Category Archives: Links to Make You Think

Monkeys Do Markets

In a recent experiment, a team of scientists trained a vervet monkey to open a container of apples, a task no other monkey in her group could do. She was well-compensated for this service by the other monkeys, who began to spend a lot of time grooming her (apparently, grooming is the monkey unit of exchange). Then, the scientists trained another monkey in the group to get the apples, and the…

If a group of lions is a “pride,” a group of development professionals is a ________.

More and more mzungus (whites) fall truly, madly, deeply in love with Africa. (via Scarlett Lion)

Book-burner to be new head of UN education and culture efforts (UNESCO)? We wonder if the UNESCO Sex Ed book that Chris Blattman satirized might be the first to go on the bonfire…

1. Is Nobody Safe? Foreign Policy article questions sainthood for Mohammed Yunus and Hernando de Soto.

2. Nobody is trying too hard to promote circumcision for heterosexual AIDS prevention in Africa, but we’ll do universal circumcision in the US, which doesn’t have much heterosexual AIDS

3. Right-wingers for foreign aid

4. Radical priest harshly criticizes patronizing American volunteers in Mexico — in 1969.

5. Trying to find…

Blood and Milk blog calls out a boneheaded Enough Project basketball jersey distribution at a refugee camp in Chad, starts a comment writing campaign, and gets a sincere apology. Nicely done.

Oh, turns out the problem is that no one wants the job…Clinton blames lack of willing candidates and “nightmare” vetting process for delay in appointing USAID administrator.

Solid, practical advice from the Good Intentions are Not Enough blog on…

Secret to development is to be taller! taller makes you happier, richer, smarter – thanks a lot from us short people, tall Anne Case and Angus Deaton!

False pessimism exposé: American children still doing better than their parents (Café Hayek) are they taller?

FT first newspaper to figure out that other countries’ banking crisis experience might be relevant (Brazil) and that it might help to consult experts…

“US food aid is all in bags labelled ‘From the American People’….it might be less misleading if it were labelled ‘From the American People, mainly to the American People.’”

World Bank employees give up on their own bureaucracy, use Wikipedia to find World Bank reports.

The Economist profiles Jacqueline Novogratz, “‘The financial system is broken, yes, but so too is the aid system,’ so ‘a moment of great innovation’ could be at hand.”

Good Intentions…

First do no harm

In today’s FT supplement “The Future of Capitalism,” Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy urge caution on government interventions designed to resuscitate the global economy. In the rush to do something rather than nothing, we run the risk of maiming the only system that can deliver growth to those parts of the world that have so far missed out on the gains of global capitalism. (The previously published online version is

Maybe Also Fight Deadly Diseases that Don’t Make Headlines: “Neglected Tropical Diseases are devastating, debilitating and deadly parasitic and bacterial infections that adversely affect the poorest 1.4 billion people worldwide living on $1.25 a day.” From the

The FT has a great special section on malaria today (tomorrow is World Malaria Day). Their very sensible editorial says: “…malaria is becoming an industry in its own right. That brings responsibilities, including rigorous evaluation to ensure money is well spent.” There are plenty of other grounds for hope, let’s hope also that somebody will step up to hold this industry accountable.

In another article, FT writer Andrew Jack quotes activist…