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Category Archives: Book and Article Reviews

The Civil War in Development Economics

By William Easterly | Published December 3, 2009

what_works_in_developmentFew people outside academia realize how badly Randomized Evaluation has polarized academic development economists for and against. My little debate with Sachs seems like gentle whispers by comparison.

Want to understand what’s got some so upset and others true believers? A conference volume has just come out from Brookings. At first glance, this is your typical sleepy conference volume, currently ranked on Amazon at #201,635.

But attendees at that…

Also posted in Aid Policies and Approaches, Arguments, Logic and Use of Evidence | 21 Comments

The secret to success is failure

By Laura Freschi | Published December 2, 2009

Novogratz_blue_sweaterWhen Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund, was in her early twenties, she turned down a promotion on Wall Street and went to the Cote d’Ivoire to open a new branch of the African Development Bank focused on microfinance for women. But the West African women she was supposed to work with shunned her. They talked about her derisively in her presence, letting her know exactly what they thought of an untested, unmarried, American…

Also posted in And the Secret to Development Is... | 13 Comments

History Matters: If you paid a $4 poll tax in 1910, your great-grandchild gets a polio vaccine today

By Laura Freschi | Published November 9, 2009

In colonial Nigeria in the last years of the 19th century, a strange quirk of history led the British rulers to draw an arbitrary boundary line along the 7˚10′ N line of latitude, separating the population into two separate administrative districts.

Below the line, the colonial government raised money by levying taxes on imported alcohol and other goods that came through Southern Protectorate’s sea ports. Above the line, the administrators of the landlocked Northern Protectorate…

Also posted in History and Development | 17 Comments

Strength in What Remains: Healing in a Post-Genocidal World

By William Easterly | Published August 27, 2009

An individual overcomes unbelievable odds, in a tale so implausible that it might well be rejected if it were a mere movie script, but it is a true story. In “Strength in What Remains,” Tracy Kidder tells us about a member of the Tutsi ethnic group in Burundi named Deogratias, or Deo, who barely escapes the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis in a harrowing journey on foot out of Burundi and Rwanda in central Africa during

…

3 Comments

Giving Us Idiots More Credit than We Deserve

By Diane Bennett | Published August 25, 2009

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While not a complete idiot, I still find books in the “Complete Idiot’s Guide” series amusing and occasionally useful. So when The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Giving Back came out recently, I was curious to read the book’s recommendations.

The author outlines a process for deciding which causes to support, how much to give, and other factors to consider before giving a not-for-profit your hard-earned cash. Unfortunately, most idiots, and many other…

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Better life, liberty, and lager

By William Easterly | Published August 17, 2009

Global infant mortality has halved since 1960. The poorest countries are steadily catching up to the richest on other critical measures of the quality of life: life expectancy, literacy, political and civil rights – not to mention beer production per capita.

This blog tries to remind us all periodically that there ARE successes in development. Charles Kenny has a great book in the works that will shoulder THAT load from now on. Kenny…

Also posted in And the Secret to Development Is... | 8 Comments

Salvation is Not Ours to Bestow: A Review of Michaela Wrong’s new book

By Laura Freschi | Published August 4, 2009

Wrong-200.png Michaela Wrong’s gripping latest book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower, is the antidote for anyone who knows the weariness of wading through the jargon of implementation plans and institutional treatises on governance and anticorruption. It’s the anti-boredom serum, the potion that brings you the real consequences of what happens when those plans are ignored.

On one level, the book is the story of one John Githongo, the eponymous…

9 Comments

You’re rational after all: unconscious development insights from unreadable books

By William Easterly | Published July 24, 2009

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Vernon Smith is a Nobel Prize winner. You quickly realize on reading this book that he got it for economics, not literature. But if you can slog through this book (which took me about 4 months), you will be rewarded with some great insights about development. (But why I am working so hard when Tyler Cowen’s blog is about topless French sun-bathers?)

His big picture is familiar to readers of Hayek: societies…

12 Comments

“Whites make locomotives; Negroes cannot make simple needles”

By Diane Bennett | Published June 11, 2009

by Diane Bennett

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The poor can’t sleep

Because their stomachs are empty.

The rich have full stomachs,

But they can’t sleep

Because the poor are awake.

-Copper miner

Lusaka, Zambia

I have been privileged to work with some of the poorest people in the world in South Sudan. Their daily life is a constant struggle to feed, shelter and clothe their families. I have been, quite literally, the rich person who couldn’t sleep. So…

15 Comments

Did “Save Darfur” Lose Darfur?

By William Easterly | Published April 14, 2009

I have long been a fan of Mahmood Mamdani. His new book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror is very critical of the Western approach to Darfur. In brief, he accuses advocacy campaigns like Save Darfur of making the achievement of peace in Darfur more difficult by portraying the conflict simplistically between “bad Arabs” and “good Africans,” and by advocating foreign military intervention.

I’ll repeat just a few points…

Also posted in Current Events | 9 Comments