Panel Discussion

Julia Elyachar, Professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Amolo Ng'weno, Senior Program Officer, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Paul Thomas, Chief Economist, Intel

Experts from a range of disciplines will discuss ideas and questions arising from workshop presentations.

Links

• Paul Thomas: Why alternative monies? (slides)

Comments

[EDMBloggerCrystal]

Julia Elyachar reflected on her experience studying markets in Cairo through failed state sponsored development loans. She also reflected on the day's presentations and noted a couple of themes.
One theme in many of our discussions was that of trust--presumably people need it to adopt to new moneys. She raised an integral question for the sake of these inquiries: whose asset is it?
Another topic repeated was that of state role and regulation. In this particular historical moment, after having arrived this morning after NPR announcements about the Fed bailing out AIG among other financial mediation, we all realized this was a sobering and important discussion. It raised questions about what we can do when state capacity is low. She also questioned who is to regulate when debt is nationalized, especially in a moment like this, when it is still unclear about who is indebted and who is housed in this country.

Amolo Ng'weno explained that the Gates Foundation is interested in whether/if/what regulation is needed to help the lives of poor people living in developing countries. While adoption of debit card technology may be more incremental than in Europe and the US, she asked; could it potentially leapfrog centuries of old banking technology?
She also remarked on the question of client trust when transferring money to an agent. In her opinion, digital banking's ability to immediately know about the status of your monetary transactions. She alluded to the idea that immediacy in that way can create transparency as a proxy for trust.
In contrast to other opinions on usurious interest rates, she suggested we look to the French example to assess (in context, as always) if clients are better off with high interest banking or without being able to access the goods that banking permits.

Paul Thomas made the point that though some aspects of the real economy may be falling apart, that the rest may be in remarkably good shape. He asked why we are compelled to explore alternative moneys when preexisting currencies are already in use. He suggests that traditional liquidity may incur higher transaction costs than necessary. These occur because of inflation, depreciation against other currencies, costs to move currencies over long distances, and not least from desire to escape regulation and monitoring.
He cited Radford's Economic Organization of a POW Camp as an example of the way new currencies introduced into an economy (in that case, cigarettes) transform the value of the accounting.

One participant commented on the way African development aims to replicate projects in other places in the world rather than consumer needs. Because of this, regulatory opportunities arise for technology that wasn't existent when the initial intervention began. He replied by saying that regulation mustn't be uniform but depends on place. He and others recognized the need to be leery of 'regulatory capture' as discussed by Stigler. Indeed, others agreed that practitioners and policy-makers should not be too quick to unfairly or unwisely regulate.

Elyachar made a strong plea for quality extended ethnography to observe these phenomena on the ground, in light of how rapidly they change.

On another point about value-added to consumers, the question was raised about how one can convince a person who saves in livestock that it is better for them to save with a mobile device system? We must learn what good it actually does them and whether it actually protects them from shock.