From America, with love

Twenty years ago, George Rosen, a great economist and a friend of India, wrote a book called Western Economists and Eastern Societies.

In it he described the experiences of the Harvard group that went to Pakistan and the MIT lot that came to India. These American economists worked here between 1950 and 1970.

Rosen examined what they had to offer and why the Indian and Pakistani governments invited them and how the interface worked. In general, he concluded, everyone gained.

This paper by Daniel S Hamermesh who went as a visiting economist to Australia caught my attention because, by an odd chance, I had just been referring to Rosen's book to check something I had been told.

Since the paper is about American economists visiting other countries, I thought I would see if the bibliography contained a reference to Rosen's book.

It didn't but it seemed like a good idea to compare what Hamermesh had to say on the subject of visiting scholars with Rosen's assessment.

Hamermesh says, "I ask generally whether a country can benefit from the temporary importation of human capital, and specifically whether a programme that attracts large groups of academic visitors to a distant country benefits it by generating additional scholarly research on local issues".

He conducted a survey "in which visitors described their research before and after their visit and designated as a "control person" another economist who had a similar career but had not visited."

After performing the usual mathematical cartwheels and econometric handstands, he concludes that "academic visits generate additional research that is directly relevant to the distant land that funds part of the cost of the visit. As such, academic visits appear to be an inexpensive way of inducing research by scholars."

Ergo, it makes sense to import foreign academics who can enrich the research effort. "Valuing this extra research based on the scholarly citations it received and the effects of citations on salaries shows a substantial monetary impact of visiting economists. Less tangible additional impacts in terms of research style also clearly result."

There is, of course, the problem of evaluating the worth of the research. Where India was concerned during 1950-70, the involvement of the Americans was directly at the policy level through the Planning Commission.

The leftward swing by Indira Gandhi and the way in which she depended on the Communists until 1971 put an end to that. But the results could be seen in a variety of ways.

For Hamermesh's visitors, however, the involvement is purely at the academic level. So the results are measurable in the only way acceptable to economists -- citations and the extra money that these citations eventually result in for the individual.

After all he does say that he is interested in finding out if Australia derived any benefits from the expenses it incurred in importing economists, many of whom had seen the visit as a nice way of combining a great holiday with some work. His answer is honest.

"One cannot know whether the estimated gains justify the expenditure. But it does seem that the extra scholarly output has generated private benefits; and if we make the standard assumption that the social benefits are at least that large, we may conclude that the peripatetic economists have generated substantial monetary value." One may but should one?

What lessons can India draw from this paper? Thanks to some nonsensical notions of self sufficiency promoted by the Communists, we have given up funding the import of academics. Instead, now our academics are constantly going about with a tin box in their hand, which is a shabby and shaming sight.

The time has to come to revive the practice Pandit Nehru had initiated and P C Mahalanobis had energised. We have nothing to lose but some lousy ideas.