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
Recent Comments
- Rukmini on Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins : This has been a valuable resource for me and I’m sorry to see it...
- Jesse on From Hell to Prosperity: I would like to see this graph with a comparative one which shows the number of people in each religion...
- Ellie on Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins : Sad to see you go, but I certainly respect the decision. Hope it is...
- Vivek Nemana on From Hell to Prosperity: Jeff, Well, the billionaire effect might explain a disproportionately high mean income, but...
- M on Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins : I agree that Bill and Laura should think about how they can get their message...
- Mr. Econotarian on Are Lax US Gun Laws Spilling Violence into Mexico? : The paper says: “DHS data gives the number of illegal...
Archives
Bill Easterly tweets
- RT @tkb: @meighanstone @bill_easterly @viewfromthecave Thanks from @worldbankdata team! http://t.co/aD4zp3Px & http://t.co/6APTLA7D ... about 6 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @meighanstone: @bill_easterly @WorldBank @viewfromthecave you should be singing praises of @tkb and his team then (upstart World Bank ... about 6 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- Praise the @WorldBank! (for data visualization) http://t.co/ri7CvwdZ HT @viewfromthecave about 6 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @lustrefound: New idea for Sandel: Writers as public intellectuals replaced by economists. RIP Carlos Fuentes. http://t.co/Zkpq1Shj h ... about 8 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
Aid Watch tweets
- RT @viewfromthecave Healthy Dose top story: UNDP to Africa, End Hunger to Ensure Growth http://t.co/6b1tghMg about 8 hours ago from web ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @bill_easterly Leonardo DiCaprio's coffee has a remarkable effect on development. We're just a bit fuzzy on how. http://t.co/ITkKtwVG 08:08:48 PM May 15, 2012 from TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @NatalieNYT Study points to the complexities of giving & measuring the impact of charity http://t.co/zjZCCxth 06:25:03 PM May 15, 2012 from TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite
- “Poverty: The audacity of hope” @TheEconomist describes an RCT by Esther Duflo http://t.co/ahFAljgc 05:23:35 PM May 15, 2012 from web ReplyRetweetFavorite
Monthly Archives: May 2010
Touristiness
This map of how popular different tourist places are was generated by an Estonian programmer using the number of photo uploads to a popular site. Yellow is the most touristy, followed by red, blue is not very touristy, but grey is nowheresville.
I am a little suspicious about the methodology after I saw Toledo, Ohio show up pretty yellow. However, otherwise the map seems plausible. Coasts and mountains show up about as much…
Memorial Day
Readers of this blog know that I am not a big fan of military solutions to development problems, AKA “fixing failed states”, and am unhappy about wars that are justified on development grounds.
Yet I believe all of us should admire, respect, and pay tribute to those who put their lives on the line in dangerous places, which includes all of our soldiers and our aid workers in Afghanistan and Iraq, and honor the memory of those who…
Posted in In the news 5 Comments
Is it easier to start an NGO than a business in Haiti?
From today’s NYT:
Alain Armand, 36, a Haitian-American lawyer from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who is now trying to open several businesses here in Port-au-Prince, the capital, including a bed and breakfast.
Trying is the operative word, he said: “It costs $3,000, and it takes at least three months to get incorporated. There is no organized structure in which we, outsiders to NGO-land, can operate.”
Meanwhile, one list for Haiti lists 822 NGOs operating.
The Age of Democratic Capitalism is Over
Washington Post reviews three new books arguing this. Very convincing, except for the “over” part.
Posted in Academic research, In the news 5 Comments
Fail fast
Failure is inevitable. Just be sure you fail fast, so you leave time to figure out how to succeed.
UPDATE 5/31 2:35PM Sorry, just got around to giving credit to the original source, an interview with futurist/thinker Freeman Dyson by Wired magazine.
Say something about failure in experiments or businesses or anything else. What’s the value of failure?
You can’t possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It’s a
…
Of mangos and plastic crates
Sometimes the things that keep people in poverty seem so small and so insignificant, and the remedies seem so simple, that it’s hard for people from rich countries to understand why they remain impoverished.
Jelen, a Haitian farmer living on about $2 a day, can’t get enough water to her mango trees, even though there is a river just beside her property. She needs a simple canal dug from the river to irrigate her…
Posted in Aid policies and approaches, Disaster relief, Trade Tagged Haiti, This American Life 15 Comments
The Asian Man’s Burden? China worried about prospects of Europe
According to the FT, China’s Investment Corporation is “very concerned” about threats of further instability in the Eurozone.
Considering also China’s big new role in aid to Africa, is it time to start wondering whether both World Bank and IMF should be moved to Beijing?
Not that I am willing to join the China-worship cult, but I DO love historical ironies that deflate pretensions of the White Man as Savior.
Oops, did I just prove “Confessions of a hit man” conspiracy?
Ray Fisman in Slate takes my paper with Daniel Berger, Nathan Nunn, and Shanker Satyanath on Commercial Imperialism as partial confirmation of John Perkins’ allegation of a global conspiracy to take down poor nations for the benefit of rich corporations. This is fun, so let’s run with it.
Of course there’s a eeny weeny difference between conspiracy theories and social science that just says, yes, CIA interventions could have been helpful to US corporations…
What in the world is going on with Turkish democracy and Dani Rodrik’s father-in-law?
Dani Rodrik and his wife Pinar Doğan, a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, have a piece in The New Republic called Turkey’s Other Dirty War.
Dani also discusses the issue in his blog.