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
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Recent Posts
- Weirdest story award: how gays in the military cause genocide
- Ghana. 1970.
- Beware the fury of a patient man: Michael Clemens on Millennium Villages
- The leader bias – for example, this blog
- Undercover Economist Goes Public for Randomized Controlled Trials
- Economics tells countries to specialize…including specializing in economics
- Best in Aid: The Grand Prize
- Defending My Homeboy Hayek from Freakonomics
Recent Comments
- Dan Kyba on Weirdest story award: how gays in the military cause genocide: Reminds me of an incident with the Cdn military about 15 years...
- J. on Ghana. 1970.: Uh… which one is you?
- lukas on Ghana. 1970.: young bill easterly?
- geckonomist on Beware the fury of a patient man: Michael Clemens on Millennium Villages: nobody needs evaluations to see whether some...
- Joe on Ghana. 1970.: Nice photo. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a wonderful documentary on Ghana from 1950s-1980s:...
- Robert Tulip on Beware the fury of a patient man: Michael Clemens on Millennium Villages: Opportunity cost of MDVs would be clarified by...
Archives
Popular Posts
- 100% African leaders advise Bono on reform of U2
- 84% Nobody wants your old shoes: How not to help in Haiti
- 34% Haiti earthquake: Help navigating complex terrain of disaster relief
- 18% The Civil War in Development Economics
- 16% How to write about poor people
- 15% If Martin Luther King had been an aid official -- the Powerpoint version of I Have a Dream
Bill Easterly Tweets
- Decline in web traffic this weekend because of beautiful weather on the East Coast? is a GOOD thing. No worry I've already been outside. about 1 hour ago from web
- Weirdest story award: how gays in the military cause genocide (from @wrongingrights)http://bit.ly/9UgsSG about 5 hours ago from bit.ly
- Excellent guess! RT @dutchatharvard was it you? 01:35:29 PM March 20, 2010 from web
- I assume you guys figured out who the white boy was in Ghana 1970 picture?http://bit.ly/dtGz96 12:58:15 PM March 20, 2010 from bit.ly
Aid Watch tweets
- WB: Graph showing Africa's devt pattern increasingly diverse, w/ more & more success stories via @ryanbriggs http://bit.ly/dsdqPy 11:07:43 AM March 18, 2010 from web
- Today's post: Economics worldwide is an Anglo-Saxon monopoly. Discuss.http://bit.ly/bka5vP 10:58:41 AM March 18, 2010 from web
- RT @nancymbirdsall A new way to deliver aid to Pakistan? @FP_Magazine (http://bit.ly/8Z7av5) cites #CODAid (http://bit.ly/24cpXR) 10:58:07 AM March 18, 2010 from web
- Modest manifesto on open philanthropy http://bit.ly/a8Prsg via @denniswhittle 11:44:41 AM March 17, 2010 from web
Category Archives: Assumptions, Myths and Stereotypes
How to write about poor people
Use a precise definition of poverty: living on less than $1.25 a day, adjusted for purchasing power. Give the precise number who fit that definition.- Ignore the recent revision of this number by 42%.
- Do not excessively analyze geographic or ethnographic distinctions amongst poor people.

- Discuss the following: poverty traps, vicious circles, aid financing gaps.
- There probably won’t be time left to discuss the following concepts: initiative, savings, inventiveness, resourcefulness, adaptation
…
Also posted in (B)advocacy, Celebs and Cause Marketing
22 Comments
Response to MV tourism operator on “Should starving people be tourist attractions?”
Dear Michael (or Dr. Grosspietsch, whichever you prefer):
Thanks for taking the time to respond, which is very admirable in itself (I am still waiting a week later to hear from the US Army Lieutenant General William Caldwell IV on the Army’s approach to development.)
I have also read the comments on both my post and yours on Aid Watch, and I have read the post of…
Should starving people be tourist attractions?

Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade on the Huffington Post touched a raw nerve about condescension towards Africans. She noted that a tourism operator was marketing one of Jeff Sachs’ Millennium Villages (MVs) as a vacation destination and quoted from the brochure “Please do not give anything to the villagers — no sweets.”
I decided to look more into the MV tourism project, not to pile on, but because I believe patronizing attitudes towards…
African men call for UN to protect white women

(Mother’s Day Edition)
OK that didn’t really happen, but just think how white men would respond if it did.
What happens of course is the reverse: white men offer themselves as saviors of African women.
One random example: Stephen Lewis the former United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa (2001-2006) said that UNAIDS “utterly and tragically failed to protect the women of Africa” and he is calling for a new UN…
We can make bad news look worse…and for Africa, we can make even good news look bad
Lost in the confusion of the Spring Meetings this weekend in Washington was the release of the IMF/World Bank Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2009, the annual song of woe about lack of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. You would think the current supply of bad news was adequate for our needs, but the GMR has long made a specialty of portraying the poor nations as bleakly as possible and this year’s report…
Self-Esteem in Africa
by Moussa P. Blimpo (the author is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at NYU from Togo.)
A prominent university professor in the US goes back to his home country in Africa with his American Master’s student who wanted to get some field experience. The professor is unable to schedule a meeting with a key political leader whereas the student does get a meeting with the African leader.
Last summer, in a heated discussion with some…
Is There Such a Thing as a Good Colonialist?
An ongoing exhibition at NYU’s Casa Italiana introduces American audiences to a new Romantic hero, the Italian explorer and conquerer Pietro di Brazza. In three small but fascinating rooms of photographs, maps and drawings, the exhibit lays out the argument that Africa would have been better off with more of the kinder, gentler colonialism of Pietro di Brazza, and less of the harsh colonialism of Henry Stanley, the Anglo-American explorer in the service of the…
Also posted in History and Development
8 Comments
Do You Have To Be Pro-Aid To Be An Authentic African?
The always provocative and insightful Chris Blattman asks:
How come all the Africans getting press on the aid debate are conservatives and libertarians? Moyo, Mwenda, Hirsi Ali. The list is getting longer. All make good points (well, at least Mwenda does) but these hardly strike me as indigenous voices. Most seem to be channeling Milton Friedman. There’s nothing wrong with a little Friedman in your thinking, but is this “authentic Africa” or the
…
Also posted in Arguments, Logic and Use of Evidence
11 Comments
When Will There Be Good News? Does it Help There Already Was Some?
In the midst of the general doom and gloom, fears about how the crisis will affect poor countries, and fierce criticism of markets, states, and aid agencies, perhaps it’s healthy to step back to the big picture, to recognize there has already been some very real good news. The graph below shows some overall statistics for the developing world:
This graph has a mixture of good news that all of the much-criticized triad of…
Also posted in General Economic Principles
11 Comments
“Africans Have Cell Phones? Who Do They Call?”
Kenyan businesswoman June Arunga on how negative stereotypes of Africa are hurting investment in Africa (from the recent Aid Watch conference at NYU):
June Arunga on Western Attitudes Towards Business in Africa from DRI on Vimeo.


