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Author Archives: William Easterly

Rodrik, Defining Libertarians, Afghan Tribes, Finding Coffee in New York

By William Easterly | Published March 12, 2010

Links for Friday:

Dani Rodrik gets way too excited about changing IMF views on capital controls.

Will Wilkinson: libertarians are liberals who like markets.

The NYT again tries tribal analysis in Afghanistan: did they get it wrong again?

Bonus non-development link: where to find the best coffee in New York

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The tragic disappearing of humanitarian neutrality

By William Easterly | Published March 11, 2010

UPDATES (latest 3/13 2:42 pm New York) — please read to bottom of post

From today’s NYT:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Six Pakistani employees of the American Christian charity World Vision were killed Wednesday and seven others were wounded in an attack on the aid group’s offices in a remote village in northern Pakistan.

The Seattle Times on the same story:

When suspected extremists armed with assault rifles and a

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 12 Comments

Am I useless? A critic needs to listen to critics

By William Easterly | Published March 9, 2010

The whole idea of searching is that you never quite know if you are getting it right. You need constant feedback from the intended targets of your efforts, to keep adjusting and re-adjusting. This is my motivation for criticizing aid, to try to induce it to change in response to criticism on things that are clearly wrong. And this is why I myself need to listen to my own critics.

The blogosphere has recently been…

Posted in Aid Policies and Approaches, Arguments, Logic and Use of Evidence | 42 Comments

New York Times on Millennium Villages

By William Easterly | Published March 9, 2010

Jeffrey Gettleman reports today from Sauri, Kenya on the debate on the Millennium Villages.

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

In defense of being mean-spirited: response to a critic

By William Easterly | Published March 8, 2010

People on Twitter yesterday and today called attention to this thought-provoking critique of yours truly (from Chris Conrad at his blog The Big-Push: Development and Aid Effectiveness)

I did want to take issue with one of Easterly’s tweets from yesterday, in which he sardonically impugns USAID’s efforts in Afghanistan, suggesting that the most benefit Afghanis have realized from USAID’s years of war-time effort is the use of USAID-labeled vegetable oil cans

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Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Do what you’re actually good at? or what you should be good at?

By William Easterly | Published March 8, 2010

We have just finished the annual ritual in which Hollywood pretends that its job description is making quality indie movies,  instead of what it is actually good at — producing crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Avatar was not only in the latter category by $2.5 billion or so and counting, it even got good reviews from critics. But it couldn’t win Best Picture under Hollywood’s hypocritical self-fantasy that rewards what they think they SHOULD be doing.

Wait, I feel another Aid…

Posted in Aid Policies and Approaches, Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Who is best qualified to help Haiti? Why not the Haitian diaspora?

By William Easterly | Published March 7, 2010

Toronto Globe and Mail columist Margaret Wente:

Who can offer the most help to the desperate children of Haiti? Is it Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Sachs, the World Bank or the UN? Is it the many experts who are calling for a Marshall Plan to “fix” Haiti once and for all, or the donor nations that have pledged billions for the task?

Personally, I would choose people like Eric and Nicole Pauyo. The Haitian-Canadian

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Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Afghans and social entrepreneurs improvise when official aid fails

By William Easterly | Published March 6, 2010

From the blog FabFi (HT to blog Whirled Citizen)

{A} World Bank funded infrastructure project to bring internet connectivity to Afghanistan began more than SEVEN YEARS ago and only made its first international link this June. That project, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, is still far from being complete.

{Meanwhile} the Fabbed Long-Range Wireless Antenna Project, … as of December 2008 is working on an installation

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Wrong Person Wins The Great Economist.Com Finance Debate

By William Easterly | Published March 4, 2010

Well, at least in my inexpert opinion. The final statements indicated a lot of agreement between Ross Levine and Joe Stiglitz. Yet you can distinguish between the two when each makes their most colorful or most forceful statements:

Ross Levine:

Again and again, the regulatory authorities (1) were acutely aware of problems, (2) had ample power to fix the problems, and (3) chose not to.

Joe Stiglitz:

If products like CDSs are sold

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Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

I’m really not sure what to make of this

By William Easterly | Published March 4, 2010

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments