Population: why it’s a dangerous distraction on climate change (and makes us feel uncomfortable)

Trust the military to give it to me straight. Population comes up at virtually every talk I give – on climate change, development or just about anything else. But usually my questioners are a bit more circumspect than the man from the armed forces who recently asked what could be done about ‘women popping them out’ in poor countries.

People cause climate change, therefore cut the number of people. Right? Not really. A closer look shows that the conventional view is wrong, or at least a gross over-simplification.

Malthus goes to the beach

First, the numbers. The global population is about 6.8 billion and rising, but the rate of growth is slowing and the world population is expected to peak at about 9 billion in 2050. The growth rate is slowing fast, verging on collapse in some countries (South Korea is in a national panic about falling fertility rates and shrinking populations and is likely to look to immigration to fill the gap). The drivers for a far faster demographic transition than that seen in previous centuries in Europe or America are a combination of urbanization, women’s education, access to contraception and (one hopes) the spread of notion’s of women’s rights and control over their own fertility.

So one response is that the ‘problem’ is self-correcting, and indeed, if the transition gets any faster, the world could be faced by a serious shortage of working age people to look after the rising numbers of elderly. If their arguments were based on logic alone, the population control lobby would probably be advocating compulsory euthanasia rather than birth control, but its preponderance of elderly white male members makes that pretty unlikely.

In what sense is population growth a ‘problem’ (or ‘challenge’, as the management-speak people like to say….)?  Certainly not on climate change mitigation – as The Guardian’s George Monbiot argued in a great recent polemic, over the last 30 years, the countries with fastest population growth rates have the slowest emissions growth rate, and vice versa. But that hasn’t stopped a bit of blatant opportunism by the Optimum Population Trust, launching an offset scheme where you can offset your carbon emissions by funding birth control programmes in developing countries. Guys, the problem is consumption, not population. A cull of rich Americans or Australians might have an impact; population growth in Africa is largely irrelevant.

Adapting to climate change is more of an issue. In dozens of developing countries, Oxfam has witnessed the hammering that poor communities are already taking from climate change. Overcrowding in rural areas can increase their vulnerability. But the OPT doesn’t seem too bothered about that (wonder why?). Population is undoubtedly one among many contributory factors t0 hunger and local environmental degradation, although often there is enough food, it’s the distribution that goes wrong.

So if population growth is (sometimes) important, what is to be done? Listen to women, stupid.

the best contraceptive

No coercion is required, just access to education and family planning services (not just contraception, but also proper abortion facilities to reduce the horrendous death toll from backstreet butchers). (And to be fair, the OPT would agree with this). Amartya Sen famously showed that a combination of girl’s education and access to contraception prompted a demographic transition in Kerala every bit as fast as China’s coerceive one child policy.

I’m talking evidence and arguments thus far, but the choice of language also matters. As soon as the issue is framed as ‘population control’, the problem becomes ‘them’ – those women ‘popping them out’. That, along with population control programmes’ chequered history of coercing and tricking people into being sterilized in several notorious cases, is why many people in developing countries find the term so offensive.  Start with ‘women’s rights’ and the discussion becomes about ‘us’, our shared rights and the solidarity to achieve them. Talk about the problem of over-consumption, and the debate revolves around equity, redistribution and low carbon development, not fewer babies.

That discomfort on language is, I think, why so many NGOs tend to avoid the subject altogether. But in doing so, we unwittingly abdicate the ground to the bad guys. Time to go on the offensive?

The population debate matters, especially in these Copenhagen weeks, because it risks becoming a massive distraction. We need to focus on curbing consumption and emissions, not babies and women’s rights. Otherwise we risk blaming the victims and letting the climate villains off the hook.

Want some more ammunition? Enjoy these spectacularly wrong assertions from Paul Ehrlich’s bestseller ‘The Population Bomb’, published in 1968 and I would guess a major, if subliminal, influence on the current crop of population controllers:

‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

‘”India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980,”

‘”One general prediction can be made with confidence: the cost of feeding yourself and your family will continue to increase. There may be minor fluctuations in food prices, but the overall trend will be up”.

‘The United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1980 because of pesticide usage, and the nation’s population would drop to 22.6 million by 1999′

Oh, and here’s a video of me giving a grumpy interview on the Optimum Population Trust nonsense – it was late and I wanted my dinner…..

A condensed version of this blog was published yesterday by the New Statesman

What to Read on Copenhagen

OK, the Copenhagen climate summit is warming up nicely (even faster than the rest of the world), and I am trying to sift through the information overload. What on earth to read for those of us with limited time and not at the summit? I’ve been asking a few climate change guru chums and here’s a selection.

Overviews

The official COP 15 news page gives you the (conference of the) party line

Columbia Journalism Review summarizes the media coverage

Mainstream Journalism

Richard Black at the BBC is excellent, knowledgeable and prolific

John Vidal at the Guardian got the media coverage going yesterday with a scoop on the so-called ‘Danish Text’ (no blog, but all the Guardian’s Copenhagen coverage is here)

The Financial Times energysource blog is comprehensive and signposts other media coverage

Independent blogs

Grist, a Seattle-based US environment blog

Mother Jones, for some venerable leftie US journalism

Alex Evans over at Global Dashboard, seems to think that everyone is wrong (except him, that is) – but he’s quite persuasive about it…. See for example his critique of John Vidal’s ‘overselling’ of the leaked Danish text

Environment and Development NGOs

ECO, a daily newsletter written by Climate Action Network.

ENB, a daily report of the proceedings prepared by the International Institute for
Sustainable Development

Oxfam’s climate change blog

And finally some light relief

The “Fossil of the Day Award” rewards governments or observers who performed
“best” at blocking progress at the climate negotiations (Canada, Croatia, Ukraine and Russia are the early winners – what is it about those pesky East Europeans?)

and a handy running total of what the current offers will do to global temperature rises, using the standard climate change models

Any other candidates?

Bad aid to agriculture: lessons from West Africa

After decades of decline, aid to agriculture has started to rise in the last few years in response to a renewed understanding of the role of agriculture in triggering growth and reducing poverty (see previous blog). But some recent research from 3 countries in West Africa (Niger, Burkina Faso and Ghana) suggests that quality is as much of an issue as quantity – aid to agriculture epitomises the problems that have long beset aid, and seems to be lagging behind the efforts to improve aid in other spheres (essential services, direct aid to governments etc). Here are the headlines from a new Oxfam research report:

In West Africa, the last 25 years have been marked by a twofold disinvestment in the agriculture and food sector: disinvestment by the international community, whose aid to agriculture has dropped to dangerous levels, and disinvestment by States, who have reduced the priority of agriculture in national policies. Despite the decline in aid volumes, it still provides the vast majority of funding for agriculture.

Most aid comes through innumerable projects, which are not aligned with national priorities and are poorly coordinated. Instead of building up government capacities, this multitude of projects has weakened local resources. The creation of parallel management entities competes with the State’s technical departments. Government human resources are monopolised by the short term management of the projects, monitoring procedures and evaluation missions that are specific to each donor. In 2007, projects in Niger had a total budget for running costs that was double that of the civil service agriculture department. The differences in salaries, equipment and working conditions often proves irresistible for state personnel, who jump from one project to the next or are simply take better paid jobs with donors and projects.

Those civil servants that remain spend much of their time monitoring and reporting to donors, rather than running their departments. Burkina Faso, for example, received almost 330 missions from donors in 2007. In Ghana, these missions are so numerous that the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP) has had to develop a code of conduct on the issue, and now imposes a two month ‘mission-free period’ while the annual budget is being drafted (see table for the 16 different departments in MoFEP given over to managing donors).

In Burkina Faso, some industries receive support from several donors (e.g., sesame, soya, onion, shea, livestock/meat, poultry farming, milk) while other industries such as maize and rice are starved of support, despite the fact that they are priority areas for the government and important for food security.

So what’s the good news? Donors have committed to increasing the volume of aid, especially for emergency aid to combat the impact of high food prices. What now needs to happen is for agricultural aid to catch up with other sectors in implementing the ideas contained in the Paris and Accra declarations. This should include:

Shifting from multiple projects to funding a single national agriculture strategy, managed by the government.

