Dams!

For centuries, dams have been a big part of economic development policy around the world. They can also have large and contentious environmental impacts. This week, we’re going to think about dams in the context of Chinese economic development. On Canvas under “Class notes and lecture slides” you’ll find the main article for our discussion, a PDF from the South China Morning Post detailing China’s construction of river dams and hydropower plants (“Week 10 China Dams article.pdf”).

China has a clear plurality of large dams in the world. To give you a bit of (somewhat critical) context on dams in China and generally, we also have a blog post from the Environmental Defense Fund detailing the carbon impacts of dams and a CNN article about the Three Gorges Dam. I encourage you to draw on other sources as well, but be mindful their viewpoints and credibility (the same applies to the sources I’ve shared).

Our focus today is not on making normative policy recommendations (i.e., “what should/ought to happen”). Instead, we’re going to practice positive analysis (i.e., “what is happening/what will happen”). To that end, we’re going to focus on identifying the questions which are most informative for advancing our understanding and for policy design without presuming the policy objectives.

Focusing on positive analysis doesn’t mean we ignore policy considerations. But rather than providing unconditional normative recommendations (“this is what ought to happen”), we’re going to think about how normative recommendations are conditioned on answers to the key questions we’ve identified as well as the objectives policymakers may have (“if the answers to questions ABC are XYZ, then policy W achieves objectives D and E but not F”).

Drake rejects your unconditional normative prescriptions

Drake rejects your unconditional normative prescriptions

Th full set of questions you identify as informative for advancing our understanding is worth keeping and thinking about. But when it comes to making decisions, we’re often constrained in the time/resources we have to answer all of the questions we ask. So when you get to thinking about conditional policy analysis try to identify no more than three questions which are most informative—and pay attention to why you think they’re most informative. (Please record notes from your meeting in a Google doc, and have one person from your group send it to me after class.)

We’ll spend about 30-45 minutes discussing these issues in small groups, and then reconvene to discuss as a class.

Some questions to guide your inquiry

Below I’ve listed some questions to help get you into a headspace of asking questions and tracing through their informativeness and potential influence on policy design. You don’t need to answer all of these, or work through them in this order—they’re here to help you get started and keep going, not to be a restrictive checklist.

  1. What are the key issues at play in the main article? Who are the people affected, and how?

  2. What seem to be the policy objectives?
    1. What seem to be the interests of the people and organizations involved? Where might they align, and where might they not align?
  3. What are the key questions you need to answer to assess the impact of the project? (e.g. What are the key elasticities? What are the possible outcomes? etc. Think broadly & deeply here.)
    1. How could you answer those questions? What infrastructure (physical, economic, political) would you need?
    2. What concerns might you have about answering those questions?

  4. Of the questions you’ve identified, which three seem most important? Why those and not the others?

  5. How would the answers to the most important questions you’ve identified influence a policy recommendation? How would the recommendation depend on the policymaker’s objectives and the people affected?