La hambruna que está asolando Níger y otros países africanos, además de constituir una enorme catástrofe, está poniendo a prueba la capacidad de respuesta de los gobiernos, organizaciones internacionales y ONGs y las soluciones teóricas que div…

The Washington Post will be hosting today at 2 PM EST a live online discussion on the continuing food crisis in Niger. Submit your questions and comments in advance. Washington Post foreign correspondent Craig Timberg will be answering your questions. …

However, I am not sure that it was ever in doubt that Niger is a difficult place to do business. The question is whether we have evidence of whether, and if so how much, this has contributed to Niger’s current famine.

Don’t know much about Niger and I’m increasingly sure that Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek doesn’t either.

Recollect the start of this round of blogging: the WaPo article. The article blamed the famine on the free market, which is false. Boudreaux doesn’t need to know the cause of the famine in Niger to know that the cause urged on the reader by the Washington Post is false.

We don’t need to know the cause of AIDS to know that it was not caused by “the pharmaceutical industry”.

Owen replies: Not quite. In my original post, I agreed with those who said that the Washington Post article was wrong, but also complained that the free-market bloggers were making equally unfounded assertions in the opposite direction (such as that the famine was caused by government interference, or that aid agencies were part of the problem.) Just because the Washington Post article got it wrong does not mean that the bloggers who disagreed with it got it right. And I would say that the dicussion has vindicated that point.

I would also say that Tim’s comments were simply challenging the claim that Niger was a country steeped in market policies. The Doing Business survey data (which was for 2004, the 2005 data will be released this Sept 14th) shows that the business environment has much to be desired. But to a large degree, all of this discussion of economics is beside the point. This Washington Post article has been widely discussed in the econ blogosphere, though we must remember that many factors are playing a role here and much much more is at stake than arguments about the pros/cons of market policies. For example, the large role played by the region’s terrible drought and locust infestation should not be forgotten. Additionally, a recent Economist (http://economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4220850) article describes that the situation in Mali is almost as dire – yet Mali is a country often praised for its sound policies.

I would also like to point out that this famine was around last year – it just was not on the front page of every newspaper. Last week there was an interesting article in the New York Times discussing when a crisis becomes a “crisis” in the media’s eyes: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/international/africa/12aid.html/. It seems as though “Mali” has not achieved first page status yet. Though depending on what that means, I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing?

Owen replies: Right. I should have made it clear that I didn’t mean that the underlying study was sketchy and anecdotal. Professor Boudreaux’s comment was based on Tim’s blog entry – and I am sure that Tim would be the first to say that his entry was nothing more than a quick summary of the report. For Professor Boudreux to diagnose Niger’s economic problems on nothing more than those few paragraphs from a blog is what I was describing as sketchy and anecdotal.