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Is There an Underside to Economic Growth ? A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Malaysia

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Our study is the first predominantly qualitative paper accepted in The World Bank Economic Review.

It makes the case for listening carefully to what people say—especially when the numbers look good.

📄 Read it here: documents.worldbank.org/en/publicati...

This paper sheds light on a Malaysian paradox that may have lessons for the rest of the world. Despite high gross domestic product growth with concurrent sharp reductions .

documents.worldbank.org

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Three key takeaways for development policy:
1️⃣ Growth is not enough.
2️⃣ We need to protect people from the market’s vagaries.
3️⃣ Reconnecting economic and social life is critical—especially amid rising populism.

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Quantitative indicators—like GDP or consumption surveys—often miss this underside.

Open-ended conversations reveal the lived experiences and emotional undercurrents that data alone can’t capture.

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

This is what Hirsch meant by “social congestion”:

More money doesn’t buy better lives when education, housing, health, and leisure become rationed by class, and social networks fragment under economic strain.

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Drawing on Karl Polanyi and Hirsch, we argue that economic growth can fracture the social fabric.

It prioritizes individual mobility over collective well-being—leading to anomie, congestion, and declining access to formerly free public goods.

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Strikingly, the less developed western regions expressed less discontent.

There, people seemed more attuned to relative rather than absolute income—and less affected by what Fred Hirsch called “positional competition.”

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

We conducted 56 open-ended focus group interviews across Malaysia.

What we heard:
▪️ “Imbalance” between income & living costs
▪️ Reliance on multiple jobs
▪️ Rising debt
▪️ Stress & social disconnection
▪️ Ethnic polarization

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Malaysia is often hailed as a success story of the “East Asian Miracle”:
✔️ High growth
✔️ Sharp poverty reduction
✔️ Falling inequality

But what do people themselves say about this progress?

Is There an Underside to Economic Growth ? A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Malaysia

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 28

Why do people feel worse even as their countries grow richer?

In an age of populism, we need to ask what policy misses when it focuses solely on growth.

A thread on our paper: Is There an Underside to Economic Growth? 👇
📄 documents.worldbank.org/en/publicati...

This paper sheds light on a Malaysian paradox that may have lessons for the rest of the world. Despite high gross domestic product growth with concurrent sharp reductions .

documents.worldbank.org

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 16

😂

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Jul 16

Development folks (usually of a particular vintage) who are prone to making Denmark comparisons - note that you can fit six Denmarks in Delhi, five in Jakarta, four in Cairo….

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · May 27

Given that high quality codes are necessary in order to assess whether an LLM introduces bias, we argue that it may be preferable to train a bespoke model on a subset of transcripts coded by trained sociologists rather than use an LLM.

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · May 27

We find that using LLMs to annotate and code text can introduce bias that can lead to misleading inferences. By bias we mean that the errors that LLMs make in coding interview transcripts are not random with respect to the characteristics of the interview subjects.

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · May 27

We ask whether LLMs can help code and analyse large-N qualitative data from open-ended interviews, with an application to transcripts of interviews with Rohingya refugees and their Bengali hosts in Bangladesh.

Moving from nudging to boosting: empowering behaviour change to address global challenges | Behavioural Public Policy | Cambridge Core

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 28

Instead of “nudging” people to get them to do what YOU think is good for them, “boost” their agency so that they are better able to think and act for themselves. Wonderful paper from Behavioral Public Policy that encapsulates what many of us have been thinking. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Moving from nudging to boosting: empowering behaviour change to address global challenges

www.cambridge.org

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 10

Ah yes, Gauss. I also used something called LISREL for my dissertation

Institutional Builder Extraordinaire By Vijayendra Rao

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 10

Very interesting Owen. Disciplinary distinctions on software have been around a long time. When I started grad school in 1985 it was SAS(Economists) vs SPSS (Sociologists), and all the fancy ones used Fortran. 🙂

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 9

My essay is on VKRV Rao, who developed the first set of national income estimates for a poor country, founded the Delhi School of Economics, and laid the intellectual foundations of IDA, the concessional funding arm of the World Bank azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/indian-econo...

V.K.R.V. Rao

azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 9

Indian economists have been central to development thinking from the early 19th century. This amazing collection of biographical essays on distinguished Indian economists of the past is really worth reading azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/distinguishe...

Distinguished Indian Economists

Swaying Minds and Shaping the Modern Indian Economy

azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 3

Both Mansur and Amonkar belong to the Jaipur Atrauli gharana. Her mother and guru Vid Moghubai Kurdikar employs a different lyric for the raga. So why Amonkar appropriated the bandish for a different raga is a mystery youtu.be/my5Zh8ze3eY?...

Moghubai’s version youtu.be/WWjePAW0ZD0?...

Mallikarjun Mansur Raga Yamani Bilawal

YouTube video by Pokri Poki

Mallikarjun Mansur Raga Yamani Bilawal

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 3

What is unusual is that the same lyric is also employed by Vid Kishori Amonkar in this performance of the much more common raga Alhaiya Bilawal which is simply raga Bilawal (the western major scale) with a komal Nishad. “Pure” Bilawal is rarely sung in Hindustani music.

YouTube video by Pokri Poki

Mallikarjun Mansur Raga Yamani Bilawal

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Apr 3

This is Pt Mallikarjun Mansur singing the beautiful and uncommon raga - Yamani Bilawal which is a combination of ragas Yaman and Bilawal youtu.be/JUXfF8iEDOQ?....

The bandish is Ale Re, Kituve Gaye Loguva.

YouTube video by Pokri Poki

James Ferguson, professor of anthropology and former department chair, dies at 65

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Mar 23

Thinking of posting Indian classical music videos here like I do on Twitter. Is there any interest in this?

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Mar 20

Michael Woolcock and I have written a (very) short paper on “Ten Consequential and Actionable ‘Social’ Contributions to the Theory, Practice, and Evaluation of Development” largely drawing on our own work over the last 20 years. Comments welcome documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/0...

documents1.worldbank.org

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Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Feb 22

James Ferguson helped me understand how The World Bank works. His The Anti-Politics Machine is a must-read for anyone in development. RIP 🙏🏾https://stanforddaily.com/2025/02/19/james-ferguson-professor-of-anthropology-and-former-department-chair-dies-at-65/

James “Jim” Ferguson played a pivotal roles in the department's history and will be remembered for his remarkable character, kindness and contributions to the field.

stanforddaily.com

Vijayendra Rao @bijurao.bsky.social · Dec 17

Congratulations Ranil! Hope you will continue to write and blog.