Allowing for far greater flexibility in using donor money to respond to changing circumstances rather than living (or dying) by the logframe

Coordinate between donors to reduce the administrative burden and free up time for civil servants to do what they are supposed to be doing

Support effective participation by civil society, especially farmers’ organizations, so that agricultural policies actually fit the needs of the people they are supposed to help.

Hell is Good for Growth (or maybe vice versa)

The Protestant Work Ethic is back, this time supported by econometrics….. A recent article in the Boston Globe summed up research showing that a belief in hell is good for growth, and other linkages between religion and development. Highlights:

‘A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.

That hell could matter to economic growth might seem surprising, since you can’t prove it exists, let alone quantify it. It stands as one of the more intriguing findings in a growing body of recent research exploring how religion might influence the wealth and prosperity of societies. In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability.

In a sense, religion and economics have long been intertwined. There are more verses on money and finance in the Bible than there are verses on prayer. Religious denominations affect economics by creating bonds of trust and shared commitment among small groups, both necessary qualities for lending and trade. In the Middle Ages, studies show, monk-run estates outperformed those that used serfs, thanks to religiously inspired cooperation and frugality. The Quakers of 18th-century Britain, renowned for their scrupulous honesty, came to dominate British finance. Ultra-orthodox Jews similarly dominate New York’s diamond trade because of levels of trust based on religion. Modern religious kibbutzim on average outperform their secular rivals, in part because of trust built through engaging in communal religious rituals.

In 1905, Max Weber, a German sociologist who studied religions, identified

Engines of Growth?

what he called “the Protestant work ethic” as the driving force behind modern capitalism in the West. But by the middle of the 20th century, most sociologists had dismissed Weber’s thesis as based on bad theology and bad statistics.

But over the last several decades, better sets of statistics on religion have become available, and improvements in computing power and mathematical techniques have made it easier for economists to run very large statistical analyses, with hundreds of variables.

Robert Barro, a renowned economist at Harvard, and his wife, Rachel McCleary, a researcher at Harvard’s Taubman Center, collected data from 59 countries where a majority of the population followed one of the four major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. They ran this data – which covered slices of years from 1981 to 2000, measuring things like levels of belief in God, afterlife beliefs, and worship attendance – through statistical models. Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.’

Why? Possible answers include:
- all major religions extol sacrifice, hard work and thrift
- ‘Those who believed in a punishing God cheat less’, according to behavioural experiments
- ‘private property protections developed by the Church to guard against grasping secular rulers gave Catholic – and eventually Protestant – nations stronger protections for individual rights than other nations, creating incentive for individual success.’
- Some religions spark growth by promoting literacy to read holy books

(Or maybe they’ve got the arrow of causality the wrong way round and high speed growth makes you believe in hell…….)

Anyway, Weber may be rehabilitated, but no-one is suggesting (yet) that the IMF should start insisting on belief in eternal damnation as one of its standard loan conditions…… [h/t Nicholas Colloff]

Monsanto; top wonks; winning African journalism; Copenhagen polemics and dancing pink gloves: Links I liked

Monsanto – sinner or saint?

It may be random and right-wing, but Foreign Policy’s list of the top 100 Global Thinkers is still fun (I particularly enjoyed how they made Bill Easterly and Jeff Sachs share 39th place – how they must hate that…)

The Guardian has announced the winners of its international development journalism award. Check out the professional winners here and amateur category here. Winners in both categories are from East Africa and wrote about climate change – one on drought, one on conflict

‘The time for decision has come. Either we act soon – or we finally discover whether the sceptics are right.’ Martin Wolf gets passionate over climate change and sets out the numbers ahead of Copenhagen

‘Canada’s image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling’, George Monbiot takes aim at an unlikely climate bad guy and then gets stuck in to the population control fixates. ‘It’s no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men: it’s about the only environmental issue for which they can’t be blamed.’

