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World Bank President Doubles as a Rapping Spaceman
Just in case you haven not seen this yet: H/T Erin. Filed under: africa Tagged: Barack Obama, barrack obama, dartmouth, development economics, epidemeology, Erin Pettigrew, hanover new hampshire, jim...
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On Industrial Policy (In which I concur with Blattman 1001%)
I have made the case before here, here and here. For more here’s Blattman, commenting on Industrial policy: “You can’t pick winners” is the knee-jerk retort to the mention of anything that even rhymes...
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On Rwanda’s brand of Developmental Authoritarianism
Many, including yours truly, have a love-hate relationship with Paul Kagame and his RPF regime in Rwanda. On the one hand, his adventures in eastern DRC; alleged involvements in the assassination of...
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On technology, governance and development
By now many of you have perhaps seen the takedowns of TED talks (see here, highly recommended), which some think have become rather pedestrian (I still find most TED talks insightful, just for the...
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Where do the poor live, and how do we make them become middle class?
The Economist reports: “WHERE do the world’s poor live? The obvious answer: in poor countries. But in a recent series of articles Andy Sumner of Britain’s Institute of Development Studies showed that...
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Persistence of Culture (and Institutions)
“How persistent are cultural traits? Using data on anti-Semitism in Germany, we find local continuity over 600 years. Jews were often blamed when the Black Death killed at least a third of Europe’s...
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Re-assessing Africa’s Resource Wealth
Over at African Arguments Bright Simons tries to debunk the accepted paradox of African poverty in the middle of a natural resource glut. The post is definitely worth reading, and raises some salient...
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Rational Impatience and marshmallows (and development)
Back in 1972 Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel conducted experiments in which he claimed to show a correlation between patience and later success in life – in the experiment kids who could wait for...
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Did European Colonialism Benefit Africans?
“We find it difficult to bring the available evidence together with plausible counter-factuals to argue that there is any country today in Sub-Saharan Africa which is more developed because it was...
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Nominate the best blogs of 2012
A View From the Cave blogger Tom Murphy is holding the annual Aid Best Blogger Awards (ABBA). I don’t consider my blog to be an “aid blog” per se but I think I fit into the general category that Tom...
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The decline of Economic History at MIT
What is the cost of not having economic history at MIT? It can be seen in Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail (2012). This is a deservedly successful popular book, making a simple and strong point...
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Pockets of California amid sub-Saharan Africa?
Rant and rave alert. As an undergrad at Yale I took several classes in which professors, TAs and fellow students would casually say things that insinuated that all of Africa (read sub-Saharan Africa)...
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More on direct cash transfers
As Chris Blattman put it, the Cashonistas are rejoicing. And with very good reason. There is mounting evidence that giving money directly to poor people does a much better job of improving their...
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Who is the African child on the cover of William Easterly’s new book?
They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but if it wasn’t for Bill Easterly’s reputation for sound thinking on matters to do with Development, I would not have pre-ordered his upcoming book The...
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A New TV Show About Aid and Development
Just saw this over at Africa is a Country: Finally, a new TV show exists to highlight some of the absurdities of the international aid sector. The slyly named The Samaritans is a comedy about the...
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Working With the Grain in Development
I finally got to reading Brian Levy’s Working With the Grain. It is easily the most underestimated development book of 2014, and should be read alongside William Easterly’s Tyranny of Experts (which it...
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The Long-Run Economic Impact of the Tse Tse Fly in Sub-Saharan Africa
The Tse Tse is estimated to have had substantial effects on precolonial Africa: a one standard deviation increase in the TSI [Tse Tse suitability index] is associated with a 23 percentage point...
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More on debt, macroeconomic stability, and natural resources in Africa...
See earlier posts on this subject here and here. Below is a quote from FP on Uganda’s growing petroleum sector (see also the Global Witness report on Uganda’s secret oil contracts here): Uganda’s...
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The Anatomy of Tax Evasion in Africa
Africa Confidential has a great piece analyzing leaked documents from PwC, the professional services firm, showing the various arrangements that enable multinational companies to evade taxes in Africa....
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On Contracts and Motorcycle Taxi Markets in Benin and Togo
In the motorcycle-taxi market in most Sub-Saharan African countries, the relation between vehicle owner and driver is characterised by a principal-agent problem with the following features: the owner...
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