The aid debate continues

• Sachs and Easterly continue their debate
• Mo Ibrahim enters the discussion
• A recent editorial from the FT.
• ...and an update here.
  

Intergenerational transmission of segregation?

The NYT Magazine ran an article yesterday about the segregated high school prom in south-central Georgia’s Montgomery County. While all students are invited to the black prom, the white prom is just for whites. The article suggests that the segregation is driven by white parents. But as one black student said it: "Half of those girls [attending the white prom], when they get home, they’re gonna text a black boy".

Don't take the marshmallow!

...and you will have a better live. A recent article in the New Yorker reviews the work of Columbia's psychology Professor Walter Mischel, where he finds that delaying gratification when young (giving up a marshmallow now for two later) predicts "success" later in life. Here is the full article.

Aid is baaack!

Thanks to Dambisa Moyo book and the recent Op-Ed of Rwanda's President the debate about the role of the impact of foreign aid is now back at the headlines!....and right on time since I am covering this issue in my class about Africa. Here are some links

• FT front page headline about Dambisa Moyo.
• Is aid working? Also from the FT.
  
• and today Easterly complains about a personal attack from Jeffrey Sachs.
  

Top 10 Books of 2008

...the South African edition (from The Sunday Times). The list includes

Playing the Enemy by John Carlin, Atlantic.

If your idea of a sports book is the autobiography of Lewis Hamilton or a pic-heavy compilation of the sayings of Christian Ronaldo then you can skip Carlin’s intelligent and insightful analysis of the behind the scenes events leading up to the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. A little too enveloped in the glow of Madiba magic at times, Playing the Enemy is nonetheless the kind of sports book that anyone interested in politics, history and other non-playing field related topics can appreciate and it’s well written too.

and

The Mandela Files by Zapiro, Double Storey

He publishes an annual every year and there’s always a controversial cartoon or two included but in a year when Jonathan Shapiro caused more of a hullabaloo than usual, this belated birthday tribute to Mandela provides a fascinating look into the cartoonist’s personal history and workings. With all-new colour versions of some of his best work and detailed accounts of his working process, The Mandela Files provides not only laughs but also a thoughtful meditation by South Africa’s favourite satirist on one of his personal heroes.

Here is the full list.

Love in the time of cholera: Zim edition

Poet Chief K Masimba Biriwasha writes:

Tap water in Harare started to produce black, flaky substances and foamed when brought to boil, increasing our fears of the killer pathogen.

More here.

Zim Bank notes

The gallery.

Is Mugabe the Zimbawean version of Idi Amin?

Ugandan Professor at Columbia University, Mahmood Mamdani, explains.

HT: Emeka Okafor.

Year in photos

Year in Photographs 1 of 3. Here is one of my favorites

Fishermen try to catch fish during the Argungu fishing festival in Nigeria on March 15, 2008. Over 30,000 fishermen from different parts of Nigeria and neighbouring West Africa took part in the final of the yearly Argungu fishing festival in Kebbi, northwestern Nigeria. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)

HT: J

Education in the developing world

UNESCO recently released a new report on education in developing countries title EFA - Global Monitoring Report 2009. Duncan Green summarizes it in his blog and calls it a "fantastic overview of the state of education provision in the developing world. " Worth exploring.

Signs of Deflation

My colleague Todd Sorensen send me this photo from a nearby Sushi restaurant


(click on the picture to enlarge)

Getting ready for the spring

The fall quarter is (almost) over and I need to start thinking about my Economic Development in Africa class next spring. Here are some links

• New syllabus by Chris Blattman.
• New book about the conflict in Congo and Rwanda (reviewed by the FT) .
• A concise analysis of the problem (Op-ed by Herman Cohen in the NYT)
• BBC World Service podcast about Africa: you can subscribe using iTunes or your Google Reader.
• Impact of the financial crisis in African countries, a series by Africa Can...End Poverty: Malawi, Madagascar, Uganda, Angola and South Africa.
  