And finally, want to see a whole hospital full of normal people dance? In pink gloves? For a good cause (breast cancer awareness)? Look no further. [h/t John Magrath]

(lots of ) Other worlds are possible

‘We are confronted with two alternatives: to be a demagogue or to be a realist. If, based on the law of supply and demand, I say that there is a greater demand in the world for bread than for plastic surgery; and much more for the treatment of malaria than for apparel of haute couture; or if I propose a referendum asking the citizens if they prefer to use their monetary reserves to save lives or to save banks; I will be accused of being a demagogue. If, on the contrary, I accept that it is more urgent, more necessary and more convenient and profitable to all, to avoid an insurance company or a bank going bankrupt, instead of feeding millions of children, or giving aid to victims of a hurricane, or curing the dengue, it will be said that I am a realist.’

Manfred Max-Neef, a Chilean economist waxes demagogic in the final volume of the ‘Up in Smoke’ series, co-authored by the UK’s Working Group on Climate Change and Development (including Oxfam). Starting in 2004, the first five Up in Smoke reports highlighted the impact of climate change on different regions of the developing world. Together, they highlighted the urgent need for new development models. This latest report, ‘Other worlds are possible’, explores what those new models might look like. Vision pieces from developing country gurus like Max-Neef, Wangari Maathai and Jayati Ghosh are followed by a plethora of on the ground examples of putting alternative visions into practice (from Peru’s Happy Earthworm Ecological Center to community action to cope with drought and flood in Nepal). There’s also a good smattering of killer facts (see box).

Some will see the report as more of a dog’s dinner than soul food – a scattered collection of inspiring projects and clever ideas, rather than a clear overarching thesis on where we need to go. Indeed the report questions the wisdom of seeking such single paths. But emphasizing diversity, pluralism and ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ has a cost – the lack of a clear narrative or ‘vision thing’ (as George Bush senior once called it), which can inspire and motivate (think Keynes, Marx or Friedman). But while we wait for a new grand narrative to come along, there are good ideas in here, and it’s worth a trawl.

Seattle + 10 = Copenhagen?

I went out for a celebratory (if that’s the word) drink this week with a heroic band of Seattle Survivors. Ten years ago we were besuited NGO delegates at the notorious WTO ministerial, which collapsed in a welter of tear gas and turtles (or at least people dressed in turtle suits protesting at WTO rulings on the environment). It’s been fascinating watching the ‘battle in Seattle’ become mythologised as some kind of mass uprising against globalization – at the height of the chaos, I did a rough count of the number of activists blocking off access to the conference centre and it came to a couple of thousand at most, and the violence involved no more than a few dozen black-clad, but journo-photogenic anarchists. In the end, the ministerial

police using pepper spray against protestors

collapsed because the Seattle police in their Robocop outfits over-reacted to a ridiculous extent, making up for their lack of plans or equipment for crowd control (they had no crash barriers) by lobbing random volleys of teargas and pepper spray at non-violent protestors (and the odd government minister). Bill Clinton didn’t help when he alienated the developing countries by arguing for a labour clause on the eve of the conference.

It’s hard to imagine anything similar happening in Copenhagen next week, but it is worth comparing the current climate talks with the travails of the Doha round of trade talks that began at the next WTO meeting after Seattle (and staggered on in Geneva this week at yet another ministerial, largely ignored by the press). Like trade talks, climate negotiations have huge implications for domestic lobbies such as industry and finance, so will be much more heavily fought over than agreements on aid or debt that don’t have the same immediate impact. Like trade, the climate change talks involve shifting constellations of developing countries, trying to reconcile the need for unity with the huge objective differences (in terms of emissions and immediate vulnerability) between countries such as China and Bangladesh. Their opponents will try and exploit these differences, playing divide and rule to weaken any agreement.

But there are two big, and scary, differences. In the WTO, blocking bad agreements is not too bad a result – stopping unnecessarily expensive burdens being placed on poor countries, or forced liberalization or encroachment on their ‘policy space’. And for weaker players, it is often easier to stop bad things happening than to get agreement on good things. In the climate talks, only winning a good agreement will be enough – a far harder challenge. And while delay in trade talks is not too much of a problem, in climate change, delay is expensive, if not catastrophic. The IEA argues that every year of delay in moving towards the required trajectory of emission reductions adds an extra $500bn of costs.

