# Lant Pritchett

Lant Pritchett (born 1959) is an American development economist. He is the RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford until March 2023 and is now a Visiting Professor of Practice at the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and is the co-founder and Research Director at Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP).

## Early life and education

He was born in Utah in 1959 and raised in Boise, Idaho. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in economics, after serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Argentina (1978–1980). He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 with a PhD in economics.

## Career

Pritchett's career spans academia, policy advisory roles, and international development research. He has held faculty positions at leading universities and worked with international organizations such as the World Bank and other policy institutions. His research focuses on economic development, education, and migration, contributing significantly to global policy discussions.

## The World Bank

He worked for the World Bank from 1988 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2007. While working for the World Bank he lived in Indonesia from 1998-2000 and in India from 2004 to 2007. He was part of the teams that produced a number of World Development Reports, including the 1994 report on Infrastructure, and the 2004 report Making Services Work. In 1998 he co-authored with David Dollar the report Assessing Aid, which was an important impetus behind the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. He was a contributor to the first Copenhagen Consensus. In 1991 he said that he wrote the controversial Summers memo that supposedly advocated the exportation of polluting industries to poor countries, for which Summers was receiving widespread criticism.

## Academic Appointments

From 2000 to 2004, on leave from the World Bank, he was a lecturer in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and then returned to the World Bank until 2007. After his tenure at the World Bank, Pritchett transitioned to academia. He became a professor of the Practice of International Development at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University from 2007 to 2019, where he taught courses on economic development and public policy and was Faculty Chair of the MPA/ID program. He has also held visiting or affiliate positions at institutions such as the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics, and the Center for Global Development.

## Contributions and advocacy

In 2006 he published his first monograph Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility (Center for Global Development, pub). The book references research that Pritchett did with Michael Clemens and others at the CGD on the place premium, income per natural, and other related concepts. He argues that the most effective way the developed world can help impoverished countries is to allow increased numbers of low skilled laborers to immigrate as guest workers. He describes what he sees as an immoral cycle of using ever more sophisticated technology to reduce labor while billions of willing workers live in extreme poverty.
His proposal to monitor global poverty with a low and high poverty line has been adopted by some organizations including Our World in Data.

## Advisory Roles

Pritchett has served as an advisor to numerous international development organizations, including the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre and the RISE Programme (Research on Improving Systems of Education). His advisory work often focuses on improving the design and implementation of public policies in education, migration, and governance.

## Research Contributions
### Basic education

Pritchett has been a critic of education systems in many developing countries, arguing that "schooling" has often failed to translate into meaningful "learning." In his book The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning (2013), he examines the gap between educational access and learning outcomes, emphasizing the need for systemic reforms to address this disconnect.

### Labor migration

Pritchett has explored the economic and social impacts of migration, particularly the role of labor mobility in reducing global poverty. He has highlighted the potential for migration to address labor market imbalances between high- and low-income countries, while also raising awareness of the challenges associated with migration policies and is currently the Research Director of Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP).

### State capacity and institutional performance

Pritchett's research on state capability examines the ability of governments to effectively implement policies and deliver services. He co-authored Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action (2017), which presents a framework for improving governance in developing countries. His concept of "isomorphic mimicry" describes how some governments adopt the appearance of effective institutions without achieving their intended functions, which can undermine development efforts.

## Selected publications

Pritchett has authored and co-authored numerous books, academic articles, and policy papers. Some of his notable works include:
* The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning (2013)
* Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action (2017)
* Divergence, Big Time which examines the growing economic disparities between countries over time.
* His academic publications have appeared in leading journals on economics and development studies.

## Engagement with global development

Pritchett is an active participant in global development discussions and has contributed to several international forums. He has delivered lectures at academic conferences, policy workshops, and public events, focusing on topics such as education reform, governance, and migration.

## Critiques and influence

Pritchett’s work has been influential in shaping policy debates on education, migration, and governance. However, some of his ideas, particularly on migration and institutional reform, have faced critique for their feasibility in politically constrained environments. Despite this, his contributions remain significant in framing development challenges and proposing evidence-based approaches to address them.

## Pritchett test

Pritchett recently proposed a four-part "smell test" for pro-development policies. The 'test' isn't a pure post-hoc impact assessment, but specifically addresses whether a pro-development policy should be implemented or changed at all. Notable growth economist Paul Romer summarizes the four criteria, using X as the variable targeted by policy:
* In a cross-sectional comparison of levels, do countries that are more developed have more X?
* In cross-sectional comparison of growth rates, do countries that have rapid growth in X also tend to experience a rapid increase in standards of living?
* When we look at the few countries for which we have long historical records, do the ones that become much more developed also acquire much more X?
* If we look for countries that switch from a regime of slow economic development to a regime of rapid development, do we see a parallel shift in the rate of growth of change in X?
Pritchett uses this four-part test to critique the relevance and usefulness of the current trend in development economics of using randomized controlled trials.