David Albouy @albouy is entirely justified in being aggrieved. It was completely inappropriate for @TheEconomist to publish a response to their (ridiculous) article on Daron Acemoglu that contained a misstatement of the Albouy criticisms, just at it was inappropriate that the article's author did not contact David to describe the nature and import of his criticisms for the *ideas* that AJR have developed, as opposed to the merits of a particular set of statistical exercises. There are huge questions surrounding the ways that credible empirical claims can be made about questions of the type AJR address. Cross-country regressions have proven to a very fragile source of information on the mechanisms underlying growth and development. My view of the AJR research program is that the empirical dimension should be understood from the vantage point of inference to the best explanation, aka abduction, as a way to understand their research strategy, which implies historical/qualitative evidence is central. For details, see my paper "Institutions, Development, and Growth: Where Does Evidence Stand?" Handbook of Economic Development and Institutions, Jean-Marie Baland, François Bourguignon, Jean-Philippe Platteau, and Thierry Verdier, eds., Princeton University Press, 2020.