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Author Archives: William Easterly

Turning over Aid Watch management for a week

Dear Aid Watchers,

Both Laura and I are away for a week starting today.

I am cutting off the Internet entirely for a week in a bid to regain my sanity, so anything addressed to me in any Net medium (email, Twitter, Facebook, blog comments) I will not see for a week.

In the absence of Laura and I, DRI post-doc Adam Martin has generously agreed to take over as Guest Editor for a week, beginning with…

Posted in Meta/ about Aid Watch | 2 Comments

The Battle for the Dream

 

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Pete Boettke: economist extraordinaire

The WSJ has a well-deserved, laudatory profile of Peter Boettke of George Mason University. The Journal stresses mainly his role in the Hayek vs. Keynes debate. I have learned from him in the area of Hayek vs. central planning, the subject more relevant to my own interests in long-run development. He is also a generous colleague and friend. Congrats, Pete!

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

I have a dream: the Powerpoint aid jargon version

Recycled this on Huffington Post for tomorrow’s 47th anniversary of MLK’s greatest speech of all time.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

This just in: there was a flood in Pakistan

We have chronicled here on Aid Watch how media coverage of disasters influences disasters, and how late the US media has been to the story of the disastrous flood in Pakistan, with apparently anemic donor response as a result.

Puzzlement deepened this morning at 7:30 am when I picked up my NYT off my doorstep and saw the four column front-page headline: Much of Pakistan’s Progress is Lost in Its Floodwaters.  The NYT devotes…

Posted in Disaster/ humanitarian aid, In the news | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Laura in NYT debate on Can Aid Buy Taliban’s Love?

NYT DEBATE: Can Flood Aid Weaken the Taliban in Pakistan?

Or is it more likely that extremist groups will capitalize on the chaos created by the disaster?

Laura Freschi’s answer: aid doesn’t help with the Taliban, but give anyway.

The idea that flood aid will change Pakistani perceptions about the U.S. in a lasting and meaningful way is both unproven and based on simplistic, even condescending assumptions about the beneficiaries of

Posted in Disaster/ humanitarian aid, In the news | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

From Russia With Color, 1909

This amazing collection of color photographs taken in Russia in 1909-1912 is really unmissable (H/T Mari Kuraishi).

The picture is of an autocrat in Uzbekistan. Since then, there has been much progress, in the form of cheap polyester suits for today’s autocrats in Uzbekistan.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Our internal foreign aid program

The US Recovery Act (aka “stimulus package”) has put out this great map of where the money is being spent by Congressional District.

As I looked at where the money is being spent in the part of the country pictured (the part I know best), there did not seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason between Congressional Districts as far as population or need. Is it random? Could…

Posted in Accountability & transparency | 12 Comments

Aid Watch addresses an unexpected embarrassing problem

We’ve noticed a strange phenomenon on Aid Watch: our April 10, 2010 post Famine Africa stereotype porn shows no letup has also shown the least letup of any of our posts, showing up with traffic day after day. It is now the fourth most popular post of all time on Aid Watch. I was rather slow to figure out what was going on, which just shows what being raised as a Methodist in squeaky-clean…

Posted in Meta/ about Aid Watch | 16 Comments

The Ground Zero mosque and cognitive biases

Among the many other things involved in this controversy, stereotypes of Muslims are not exactly helping.

As this blog is (excessively)  fond of arguing, ethnic stereotypes are partly fueled by an obscure cognitive bias known as Reversing Conditional Probabilities. As a long ago Aid Watch post argued (sorry for indulging in self-quotation, but hey it’s August, time for reruns):

{People perceive} from media coverage that the probability that IF you are a terrorist, THEN you are a Muslim

Posted in Cognitive biases, Uncategorized | 17 Comments