Thim Harford lambasts the Robin Hood Tax campaign:
The basic proposition of the RHT is that it is a tiny tiny tax which will raise a humongous sum of money. Nobody is really going to have to pay it – ‘coz it’s so very tiny – but if anyone does, it will be bankers. (If you think I am exaggerating go and look at the video again.) The tax may or may not be intended to reduce volatility. My tentative answer is: the RHT is a very large tax with an uncertain incidence. We don’t know who will pay it, but $400bn is a lot of money so let’s not act like it’s going to come from nowhere. It might reduce volatility but the balance of both theory and evidence is that it won’t.
I have much more confidence in my other conclusion: that the RHT campaign has little or no interest in the evidence.
My view on the Robin Hood Tax is here. Duncan Green does not agree.

Thanks Owen for pointing Tim’s column out. I particularly appreciate his pointing out (as you did) the lack of evidence for the RHT policy.
When I clicked through to the RHT website I examined the very long list of organizations involved in advocating for this unfortunate proposal. I was a bit surprised to see an organization on the list to which I regularly donate. Actually, I wasn’t just surprised, I was grumpy.
And this made me realize that people who give funds to organizations involved in both program implementation and advocacy, need information to judge their effectiveness at both.
An NGO may be relatively good at program delivery in developing countries, but relatively bad in policy advocacy. In fact, in perusing the list of RHT activist organizations, it seems to me this is true with respect to a number of organizations on the list. If more contributors knew their funds were going not to support good development programs but rather bad policy proposals, I bet they would be pretty grumpy too.
But, generally speaking information isn’t available to allow contributors to figure this out. And this seems important to me. Don’t we folks who are committed to the goal of making aid organizations more accountable need to pay attention to their activities in the advocacy realm too?
Perhaps these two activities should be de-linked (hearkening back to your CGD paper)? In that way potential contributors could support programs as distinct from advocacy (and vice versa). And, when selecting an advocacy organization, they could try to select those which are a bit more evidence-focused rather than those involved who are less (such as those involved in the RHT campaign).
I can’t tell you how much I like your take on this. I was going to blog about it, but thought I wouldn’t add a thing to your original post on it. I just hope that more people listen. All the left-leaning non-economists (as opposed to left-leaning economists – we do exist) on my facebook are pimping out the RHT and I’m getting a little sick of trying to argue with them.
Owen, I’ve just posted this on Tim Harford’s blog, in response to his piece: