About Aid Watch
The Aid Watch blog is a project of New York University's Development Research Institute (DRI). This blog is principally written by William Easterly, author of "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" and "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," and Professor of Economics at NYU. It is co-written by Laura Freschi and by occasional guest bloggers. Our work is based on the idea that more aid will reach the poor the more people are watching aid.
“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.” - H.L. Mencken
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Recent Posts
- Rodrik, Defining Libertarians, Afghan Tribes, Finding Coffee in New York
- The tragic disappearing of humanitarian neutrality
- New UN report says Somali food aid failing to reach the poor (NYT)
- Readers’ Submissions: Honorable Mentions in Best and Worst of Aid
- Am I useless? A critic needs to listen to critics
- New York Times on Millennium Villages
Recent Comments
- jmdesp on In defense of being mean-spirited: response to a critic: « During the war, deliveries of food to the camps by the World Food...
- WP on The tragic disappearing of humanitarian neutrality: Perceptions are certainly important here. Some of the writers here conflate...
- Belay on New UN report says Somali food aid failing to reach the poor (NYT): This is sad. But equally sad is the fact that this blog...
- Agnostic on The tragic disappearing of humanitarian neutrality: The attack was a criminal, horrible, despicable act of violence for which...
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- 100% African leaders advise Bono on reform of U2
- 83% Nobody wants your old shoes: How not to help in Haiti
- 34% Haiti earthquake: Help navigating complex terrain of disaster relief
- 18% The Civil War in Development Economics
- 16% How to write about poor people
- 15% If Martin Luther King had been an aid official -- the Powerpoint version of I Have a Dream
Bill Easterly Tweets
- @CoffeeGourmet have you ever tried the fabulous Tomoca coffee from Ethiopia? about 1 hour ago from webin reply to CoffeeGourmet
- Links: Rodrik over-excited on capital controls, defining libertarians, NYT Afghan tribal analysis, & bonus NYC coffee http://bit.ly/9sOx1A about 3 hours ago from bit.ly
- Update: Evangelical blogs on the aid worker killings in Pakistan http://bit.ly/alyL9i about 21 hours ago from bit.ly
- Free Press => a bit of aid accountability: WFP cuts off Somali bad guys after NYT food aid diversion story http://bit.ly/csTPPG about 21 hours ago from bit.ly
Aid Watch tweets
- RT @USAID_News #Shah's testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Ops http://bit.ly/90XNdt 11:53:17 AM March 04, 2010 from web
- A great, thoughtful post from @patrickmeier: Haiti and the Tyranny of Technology (via @alanna_shaikh, again) http://bit.ly/aV0oYb 12:56:02 PM March 03, 2010 from web
- FP: Refugees International issues striking indictment of UN efforts in Haiti so far http://bit.ly/bPner8 via @cblatts 12:07:02 PM March 03, 2010 from web
- BBC investigation: 1984 Ethiopia famine aid spent on weapons as rebels posed as grain merchants http://bit.ly/aq53Rb 10:59:29 AM March 03, 2010 from web
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Asian Success Mythology
The blog yesterday provoked a lot of healthy debate about my claim that industrialization is mainly market-driven rather than state-driven, using Korea, China, and India as examples of industrialization out of poverty. I know I am going against the conventional wisdom of the great Asian “developmental state,” authoritarian and heavily involved in planning industrialization. So let me explain why.
When I said we can only test what works on average, I am talking about what…
The UN’s 66-Year-Old Virgin
The UN has just announced a big new idea in the war on global poverty, in its just-released Industrial Development Report 2009. In the words of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Director General, Dr Kandeh Yumkella, “Our Report represents a major conceptual breakthrough on how to tackle global poverty through sustainable industrial development.”
What was the breakthrough idea? Take government action to reap increasing returns to scale to industrial production, to get out…
Unsung Hero Resurrects US Tied Aid Reporting
Official US aid policy is to slow down emergency aid as much as possible when people are dying.
Well, they probably wouldn’t put it like that, but that is the consequence of a practice known as aid tying, whereby US aid must be spent on products from US companies. For emergency food aid, this causes huge delays in food shipments as the food has to come from the American Midwest rather than from easily available…
A Tale of Two Refrigerators
In 2001 in southern Sudan, it was a time of peace between wars. It was a time ripe for treating diseases that kill thousands of children every year. It was an opportune time for measles vaccination to halt outbreaks of one of the world’s most preventable diseases. The Measles Initiative, founded by the WHO, UNICEF, the CDC and the American Red Cross, was created to address this significant challenge.
In the rural county where I…
Posted in Notes from the Field
9 Comments
MADE-UP MALARIA DATA ROUND 2: Gates Foundation responds, WHO graciously offers not to respond
The modest aim of an initiative like Aid Watch is to be one more small voice holding aid agencies and foundations accountable for doing good things for poor people. The aim of more accountability is to induce improved behavior by those guys, so that aid will work better.
The Aid Watch blog already has had its first small test on trying to induce accountability. This post took Bill and Melinda Gates to task…
Participation of the poor in mainstreaming gender empowerment for civil society stakeholders to promote country ownership of good governance for community-driven sustainable development
I have just stumbled across a great series of articles on buzzwords in development. Some aid workers and development scholars are so jaded by these vague but ubiquitous buzzwords that they play “Development Bingo.” Whenever a development pro is giving a lecture, they hold Bingo cards marked with all the buzzwords and check them off whenever the lecturer mentions them in the talk. When they have got a full set of buzzwords, they stand up…
Posted in Big Aid Bureaucracies
14 Comments
Some cite good news on aid
A paper forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Literature states:
“There are well known and striking donor success stories, like the elimination of smallpox, the near-eradication of river blindness and Guinea worm, the spread of oral rehydration therapy for treating infant diarrheal diseases, DDT campaigns against malarial mosquitoes (although later halted for environmental reasons), and the success of WHO vaccination programs against measles and other childhood diseases. The aid campaign against diseases in Africa ……
Spies Play Economists, Economists Play Spies
The New York Times on Friday the 13th headlined “Global Economy Top Threat to U.S., Spy Chief Says.” Many other papers followed suit with similar prominent headlines. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair staged a raid on the Big Issue of the Day as a “security threat” and thus something falling within his bureaucratic turf.
Thanks, Spy Chief, but we have enough trouble sorting out the advice of the expert economists on the…
Posted in Current Events
10 Comments
Did Bill and Melinda Gates Claim Malaria Victories Based on Phony Numbers?
Tuesday’s Financial Times printed a Martin Wolf interview with the Gateses from Davos, available as a video on the FT web site.
A sample quote from the interview:
We’re trying to make sure that people understand this: aid is effective…So, for instance, malaria incidence is down in countries such as Zambia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda. It’s down in some countries by over 50 percent and some by 60 percent…[if we and other donors]
…
NYU’s Aid Watch Initiative Held Conference on “What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evaluation”
By William Easterly
During last Friday’s conference, participants and speakers leveled a variety of criticisms at aid agencies for lacking accountability and transparency, but also suggested new ideas and expressed hope for a new way forward. Here are some highlights; check back soon for more details and some video footage. Click here for the full conference agenda.
Yaw Nyarko (NYU):
“No nation has ever developed because of aid and outside…