How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It

摘要

Empirical research in social sciences increasingly relies on official statistics disseminated by states and, more recently, on statistics produced by large non/inter-governmental organizations. Researchers tend not to subject their data sources to critical scrutiny as long as these are widely used in "literature." While disciplines like political science, sociology, and demography have paid critical attention to the generative contexts of statistics, a similar critical reflexivity is not found in economics - the discipline which is most intimately associated with statistics. In addition, this field of inquiry remains under-researched in the context of developing countries. Morten Jerven makes an attempt to fill this double vacuum by examining the national accounting statistics of African countries.