A Kal cartoon in the Economist summarizes what happens if Copenhagen goes the way of Doha – if someone’s going to make a ‘Battle in Seattle’ style film, can they call it ‘Doha’d with a vengeance’, with Bruce Willis as Yvo de Boer?

Should aid support patronage politics?

In this month’s Prospect, Alex de Waal wrestles with the problems posed by state-building in countries where patronage trumps politics. This kind of ‘what do we do about fragile states’ discussion is one of the most intractable issues in development, so don’t expect simple solutions, but Alex (who is one of the most original thinkers on this kind of thing) seems to be arguing for an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, fund ’em’ strategy of supporting patronage politicians with the rather ill-defined aim of eventually turning them into the kernel of an effective state (pro-poor patronage?).

‘When Nato concedes a draw in Afghanistan, it will be because of its failure to understand the country’s politics. But a deeper failure will lurk in the background. In the past decade the west has launched a huge experiment to build capable states in the world’s most difficult countries. Troops, technical advisers and aid budgets are the tools of choice. The experiment is said to have worked in East Timor, Kosovo and Sierra Leone; now Afghanistan, Congo and Sudan are top of the target list. All are failed or fragile states where patronage is paramount and where the political arena is a marketplace, not a debating chamber.

How did we get here? According to the conventional story, countries like Afghanistan are in trouble because they can’t sustain order, manage a budget, or deliver services. So we provide funds to kick-start development, charities to provide services, experts to run departments, and troops to enforce the law. A helpful cocoon emerges in which the state grows stronger. And when this state looks enough like the Czech Republic, we hand over the keys.’

But Alex is sceptical about the whole project:

‘Even in tiny countries such hopes are fatally optimistic. Take East Timor, heralded as one of the UN’s successes. Its 1m people received $565m in support from 2002-05, backed up by Australian troops. But the country was soon back in crisis; in 2008 there was a coup attempt. The model is more unsustainable for larger countries: it would take tens of billions of dollars to similarly support Congo’s 66m people.

Look at statebuilding from another point of view: that of an embattled ruler. To him, all those dollars and foreign troops are a huge boon. The money can buy off some opponents, while foreign soldiers fight the rest. Strong, autonomous government departments, however, are a genuine threat. A chief of staff might launch a sudden coup, or a finance minister may put rival warlords on his payroll. Secret ballots are a problem too: it’s hard to pay off local powerbrokers under the eyes of election monitors. The ruler might speak the language of the rule of law. But the real game is buying loyalty. A well-managed, inclusive patronage system is often the only way of running such countries.’

His conclusion?

‘Today, it would be more cost-effective to ditch the extra troops and revert to funding patronage. This would mean different priorities, like taking control of the drugs market to deny the Taliban its best source of funds. A new patronage system could eventually be made fairer and more inclusive, perhaps allowing institutions to grow around it slowly. But this means thinking like an Afghan politician, not an international peacebuilder. If the west cannot follow this path, it will join the other superpowers humbled in the Hindu Kush. The war in Afghanistan will become more about salvaging Nato than about building a central Asian Denmark. And should Nato withdraw, others—perhaps China—will set the more modest goal of political stability, and pay hard cash to get it.’

What I like about this is Alex’s insistence on looking at politics as it really is, and on understanding the incentive systems and motivations that guide real-life politicians in fragile states (reminiscent of my friend Matthew Lockwood’s great book, ‘The State They’re In’). But his solution rather sticks in the throat.

Firstly, there’s every likelihood that this kind of ‘trickle down politics’ will never become much ‘fairer and more inclusive’. Why should it? Political stability will be bought by sacrificing political and social progress and ordinary people in Afghanistan, DRC or wherever will be left waiting indefinitely for jobs and services (see Oxfam’s recent survey of what 700 ordinary Afghans think are the real causes of their country’s malaise).

