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Category Archives: Aid debates

Statement from CARE on Bruckner FOIA Request

By Administrator | Published September 1, 2010

AidWatch received the following statement from CARE regarding Till Bruckner’s AidWatch post on USAID and NGO transparency:

Statement from CARE (Aug. 30, 2010):

Contrary to what Till Bruckner suggested in a recent blog, CARE did not withhold information in response to his FOIA request to USAID regarding certain projects in the Republic of Georgia. Our records indicate that CARE never received the request from USAID to review CARE’s budget information before USAID provided it

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Also posted in Accountability & transparency | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Africans do not want or need Britain’s development aid

By Administrator | Published August 29, 2010

Editor’s note: This letter was published in the Telegraph (UK) on 22 Aug 2010 with the title given above for this post.

SIR – The parlous state of the public finances in Britain provides the perfect opportunity for British taxpayers to end their half-century-long experiment with “development aid”, which has, since its inception, stunted growth and subsidised bad governance in Africa.

As Africans, we urge the generous-spirited British to reconsider an aid

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Also posted in Financing development | Tagged , , , , | 42 Comments

Jeff Sachs, welcome to Twitter!

By William Easterly | Published February 26, 2010

As of 11 am today (2/26), Jeff Sachs has started posting on Twitter as @jeffdsachs. Here is some of the early traffic in which yours truly has a tiny stake (I have omitted who did the T for privacy):

(anon): Just noticed that @bill_easterly is following @jeffdsachs but not vice versa / Hilarious

@bill_easterly: This hurts :>) RT  Just noticed that @bill_easterly is following @jeffdsachs but not vice…

Also posted in Technology | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Arvind Subramanian replies to his (and our) critics

By Guest Blogger | Published December 18, 2009

Today, David Roodman at the Center for Global Development responded to our guest blogger Arvind Subramanian’s post (and forthcoming paper) on the effects of aid on manufacturing exports. Here, Arvind replies:

I cannot think of a more thoughtful follower of, and contributor to, the aid effectiveness literature than David Roodman (Aart Kraay is another). So, I am really very pleased with his bottom line assessment of my paper that he trusts…

Also posted in Academic research | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Our Critics Are Starting a Bill Easterly Watch

By William Easterly | Published September 2, 2009

We received a request by Bryan Turner to submit a post on Aid Watch critical of this blog’s approach. Since we are in favor of debate, we accepted his proposal and here is the blog post he submitted yesterday–Eds.

by Bryan Turner, founder and coordinator of Students To End Extreme Poverty and Youth Engagement Coordinator of Make Poverty History Canada

I actually agree with much of what Professor Easterly writes and he does some great…

Also posted in Meta/ about Aid Watch | 20 Comments

In which I don’t care about genocides that kill only .01 percent of the population

By William Easterly | Published August 31, 2009

My WSJ review on Tracy Kidder’s book on the Burundian genocide survivor generated this comment from a reader (abbreviated here, the full version is posted as a comment on the blog):

Mr. Easterly,

You point out that “only” 0.01% of Africans have been killed by war and genocide… each year… for the past four decades. This is only slightly higher than the percentage of Europeans who died in the Holocaust each year between 1940 and…

Also posted in Books and book reviews, Meta/ about Aid Watch | 12 Comments

Dani Rodrik responds to “How ethnic profiling explains Dani Rodrik’s fondness for industrial policy”

By William Easterly | Published May 15, 2009

by Dani Rodrik

Hmmm. I think you misconstrue the nature of the debate and the argument. If my priors were that no Moslems are terrorists (“industrial policy never works”) and then I found that some are, I would think the evidence pretty compelling and alter my priors. (With apologies for the nature of the analogy, but I am following Bill’s line of thought…)

My point is to get people beyond their refusal to accept…

Also posted in Meta/ about Aid Watch | 8 Comments

Response to “Does God Believe in Jeff Sachs”?

By William Easterly | Published April 18, 2009

I invited Jay Lawlor, the head of Millennium Congregations, and Jonathan Denn, the head of CountingPrayers.Org to respond to the blog post. I have not heard yet from Mr. Lawlor, but Mr. Denn responded. His letter follows:

Dear Professor Easterly,

Thank you for notifying me of your blog, and the invitation to respond. I was most sorry to hear of your severe crisis of faith, hopefully this will be of solace.

A couple corrections, I…

Also posted in Grand plans/ aid targets, Poverty | 9 Comments

ONE Responds to Bono vs. Moyo, Round Two

By Laura Freschi | Published March 31, 2009

By Edith Jibunoh, Africa Outreach Manager at ONE

At ONE, we agree a vigorous public debate is needed on how best to combat extreme poverty in Africa, but your post suggesting ONE is trying to “discredit” and “misrepresent” Ms. Moyo is untrue and not particularly constructive. As anyone who goes to our website site can see, we aren’t trying to discredit her, we are responding, substantively, to her arguments. You suggest we aren’t addressing the…

Also posted in Badvocacy and celebs | 13 Comments