Category Archives: development

The NYT on Saturday gave valuable op-ed space to hedge fund manager Justin Muzinich to roll out his big idea: cut direct US foreign aid, and use the money instead to give tax breaks to hedge funds and others who … Continue reading →

Martin Edlund is doing a great job live-blogging the Gates Foundation Malaria Forum in Seattle. It’s ambitious – everybody seems keen to talk about eradication – but it’s also realistic: the best hope right now would seem to be a … Continue reading →

From Vivian Hoffmann of Cornell University, via Tom Foster: This paper reports results from a field experiment in Uganda. Whether a mosquito net was purchased or received for free affected who within the household used the net. Free nets were … Continue reading →

The NYT covers the bed-net debate today, if debate it can reasonably be called. The article itself is good; the main problem is the headline, which says that "Distribution of Nets Splits Malaria Fighters". Er, no, it doesn’t. Once upon … Continue reading →

I went to a great talk by Paul Collier on Friday, at the Cooper Union. I blogged his new book, "The Bottom Billion," in June, and I was looking forward to hearing him in person: after all, he comes impressively … Continue reading →

A rock star receives the Liberty Medal yesterday in Philadelphia. With her is some Irish dude. (Via TED Blog. Photograph by Jim Young/Reuters/Landov.)

On Monday, I met Jim Whitton, a director of The Hunger Project, in a midtown cafe. The Hunger Project (THP) is a well-run non-profit which works efficiently and tirelessly towards sustainable poverty reduction in the developing world. With Whitton was … Continue reading →

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism submits: The BBC, reporting on a meeting at the Royal Geographical Society, says that 140 million people in developing countries are drinking water with such high concentrations of arsenic as to constitute poisoning. Experts estimate … Continue reading →

The new issue of Portfolio
is now online!
Continue reading →

Charles Kenny points me to a study
of the obstacles to trucking on West African roads, which includes this wonderful
chart.
Continue reading →

Are you a little bit bored of the "does aid work" debate? Well, so
is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and in a tour de force 20-minute talk
at the end of TEDGlobal, she asked us all to get "a bit more sophisticated"
in terms of how we approach such questions.
Continue reading →

Computers can do many things, but can they make poor countries richer? One
of the leading researchers when it comes to the impact of information and communication
technology (ICT) on development is the World Bank’s Charles Kenny
Continue reading →

Africa’s need for infrastructure is urgent, and any African government should jump at whatever the quickest, cheapest option is. Right now, that’s much more likely to mean looking east than looking west.
Continue reading →

Does anybody have a nice word to say about Bono?
Continue reading →

Niall Ferguson reviews
the new book by Paul Collier, The
Bottom Billion, in Sunday’s NYT Book Review, and I’m not sure what
to make of it.
Continue reading →

The social value of Windows is surely not proportional to Microsoft’s monopolistic profits.
Continue reading →

I’m beginning to think that Steve Jobs’s famous Reality
Distortion Field has a rival: that of Jeffrey Sachs.
Continue reading →

Easterly vs Sachs becomes Mwenda vs Bono.
Continue reading →

“Can scores of presidents, prime ministers, monarchs be wrong? Yes. Can the Nobel committee be wrong? Yes. Can celebrities and the media be wrong? Yes!!!”
Continue reading →