Moreover, I fear there has in practice been a lot more buying off of leaders by donors than Alex allows for, partly by turning a blind eye to graft, and willingness to let patronage-style politicians play significant roles. If true, he can’t say that his strategy has not been tried (and found wanting).

What other ideas might help? One might be to focus more on the local state, either at municipal or provincial level. That might mean accepting some patronage politics, but it might also increase the chances of delivering real benefits to local people in terms of services and accountability. Another would be to invest much more in civil society strengthening, rather than just state building, enabling local organizations – social movements, NGO watchdogs, faith groups etc – better to hold the state to account. Any other bright ideas?

If fragile states are your bag, have a look at the inaugural European Report on Development, entitled ‘Overcoming Fragility in Africa’ . The ERD is a long overdue attempt to provide a European counterweight to the avalanche of Washington-based analysis, opinion and proposition, and will be an annual.

Is Growth with Equity getting old?

Growth with Equity has been one of the development industry’s overarching economic narratives for over a decade (Oxfam published ‘Economic Growth with Equity: Lessons from East Asia’ in 1998). OK, it’s better than just ‘Growth’, and where it’s been achieved, it has an unrivalled impact on poverty, but thinking has moved on in a number of areas, and G+E is starting to look distinctly threadbare. I’ve been putting up posts on this blog on different aspects of this, but here’s a synthesis, and some links to relevant posts:

1. How much Growth?: Climate Change and other environmental challenges mean that the boundary conditions on economic activity are becoming much more salient.

• Barring a miraculous new technology, it is far from certain that the carbon intensity of growth can be reduced to stay inside a safe emissions pathway at current growth rates. If that is true, then there are only two options: less global growth or more climate change. If the choice is the former, then who grows and who does not (growth rationing) becomes a crucial issue of economic justice. Growth may be just too scarce and precious to waste on the rich countries (where it doesn’t make people any happier).

Further Reading:

• Do we need to ration growth?
• Prosperity without Growth? Report of the UK Sustainable Development Commission

2. Are we measuring the right thing?: The recent report of the Stiglitz Commission to President Sarkozy highlights just how mainstream concerns over measurement have become. Stiglitz argued that the way we measure economic activity has to be reformed on 3 fronts:

Reform GDP to respond to the evolution of the economy – from quantity to quality, from goods to services, the importance of the caring economy etc. (But I’m not sure South Africa is on the right course in expanding GDP to include criminal activity (see article here))

Shift from measuring economic output as the primary indicator of policy success to measuring the impact on human well-being, including the caring economy

Pay much more attention to long term economic, social and environmental sustainability (stocks, rather than flows)

Changing what we measure (and therefore value) might also provide a more imaginative political escape route from the entrenched pro v anti growth debate.

Further reading:

• Stiglitz Commission
• Stiglitz at the OECD well-being conference 
• Stiglitz v Layard

3. The importance of volatility and unpredictability: economic issues are usually discussed in terms of stocks (eg of assets) and flows (e.g. average incomes). However, virtually all serious studies of poor people’s lives show that it is uncertainty and unpredictability that is often the defining, and most dreaded, feature of  ‘ill-being’. This has led to increased interest in a range of mechanisms to reduce vulnerability to such sudden shifts, including social protection, enhanced social capital, disaster risk reduction, keeping health and education free at the point of use etc.

Further Reading:

• Cash transfers and inequality
• Chronic Poverty Report

4. What do we do about Financialisation?: The eclipse of anglo-saxon capitalism, the critique of structural adjustment, and the damage wrought by financial crises in Asia and Latin America, and most recently, the global economic crisis, have led to a profound questioning of the ‘wisdom of markets’. At the same time, the extraordinary size and power of the financial sector, even when reasonably well regulated, poses serious threats to the real economy in which most poor people live. How strong is the case for capping and reducing the overall weight of the financial sector? See interesting piece on shrinking the banks in the most recent issue of Prospect.

And that’s just within the economic arena. There’s plenty more to say on politics and culture (state building, rights, the centrality of faith in the lives of the poor etc etc), but that’s far too much for one blogpost.

Any other candidates on economic issues?