How Americans became Followers of Nzhdeh
American scientists are strange people, even though they are not like British scientists, who often do experiments that are out of reality and rational logic.
For example, a serious scientific group may do a research to find out how beetles behave under Lady Gaga’s music (this is not a joke). Or, according to another research, scientists wanted to find out if blondes have lower level of IQ than others.
Sometimes there are researches that seem to be very serious, but later it turns out those are useless. For example, in 2010 economists Kaineth Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff did a research and proved that in countries with higher level of state debt the level of economic growth is lower. Or, scholars from Massachusetts University, under the management of Thomas Henrdon, decided to revise the results of the research above, but they encountered difficulties and were not able to reach their goal.
The authors of the research sent an excel file to this scientific group. This was the file they used to do their calculations. The scholars from Massachusetts university went though the information in the excel file and found mistakes there. In the meantime, the revised information shows that the process is the vice versa. After revising the information they published an article writing that countries with higher level of state debt have higher economic growth indicators. This means that high level of state debt does not have any impact on economic growth indicators.
In other words, this should have harmed the reputation of the scientists above, who made the mistake (by the way, still there is no information whether the ministry of Diaspora has given them any prizes for their invention or no).
Going back to the points above, let’s mention that the useless thing was spending money and resources on something they could easily find in Armenia.
Armenia’s foreign debt has grown by several times since 2008 and now is $4.2 billion. However, following the economic crisis the economy started to recover and in 2012 the economic growth reached 7.1% instead of the planned level of growth at 4.2%. According to the most recent statistical data, the economic activity indicator of the first quarter was 8.7%, which means that there will be impressive growth this year too.
Instead of trying to prove the mistakes of the mentioned scientists’ research, they could simply send mail to the Armenian PM and ask him tell them about the successful economic growth, along with the contrast of growing state debt. This would help them save resources on experiments.
However, if the scientists from Massachusetts University asked the government to give them information, they might refuse to because those scientists are good at calculations and could reveal a lot of mistakes like they did in the excel file of the other group.
This scientific group is not like the IMF or other international institutions, who would compromise and praise the economic growth of Armenia at the request of the government. This information might also give them enough materials to write another research paper on the phenomena of the Armenian economy.
This is not a joke. For example, former prime-minister Hrant Bagratyan does not have a research group, but he was able to prove that the economic growth rate at 7.1% in 2012 was questionable. He proved that the GDP 2012 was more than the GDP 2011 by 5.5%. In consideration of the GDP deflator, which is usually deducted, the economic growth should have been even less.
However, as the president had instructed them to provide 7% economic growth, they found a solution and gave a negative value to the deflator (-1.6) and added it to 5.5% in order to report 7.1% economic growth. Hrant Bagratyan has written the details of this trick on his facebook wall.
It is not only professionals and economists that see shortcomings n economic reports and calculation in Armenia but also journalists can see that. So, it would be better to keep these indicators and economic growth information far from a foreign eye. In this case the Armenian government would not be able to explain the mistakes like in the case of the mentioned excel file. By the way, it would be good if the American scholars could find the connection between governance failures such as high level of emigration, poverty and reduced investments on the one hand, and possibility of maintaining high rank positions on the other hand.
By Babken Tunyan
