Randomising Development: Geography, Economics and the Search for Scientific Rigour
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Development economics has become something of an innovator within the discipline of economics, due to its adoption of experimental and statistical analysis techniques. In this paper I give examples of this new trend in development economics: randomised‐control trials, natural experiments, specialist analytical techniques like pre‐analysis plans, and evidence‐driven policy evaluation. I explore this novel experimental development economics in conversation with current argumentation in economic/development geography about economics. I do this in order to ask whether this experimental trend responds to any of these geographical critiques. Although I find that this new development economics repeats many of the tendencies of economics that geographers find so specious, it does pose challenges to economic/development geography, which I explore.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.333 | 0.562 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.040 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".