Alpha and Beto

Those are the names of Luis Soriano's donkeys. He uses them to carry book around rural areas in Colombia as a sort of mobile library, or as he call it, Burrolibro.

HT: New York Times

When is growth good for poverty?

From J. Donaldson in the last World Development (gated):

Economic growth and liberal economic policies often help the poor, but what about the numerous cases in which they do not? This article analyzes two types of cases: those in which income growth of the poor was significantly lower than expectations (“negative exceptions”) and those in which income growth of the poor significantly exceeded expectations (“positive exceptions”). Insights from these cases inform our theoretical understanding of poverty reduction. In addition, this article contributes a typology of strategies used in these cases, including alternative pathways to economic growth and neoliberal prescriptions for poverty reduction.

Search like it is 2001

Chris Blattman pointed us to Google's index from 2001 (they are celebrating their 10th anniversary.) I ran some queries and here is what I found

• Randomization: search for "economics and randomization" in 2001 and the first link is for papers from Simon Fraser University Economics department. Today, it takes you to the Poverty Action Lab at MIT.
• Searching for "regression discontinuity" in 2001 takes you to a site from Cornell U. that starts with: "The regression-discontinuity design. What a terrible name! In everyday language both parts of the term have connotations that are primarily negative." (but so today!)
• Difference in difference: a link to web vs. gui design and nothing about economics in the first 10 links.
  
• Freakonomics: no results.
• Robert Mugabe: this article from the Daily Mail and Guardian on his peasant-to-president transformation.
• iPod: back in the day that meant "Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System."
• Housing bubble: What housing bubble? The report ends with this sentence:
  

  In the end, builders envision no dramatic changes in this housing market. "I don't see any big bumps in the road," concluded David Laffoon. "The housing market won't fall off a cliff."

  
  

Keep your priorities straight

From the Washington Post

On his first day in office, according to a statement, [South Africa's new President Kgalema] Motlanthe called FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter to assure him that deadlines would be met and that "South Africa's hosting of the World Cup is testimony to the achievements of our democracy."

Links of the week

• What can US$700b can do in the development world? (via Chris Blattman)
  
• Easterly on the lessons from the bailout (from Wall Street Journal).
• HIV is older than expected (from NPR).
• World Bank's new Human Opportunity Index (full report and website)

Needed: More Princes

Rafeh Malik, prince of a Pakistani village, is trying to achieve the MDG in his own village. Here is the BBC report. HT: Dani Rodrik

Can the west save Africa?

Here is an answer from Bill Easterly

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort towards Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts the predominant "transformational" approach (West saves Africa) to occasional swings to a "marginal" approach (West takes one small step at a time to help individual Africans). Evaluation of "one step at a time" initiatives is generally easier than that of transformational ones either through controlled experiments (although these have been much oversold) or simple case studies where it is easier to attribute outcomes to actions. We see two themes emerge from the literature survey: (1) escalation. As each successive Western transformational effort has yielded disappointing results, the response has been to try an even more ambitious effort. (2) the cycle of ideas. Rather than a progressive testing and discarding of failed ideas, we see a cycle in aid ideas in many areas in Africa, with ideas going out of fashion only to come back again later after some lapse long enough to forget the previous disappointing experience. Both escalation and cyclicality of ideas are symptomatic of the lack of learning that seems to be characteristic of the "transformational" approach. In contrast, the "marginal" approach has had some successes in improving the well-being of individual Africans, such as the dramatic fall in mortality.

You can read the paper here.

Problems with MDG (education)

Via Chris Blattman:

It took a century in the US to go from getting 30-40 per cent of children in primary education to 100 per cent, and yet we are expecting the likes of Burkina Faso, which has increased enrolment rapidly, to do it in seven," he says. "Kids get put in school when their parents become richer and better-educated, not when bureaucrats in the ministry of education are publicly shamed by international targets.

The comments come from Michael Clemens. Here is the full FT article and you can read his paper here.