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 7 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 7 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- Praise the @WorldBank! (for data visualization) http://t.co/ri7CvwdZ HT @viewfromthecave about 7 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 10 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 9 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
Author Archives: William Easterly
Nation not part of “Democratic Revolt” international media story presumptuously holds election
A nation that does not fit into the media narrative on the Worldwide or Arab-wide Democratic Revolution went ahead and held an election today.
Leading media representatives complained that there was no room for media attention to the historic, pivotal election in the nation of 74 million registered voters. “I mean there are no Arabs in Niger, are there?” said leading journalist Woodscott Tarleton. “We can barely keep up remembering the capitals of all those Arab countries like Iran.”
Voters…
Posted in In the news, Satire and parodies 16 Comments
Stories our data tells us: 3 Ways of Looking at a Dictator
Next installment in our popular (for wonks maybe?) series on the volatility of growth outcomes under autocracy:
What if we have it backward, and growth volatility causes autocracy?
The picture below shows the association between per capita growth outcomes and a measure of “individualist” values.
Once again the most striking thing is the high variance of growth outcomes under collectivist values, and a much lower variance under individualist values. Which causes which? One plausible story is that…
Posted in Academic research 19 Comments
Does growth reflect good and bad dictators, or just good and bad statisticians?
As a previous post showed, autocracies have high variance of growth outcomes (also illustrated in the graph above). The usual interpretation is that benevolent autocrats cause good outcomes while malevolent autocrats cause bad growth outcomes. Democracy has checks and balances that prevents malevolent people from having too much power to generate bad outcomes, but also restrains the good ones from doing what they want to achieve the great outcomes.
Unless this is completely wrong. Autocracy…
Posted in Academic research, Data and statistics 23 Comments
2500 years of Development in 100 Seconds
This marvelous video from 498 BC to 2011 AD shows the location and concentration of events mentioned in Wikipedia at different dates.
A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.
Taking that as an informal history of development, the main takeaway is that for most of history, things were mainly happening along the line between Birmingham and Baghdad.
PS as far as your kneejerk reaction that “Wikipedia is Eurocentric”, …
Posted in Uncategorized 18 Comments
What if NCAA Basketball Tournament Teams were coached by Development Economists?
Tomorrow night is the next round of March Madness, the annual NCAA tournament that started off with 64 college basketball teams, now reduced to the “Sweet Sixteen” .
It is not widely known that some lower seeded teams in the tournament, who had to play much better teams, desperately sought advice from leading Development Economists.
A Columbia Professor said we already know the successful ingredients for a championship, just get lots of funding for the…
The World Economy goes East: should the West get hysterical?
Danny Quah of LSE has a new article “The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity“. Here’s the shift, where black dots denote the easterly shift that has already happened 1980-2007, and red dots the projected shift 2010-2049:
[CORRECTION: I got the following paragraph wrong {the original in brackets}: {The future shift extrapolates current trends. This is iffy given how individual country growth is mean-reverting, but I will leave that for another…
Posted in Academic research Tagged Danny Quah, Global Economy, London School of Economics 27 Comments
America’s Warrior Women
FIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES: Update Tues Mar 23 3:45pm: Maureen Dowd in NYT also notes (colorfullly) the Lady Hawks vs. Male Doves split in the Administration on Libya
Breaking news 7pm: US starts bombing Libya to knock out anti-aircraft missiles, to begin enforcing no-fly-zone.
The Christian Science Monitor notes one difference between those in the Administration who argued for the war in Libya, and those who argued against it.
FOR: Secretary of…
Libya: Never say never again
News update Saturday 9 am: Western allies dither while Qaddafi invades last rebel stronghold. Was the agreement on the no-fly zone so easy because it would be too late and so wouldn’t actually happen?
BREAKING NEWS 2:30pm: Obama announces US will help enforce UN resolution on no-fly zone on Qaddafi: not alone but as part of European and Arab coalition, and with limited objective of protecting civilians.
Readers of this blog know that this author is…
Twitter and Income Distribution
UPDATE 11:35am: don’t think I obsess about Twitter numbers (see end of post)
I posted a link on Twitter to yesterday’s great post by Laura: ”Does Japan need your donation?”. A little while later the traffic on Aid Watch exploded. Being still pretty clueless about social media, I didn’t know why. Much later in the day, the reason became apparent — it had made it into @TopTweets Favorites, which I had never heard of but…
Why no looting in Japan?
Amidst the heartbreaking devastation in Japan, many have noticed (especially this blog from the Telegraph) how much social solidarity — and little stealing — there has been. The Telegraph blogger Ed West notes vending machine owners giving out free drinks, in contrast to large-scale looting after Katrina.
Economists have been saying for a while that trust is a good candidate to be a major determinant of development. Think how much contract enforcement is…
Posted in Uncategorized 51 Comments