Author Archives: William Easterly

Not long ago, I was returning home from a trip when the airline bumped me from my flight due to overbooking. The airline rep was very sympathetic, but I didn’t want her sympathy, I wanted A Seat On the Plane. She had traded off my wishes against those of other passengers, and I lost.

 Economists are unpopular because we say there is always SOME resource that is overbooked in aid, and aid is Forced to…

From today’s NYT

NEIL MacFARQUHAR in a good NYT story this morning  (self-promotion alert: I am quoted in the story) notes all the discussion that the quake is an opportunity to sort out all the problems of long-run Haitian development. But an opportunity for whom? Apparently for foreigners. The story mentions some of the proposals for foreign intervention:

Haiti should be temporarily taken over by an international organization

{Bill Clinton as} Haiti reconstruction czar.

“Is it too wild a

…

Fascinating paper by Melissa Dell at MIT on how indigenous slavery (called the mita)  in the mines of Peru and Bolivia from 1573 to 1812 left a lasting impact on development.

Within seconds of the unveiling of the iPad by Steve Jobs, Twitter lit up with women complaining and/or joking that the name immediately made them think of a certain feminine hygiene product. #iTampon was the #1 trending topic on Twitter yesterday and remains so this morning.

Could this be one of those unintentionally revealing moments that women’s rights in the US has not come as far as we thought? That women did not have enough voice…

This blog has ridiculed the RED campaign from all possible angles. We’ve questioned whether creating a few pennies of aid through buying a corporate product is worth all the hype, criticized the murky finances of the legal entity behind RED, and gone after RED co-founder Bono with jibes, fake awards and parodies.

Displaying exceptional cool in the face of this mockery, Bobby Shriver,…

Amusing quote from David Brooks’ NYT oped today:

populism is popular with the ruling class. Ever since I started covering politics, the Democratic ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at people with M.B.A.’s that they will hand power to people with Ph.D.’s. The Republican ruling class has been driven by the fantasy that voters will get so furious at people with Ph.D.’s that they will

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A few days ago, I met a guy because he was my wife’s girlfriend’s boyfriend. He turned out to be a high ranking official who had some fascinating inside stories about aid and corruption in an African country (which I won’t name to protect his privacy).

A local aid worker friend recommended an orthopedist to treat my wife’s badly injured ankle while we were in Addis Ababa. The orthopedist was able to give my wife…

The Economist leader on Haiti:

 investment {should}  be targeted on infrastructure, basic services and combating soil erosion to make farmers more productive and the country less vulnerable to hurricanes.

The pressing question is who should do it and how. Haiti’s government is in no position to take charge, yet the country needs a strong government to put it to rights. Paul Collier, a development economist who worked on the plan, reckons that the answer is

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The Lancet has issued a severe editorial blast against the aid agencies (both official and NGO) for Haiti aid efforts. (Link requires free registration.)

Alanna Shaikh points out where the Lancet is off base.

The Lancet knowledge universe has the perception “the aid sector” has “largely escaped public scrutiny.” Who ever heard of any those obscure *&^%$#@ criticisms of foreign aid? That “coming age of accountability” crap? Sigh.

But, forget all that, here’s a…