The Invisible Hand(set) & Mackerel Economics
“Mobile Phones Promote Economic Growth” was the simple, technologically deterministic claim made by The Economist in 2007, citing as evidence Robert Jensen’s now famous study of mobile phone adoption in India. In the single most cited piece of research in the history of ICT4D, “The Digital Provide”, Jensen studied the price of landed fish in Kerala between 1996 and 2001 before and after fishermen first gained access to mobile phones…