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Category Archives: Data and statistics

Are many dimensions better than one?

By Laura Freschi | Published August 6, 2010

Over at From Poverty to Power, Duncan Greene hosted a fiery debate about how best to measure poverty, sparked by the release of the UN’s new Multidimensional Poverty Index.

The new index will complement a simpler method used in the UN Human Development Reports which relies on uniformly-weighted variables measuring life expectancy, education and income. The new method, created by researchers at the University of Oxford, combines ten different variables (including…

Tagged , , , , | 14 Comments

From deadly data to lively pictures

By William Easterly | Published July 21, 2010

For those of you who have not yet discovered the wonderful Hans Rosling, go to his Gapminder to discover whole new ways of visualizing development in motion. See the classic hilarious video of his TED talk, or something more recent.

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Reasons to doubt new health aid study on fungibility

By Guest Blogger | Published April 26, 2010

This post is by David Roodman, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC.

A couple of weeks ago, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation triggered a Richter-7 media quake with the release of a new study in the Lancet.

Here’s how the Washington Post cast the findings:

After getting millions of dollars to fight AIDS, some African countries responded by slashing their health budgets.

Laura Freschi…

Also posted in Global health | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The good news on maternal mortality: Uncertainty about everything except the advocates’ response

By William Easterly | Published April 14, 2010

UPDATE 4/15, 4pm EDT: see end of post.

The NYT lead story today (as well as other media) reports a new study with some very good news:

For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.

So happy about success! Alas, the universal rule with media reports of development…

Also posted in Badvocacy and celebs, Global health, In the news | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Does your age determine your political beliefs?

By William Easterly | Published April 4, 2010

Great picture from Will Wilkinson (Via Yglesias, and originally  from OKCupid’s OKTrends )

I’m in the libertarian position of an 18 year old, even though I should be moving into the fascist quadrant in my 50s.

Tagged | 13 Comments

Made-up acronym is as credible for poverty research as Harvard

By William Easterly | Published April 2, 2010

Dean Karlan just ran a fascinating experiment (HT Chris Blattman):

We designed one that would help us optimize our advertising strategy while also settling an important score: which academic institution’s rep pulls the most weight in cyberspace? Our ad was simple:

Poverty Research

Breakthroughs to Fight Poverty

By [randomized] Researchers

Inside the brackets in the third line, Google ads then randomly inserted one of nine university names, one of three acronyms (IPA, JPAL, or

…

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Who ya gonna call? Entrepreneurs!

By William Easterly and Laura Freschi | Published March 30, 2010

Just a decade ago it seemed we were stuck with landlines. State-owned telephone companies were largely entrenched, sclerotic organizations that provided poor, delayed, or simply unavailable service —even in some rich European countries, and nearly universally in poor countries.

These maps (with data from 2001, 2004, and 2008) show how cell phones have quickly bypassed the dysfunctional landline companies and emerged as a triumph of bottom-up entrepreneurial success.

The measure is cell phone subscribers per 100 population,…

Also posted in Big ideas/ the secret to development is..., Entrepreneurship | Tagged , , | 18 Comments

Was that foreign aid … or a campaign contribution?

By William Easterly and Laura Freschi | Published March 29, 2010

The scholarly literature on aid effectiveness focuses on answering one of two questions: 1) Is aid effective at causing growth? And 2) Is aid effective at reducing poverty?

But what about when growth and poverty reduction aren’t the goals? What if the purpose of some aid is to influence a foreign election?

Some clever forensic statistic work is suggestive that bilateral donors use aid (ODA) to influence elections. They give more aid to friendly governments…

Also posted in Academic research | Tagged , | 7 Comments

New portal seeks to liberate aid data

By Laura Freschi | Published March 25, 2010

UPDATE 3/26/10 11:50 EDT: Some readers have asked for more specific information on how AidData differs from the OECD project-level database. See the comments section for detailed answers from the AidData team.

AidData, a new development finance data portal, was launched on Tuesday along with a companion blog called The First Tranche. From their inaugural post:

AidData 1.0…assembles more aid projects from more donors totaling more dollars than have ever been available from a

…

Tagged | 14 Comments

Stop panicking: Capitalism repeatedly recovers from financial crises

By William Easterly | Published March 23, 2010

UPDATE 2 (3/24, 12:59PM EDT) Tyler Cowen is almost convinced (see end of this post)

UPDATE (3/23, 2:30 EDT): see GREAT responses by Ross Levine and Mark Thoma at the end of this post

I am just beginning to dive into the awesome book by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Along with great analysis, they have some wonderful pictures, evidence, and data. What I say here…

Also posted in Economics principles | Tagged , | 22 Comments