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
Recent Comments
- Andrew on Beautiful fractals and ugly inequality: Can you please share the data sources?
- Sina on Beautiful fractals and ugly inequality: this is really good
- Ben Ramalingam on Welcome to economics, all you students (and aid workers): “The number of aid ideas that violate elementary principles...
- Dan Kyba on Welcome to economics, all you students (and aid workers): Market economies and the economics that underpins it has also been,...
- Raphael on Help the World’s Poor: Buy Some New Clothes: Benjamin, I am curious to know where you draw the ethical line. People...
- David Dolejsi on Welcome to economics, all you students (and aid workers): When I was a freshman at my university, they gave us Economics...
Archives
Bill Easterly tweets
- Saying it better! RT@patrin Forget optimal choices, econ is why Disney CEO salary is 140,000x of Ghanaian rock-breakers http://bit.ly/aRxMBt about 13 hours ago from web
- Greetings, Aid workers, welcome to your 1st day of classes on Principles of Economics http://bit.ly/aRxMBt about 18 hours ago from bitly
- World Bank denies expert in charge of development is fictional, he's in secure location in Main Complex, 3rd basement http://bit.ly/bvdx4t 07:57:32 PM September 07, 2010 from bitly
- Hello all, back on Twitter after a week off. Anything happen while I was gone? 03:54:25 PM September 07, 2010 from web
Aid Watch tweets
- IAD on A-i-d http://bit.ly/9Yqk1H. Claudia Williamson discusses Elinor Ostrom's work on development. 12:29:51 PM September 03, 2010 from web
- Be Careful What you Export: http://bit.ly/cE3e1v 11:11:33 AM September 02, 2010 from web
- TransparencyBrawl 2010 continues: http://bit.ly/aG1ytu 08:18:35 PM September 01, 2010 from web
- Hayek vs. the Intellectuals, in technicolor! http://bit.ly/cSnS8m 11:25:39 AM September 01, 2010 from web
Tag Archives: maps
Trends in African governance
OOPS: see UPDATE at end of this post. Let’s just say we goofed in highlighting the word “Trends.” Since, we criticize data errors in others, we will take any punishment you want to dish out to us. Or maybe we will be unintended beneficiaries of the phenomenon that nobody cares about data errors. (This is Bill: I will take the blame since I suggested the whole thing to Laura).
The FT’s Emerging Africa section…
Posted in In the news
8 Comments
Touristiness
This map of how popular different tourist places are was generated by an Estonian programmer using the number of photo uploads to a popular site. Yellow is the most touristy, followed by red, blue is not very touristy, but grey is nowheresville.
I am a little suspicious about the methodology after I saw Toledo, Ohio show up pretty yellow. However, otherwise the map seems plausible. Coasts and mountains show up about as much…
Posted in Technology
16 Comments
The map history of an unhappy place, 1829-present
In the greater Horn of Africa, the talk is of civil war, genocide, tyranny, interstate war, failed states, fragile peace. Where did this all come from?
One perspective is given from Europeans’ maps of this area. The maps below are cropped so as to cover the exact same area from the Tropic of Cancer to the Equator, from 20 degrees longitude to the tip of the horn (approx. 50 degrees longitude). The maps are from early 1800s…
Who ya gonna call? Entrepreneurs!
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,…
Posted in Big ideas/ the secret to development is..., Data and statistics, Entrepreneurship
Also tagged entrepreneurs, mobile phones
18 Comments
Take seriously the power of networks (or just look at some COOL maps)
A few days ago, I met a guy because he was my wife’s girlfriend’s boyfriend. He turned out to be a high ranking official who had some fascinating inside stories about aid and corruption in an African country (which I won’t name to protect his privacy).
A local aid worker friend recommended an orthopedist to treat my wife’s badly injured ankle while we were in Addis Ababa. The orthopedist was able to give my wife…
Posted in Big ideas/ the secret to development is..., Data and statistics
Also tagged academic papers, Africa, Ashoka, social networks
11 Comments