their students. Plus, tough grading makes a student less likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in college rankings.
All are among reasons cited by professors in explaining why grade inflation is nothing to worry about. And all are insufficient justification for the practice. College-grade inflation — which is probably an extension of the well-documented grade inflation in high schools — is a problem. And it extends well beyond Harvard.
Fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus, according to a study released this week by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That hardly seems justified at a time when a third of all college students arrive on campus so unprepared that they need to take at least one remedial course.
The report sifts through several possible causes for the inflated grades. Among them:
A holdover practice from the 1960s, when professors knew that F's triggered a draft notice and a trip to Vietnam.
An influx of more students, including some minorities, who are less prepared for college work. Grading leniency is believed to encourage their continued academic participation and promote self-esteem.
Evaluation systems in which students grade professors, thereby providing an incentive for teachers to go easy on their future evaluators.
An explosion in the number of overburdened adjunct professors who lack the time to evaluate each student more accurately.
The authors of the report cast doubt on several of those explanations, including the influx of minorities. They barely touch on an obvious explanation offered by several professors: Families paying more than $30,000 a year for a college education expect something more for their money than a report card full of gentleman's Cs.
More important than the reasons for inflated grades is the impact they have.
When all students receive high marks, graduate schools and business recruiters simply start ignoring the grades. That leads the graduate schools to rely more on entrance tests. It prompts corporate recruiters to depend on a "good old boy/girl" network in an effort to unearth the difference between who looks good on paper and who is actually good.
Put to disadvantage in that system are students who traditionally don't test as well or lack connections. In many cases, those are the poor and minority students who are the first in their families to graduate from college. No matter how hard they work, their A's look ordinary.
Viewed in that light, the fact that 50% of all Harvard students now get A's is a troubling problem.
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| SMR |
Posted
on 23-Oct-02 11:42 AM
Sorry, forgot to give the source:
(Ivy League Grade Inflation; source: USA Today based on a report.)
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