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Tag Archives: New York Times

This just in: there was a flood in Pakistan

By William Easterly | Published August 27, 2010

We have chronicled here on Aid Watch how media coverage of disasters influences disasters, and how late the US media has been to the story of the disastrous flood in Pakistan, with apparently anemic donor response as a result.

Puzzlement deepened this morning at 7:30 am when I picked up my NYT off my doorstep and saw the four column front-page headline: Much of Pakistan’s Progress is Lost in Its Floodwaters.  The NYT devotes…

Posted in Disaster/ humanitarian aid, In the news | Also tagged 2 Comments

Laura in NYT debate on Can Aid Buy Taliban’s Love?

By William Easterly | Published August 26, 2010

NYT DEBATE: Can Flood Aid Weaken the Taliban in Pakistan?

Or is it more likely that extremist groups will capitalize on the chaos created by the disaster?

Laura Freschi’s answer: aid doesn’t help with the Taliban, but give anyway.

The idea that flood aid will change Pakistani perceptions about the U.S. in a lasting and meaningful way is both unproven and based on simplistic, even condescending assumptions about the beneficiaries of

…

Posted in Disaster/ humanitarian aid, In the news | Also tagged , 1 Comment

NYT’s David Brooks discovers Planners vs. Searchers — for running your own life

By William Easterly | Published August 3, 2010

Brooks discusses the Well-Plannned Life vs. the Summoned Life.

Could this be a good excuse for those of us who never plan more than 5 minutes ahead?

Is it possible I like Searchers because of my personality type?

Posted in In the news | Also tagged 5 Comments

More well-deserved Crisis Recognition for economists: Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff

By William Easterly | Published July 5, 2010

The NYT Business Section on their book, This Time Is Different.

It’s nice when a fat book covering 800 years of financial crises can be summed up in one 4-word title, and then the message of the text in one 3-word response: No It’s Not.

Or as the authors put it, We’ve Been Here Before.

The authors and the article both understandably concentrate most of the discussion on Implications for Today’s Crisis. These days you…

Posted in Books and book reviews, History | Also tagged , 1 Comment

Do only democracies have anti-immigrant movements?

By William Easterly | Published June 27, 2010

This great picture on changing share of foreign-born residents in the NYT today (showing countries with largest increase):

You can see why anti-immigration sentiment is a big deal in the European countries shown and in the US. (This is a descriptive statement, I myself hate xenophobia.)

But what about the countries at the top of the graph? Let’s exclude the special and controversial case of Israel from all the following statements.

Correct me if…

Posted in In the news, Migration | 10 Comments

Sorry, Africans, you are no longer allowed to have your own countries

By William Easterly | Published June 12, 2010

An imaginative proposal in a column by Pierre Englebert in today’s NYT:

the international community must move swiftly to derecognize the worst-performing African states.

The problem of Africa that Professor Englebert is nicely fixing was that 50 years ago:

these countries were recognized by the international community before they even really existed.

So because the Western powers (affectionately called here ”the international community”) supported with abundant aid dollars the tyrants who oppressed their own citizens, those same…

Posted in In the news | Also tagged 13 Comments

He may be an evil Afghan warlord…

By William Easterly | Published June 6, 2010

But he’s OUR evil Afghan warlord (NYT)

Posted in In the news | Also tagged 3 Comments

Gulf Oil Spill: The Development Edition

By Laura Freschi | Published June 3, 2010

Vijaya Ramachandran and Julia Barmeier of the Center for Global Development are among the many commentators now looking at the development angle of the continuing, horrifying oil spill in the Gulf. They write:

Spills of this magnitude are not new to the developing world. Take Nigeria, for example. Due to poor regulation and pervasive corruption, we do not know for certain how much oil has leaked into the Niger Delta region. In 2006, 

…

Posted in In the news | Also tagged 10 Comments

Oops, did I just prove “Confessions of a hit man” conspiracy?

By William Easterly | Published May 27, 2010

Ray Fisman in Slate takes my paper with Daniel Berger, Nathan Nunn, and Shanker Satyanath on Commercial Imperialism as partial confirmation of John Perkins’ allegation of a global conspiracy to take down poor nations for the benefit of rich corporations. This is fun, so let’s run with it.

Of course there’s a eeny weeny difference between conspiracy theories and social science that just says, yes, CIA interventions could have been helpful to US corporations…

Posted in Academic research | Also tagged , , 10 Comments

Poor People Behaving Badly?

By William Easterly and Laura Freschi | Published May 25, 2010

NYT columnist Nick Kristof had an uber-provocative Sunday column:

…if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.

The Obamzas, a Congolese family from the village of Mont-Belo that Kristof met, say they can’t afford $2.50 per month…

Posted in Cognitive biases, In the news | Also tagged 45 Comments