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Category Archives: User Feedback, Announcements and Surveys

Invading Canada to debate aid

By Administrator | Published February 22, 2010

Bill Easterly is speaking in Toronto tomorrow.
When: Tuesday February 23, 2010, 4pm-6pm
Where: University of Toronto, Hoskin Avenue, Seeley Hall, Trinity College
(He will be largely offline for the next two days while taking part in this peaceful invasion.)
2 Comments

Even more apparently even more not a big fan…

By William Easterly | Published February 21, 2010

Another post from @transitionland:

Bill Easterly’s cheap, ignorant Afghanistan snark…

Also posted in Aid Policies and Approaches, Grand Plans and Other Delusions | 3 Comments

Apparently not a big fan…

By William Easterly | Published February 21, 2010

Easterly’s pointless echo chamber

Maybe I’m being too harsh on professor Easterly. Wait, no I’m not. He becomes petulant when anyone from a fellow blogger to a large multilateral organization doesn’t immediately respond to his criticisms, yet he often ignores the most knowledgeable and thoughtful of his own critics….

Posted in Aid, Bloggers, Blogging, Development, Stupidity

February 21, 2010 at 5:06 pm

Written by transitionland

Also posted in Arguments, Logic and Use of Evidence, Human Rights and Wrongs | 9 Comments

NYU’s Development Research Institute (including Aid Watch) receives 2009 BBVA Development Cooperation Award

By Administrator | Published January 29, 2010

Excerpts from the BBVA Foundation press release issued today:

January 29, 2010 – The awardof €400,000 goes to the Development Research Institute (DRI) for “its contribution to the analysis of foreign aid provision, and its challenge to the conventional wisdom in development assistance,” in the words of the jury’s citation.

The DRI has brought a fresh approach to aid and development research, helping ensure that the economic aid rich countries provide to the developing…

Also posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

The best and worst in aid from the past year is…what our readers say it is

By William Easterly and Laura Freschi | Published January 11, 2010

Dear Aid Watchers,

A year ago this month we launched this blog as one small contribution to the effort to make aid more accountable. Our ambition: to add to the growing chorus of voices demanding that our development assistance money be spent according to what we know about best practices in aid so that it might actually reach the poor. And to provide a forum for aid professionals, academics, students, and citizens to talk openly…

1 Comment

Bill Goes to Africa

By William Easterly | Published November 2, 2009

Hello, aid watchers.

I am Africa-bound and will go off the Internet for the next 2 weeks (out of choice, not technological constraints). Laura will be running the blog in my absence. When I come back I will tell you about any experiences of interest.

Maybe when I come back I will also wearily comment on the latest aid-and-growth regression paper, the 1 millionth attempt to resolve the relationship in a cross-country growth…

8 Comments

Welcome to the new Aid Watch blog

By William Easterly and Laura Freschi | Published October 14, 2009

As you can see, we’ve redesigned the blog and moved to a new location. The content is the same, but we hope the new format and design will make Aid Watch easier to find, nicer to look at, and more intuitive to navigate.

Please update your bookmarks and links with our new url: http://aidwatchers.com/. If you subscribe to the blog using an RSS feed, you’ll want to update the subscription as well: http://aidwatchers.com/feed/.

You might also want to take a look at the new Development Research Institute website, which has more information about who we are, our publications, details about occasional events and conferences, and a growing list of resources.

p.s. The images in our older posts aren’t loading right now. We’ll have this fixed in a day or two.

1 Comment

My own market experiment: where I am IN or OUT

By William Easterly | Published September 30, 2009

Last week, some people wanted to meet up with me at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in New York. I was a little embarrassed to tell them I was not invited to CGI, and in fact have never been invited to CGI. Actually, there is a long list of distinguished groups wise enough to have never invited me to anything.

I think each of us who makes some kind of public comment on anything…

15 Comments

How it helps NGOs to treat them as selfish

By William Easterly | Published August 14, 2009

Let me respond to one major strand of comments on my recent post, Are we allowed to talk about the self-interest of NGO officials?

Is it just too cynical to talk about NGO self-interest? Among the kinder comments received were that I don’t “trust anything or anyone not explicitly out to make as much money as possible.” Or that yours truly “says that no one is straightforward about their motives, so I wonder…

Also posted in (B)advocacy, Celebs and Cause Marketing, General Economic Principles | 13 Comments

Survey Results Are In: A Dialogue with Our Supporters and Critics

By William Easterly and Laura Freschi | Published August 5, 2009

Our Sally Field moment: (Most of) you (mostly) like us!

83 percent of you gave us a 5 (26 percent) or 4 (57 percent) out of 5 overall. About 15 percent of you gave us an “eh, you’re all right,” 2 percent of you gave us a 2 out of 5, and one person gave us a 1 (you really hate us!) Also on the plus side, three-quarters describe the blog as both “informative,” and…

17 Comments