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
Recent Comments
- Rukmini on Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins : This has been a valuable resource for me and I’m sorry to see it...
- Jesse on From Hell to Prosperity: I would like to see this graph with a comparative one which shows the number of people in each religion...
- Ellie on Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins : Sad to see you go, but I certainly respect the decision. Hope it is...
- Vivek Nemana on From Hell to Prosperity: Jeff, Well, the billionaire effect might explain a disproportionately high mean income, but...
- M on Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins : I agree that Bill and Laura should think about how they can get their message...
- Mr. Econotarian on Are Lax US Gun Laws Spilling Violence into Mexico? : The paper says: “DHS data gives the number of illegal...
Archives
Bill Easterly tweets
- RT @tkb: @meighanstone @bill_easterly @viewfromthecave Thanks from @worldbankdata team! http://t.co/aD4zp3Px & http://t.co/6APTLA7D ... about 7 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @meighanstone: @bill_easterly @WorldBank @viewfromthecave you should be singing praises of @tkb and his team then (upstart World Bank ... about 7 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- Praise the @WorldBank! (for data visualization) http://t.co/ri7CvwdZ HT @viewfromthecave about 7 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @lustrefound: New idea for Sandel: Writers as public intellectuals replaced by economists. RIP Carlos Fuentes. http://t.co/Zkpq1Shj h ... about 10 hours ago from Twittelator ReplyRetweetFavorite
Aid Watch tweets
- RT @viewfromthecave Healthy Dose top story: UNDP to Africa, End Hunger to Ensure Growth http://t.co/6b1tghMg about 9 hours ago from web ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @bill_easterly Leonardo DiCaprio's coffee has a remarkable effect on development. We're just a bit fuzzy on how. http://t.co/ITkKtwVG 08:08:48 PM May 15, 2012 from TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite
- RT @NatalieNYT Study points to the complexities of giving & measuring the impact of charity http://t.co/zjZCCxth 06:25:03 PM May 15, 2012 from TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite
- “Poverty: The audacity of hope” @TheEconomist describes an RCT by Esther Duflo http://t.co/ahFAljgc 05:23:35 PM May 15, 2012 from web ReplyRetweetFavorite
Tag Archives: Human Development Index
Hey, fellow committee member, are you the weakest link?
UPDATE: 12:18 PM SEE END OF POST
I was just on a committee that selected a small number of papers from a large number of submissions for a conference. We each graded each paper and then we had to come up with a rule to go from our individual grades to a ranking of the papers to decide which ones got into the conference. So here are some possible rules:
(1) one veto kills the…
Posted in Academic research, Cognitive biases, Metrics and evaluation Also tagged complementarity, geometric averages, HDI, The Weakest Link 2 Comments
Third World America
UPDATE 11:20AM: accused of Detroit “poverty porn”, see response below.
As you may have noticed, this blog sees America itself as an interesting development laboratory. Others seem to agree, as a new report applies the Human Development Index to the US.
The site has a cool mapping function. Here is a map of health that locates Third World America in the Deep South and its borderlands.
The South as Third World holds up…
Posted in Data and statistics, Maps Also tagged Detroit, Third World America, U.S. Inequality 37 Comments
Human Development Index debate…you still want more?
I suspect that we long ago exhausted the patience of our readers with our multiple rounds of debate on the Human Development Report’s new methodology for its Human Development Index. At the same time, I feel an obligation to let the other side of the debate have their say as much as they want. So here is UNDP’s new response to Martin Ravallion’s response to UNDP’s previous response to our original blog criticizing the…
Substitutability: there is no substitute for learning this wonky concept if you want your project to succeed
The debate we had on the HDI brought up the seemingly drop-dead boring jargon “substitutability.” Surprise! This actually turns out to be a USEFUL concept.
Consider two extremes in an everyday example. For producing the output: “weird music that Bill listens to,” my iPod and my iPhone are perfect substitutes, so one is redundant for this purpose (forget about other purposes for now). For producing this same output, headphones and the iPod are NOT…
Human Development Index Debate Round 2: UNDP, you’re still wrong
by Martin Ravallion, Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank
Francisco Rodriguez has defended the HDI against recent criticisms by Bill Easterly and Laura Freschi, who drew in part on my new paper, “Troubling Tradeoffs in the Human Development Index.”
Francisco would make a good lawyer, since he defends his case vigorously on multiple fronts. But this leaves a puzzle about his true position. On the one hand…
Posted in Academic research, Data and statistics 5 Comments
What the New HDI tells us about Africa
by Francisco Rodríguez, Head of Research at the Human Development Report Office
In a post published last Thursday, Bill Easterly and Laura Freschi criticize the new formula for the Human Development Index (HDI) introduced in this year’s Human Development Report. Borrowing on a recent paper by the World Bank’s Martin Ravallion, Easterly and Freschi argue that our decision to shift from an additive to a multiplicative mean makes Africa look much worse than it…
Posted in Data and statistics 4 Comments
The First Law of Development Stats: Whatever our Bizarre Methodology, We make Africa look Worse
UPDATE: Just received notice of drastic punishment for this post: invited to join HDR 2011 Advisory Panel
I’ve complained previously about how design of the UN Millennium Development Goals make sub-Saharan Africa look worse than it really is. Now I realize that UNDP’s new Human Development Report (HDR) does the same thing. Not alleging any conspiracy here, it seems unintentional, but is then not caught because … well we all know Africa is…
Posted in Data and statistics 30 Comments