Chutes and Ladders in Harlem

A highly recommended podcast from EconTalk with Katherine Newman,a sociologist at Princeton.

All You Need is a Nudge

Oh Haiti

Jared Diamond's Haiti story

One Island, Two Worlds

Why is Haiti so poor?

Too Small to Fail: Developing Haiti’s Economy

The Help That Haiti Needs

Country Without a Net

Photo of the Day

Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight

Poverty + Fashion = ?

A man modeled a Burberry umbrella in Vogue that costs about $200. Some 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day.

Vogue India editor Priya Tanna’s message to critics of the August shoot: “Lighten up,” she said in a telephone interview. Vogue is about realizing the “power of fashion” she said, and the shoot was saying that “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” she said.

“You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,” Ms. Tanna said. “We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world,” she said.

Nearly half of India’s population — about 456 million people — live on less than $1.25 a day, according to World Bank figures released last week. But as any well-briefed luxury goods executive or private banker knows, India also has a fast-growing wealthy class and emerging middle class that make it one of the world’s most attractive new places to sell high-end products.

The juxtaposition between poverty and growing wealth presents an unsavory dilemma for luxury goods makers jumping into India: How does one sell something like a $1,000 handbag in a country where most people will never amass that sum of money in their lives, and many are starving? The answer is not clear cut, though Vogue’s approach may not be the way to go.

Marketers need to “create brand awareness” in India, said Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner with the consulting firm Bain & Company, who is based in Milan. She recommended the approach that some consumer brand companies took in China, opening big flagship stores and trying new forms of advertising like television.

Poverty Measurement

a sensible way to measure poverty?

Rent-seeking Consultants?

Ashraf Ghani, the Alexander Hamilton of Afghanistan, blames World Bank for neglecting higher education in Afghanistan (emphasis added);

In Afghanistan in 2002, World Bank and UN officials insisted that the government should not invest in higher education and moreover should invest very little in secondary and vocational education despite the fact that Afghanistan had seen its professional class decimated by war, disease, and flight. Citing the focus of the millennium development goals (MDGs) on primary education, they considered higher education and vocational training a luxury that Afghanistan could ill afford. But without trained doctors, teachers, engineers, and managers, it was not clear at the time whether Afghanistan could get back on its feet. Five years later, the fact that the country’s operating budget is overshadowed by the cost for technical assistance (TA) to make up for the “poor capacity” of the government testifies to the debilitating expense of failures to invest in the training of professional staff, future leaders and administrators.

In many parts of the world, the neglect of higher education has to led to poor-quality administration and spiraling TA bills. The price for TA amounts to roughly $ 20 billion per annum, with consultants often paid around $ 200, 000 a year. Nor is this technical assistance provided by Westers donors of high quality in many cases.

- "Fixing Failed States", Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, p. 142

For Discussion: Should we try to rate the output quality of consultants? Who should rate it and how should we do it?

A Challenge to Chris Blattman: Create a consulting agency that delivers quality consulting services in the development field to low-income countries for FREE.

Can Terrorists be bribed?

A recent book event at World Bank, featuring Fukuyama amongst others;

Terrorism, Economic Development and Political Openness, edited by Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza.

Cross-national evidence identifies a nuanced role for economic development in reducing terrorist activity. Chapters by Blomberg and Hess support policy maker conclusions that poverty drives terrorism, finding that higher incomes impede terrorist activity. Krueger and Laitin, on the other hand, find little economic foundation for terrorist origins. Why the different conclusions? Krueger and Laitin investigate the overall effects of income across all countries. In “From (No) Guns to Butter,” Blomberg and Hess argue that the effects may differ between richer and poorer countries. Looking at these two groups of countries separately, they find that higher incomes significantly reduce the threat of terrorism in poorer countries, while the opposite holds in richer countries. Pooling all countries, the two effects would cancel out. The aggregate result may then mask the important role of economic development to offset terrorist threats to poorer countries. Because of methodological and data challenges, however, we must recognize that the issue is not yet resolved.

In contrast to the lack of conclusive evidence on whether the poverty of nations is a determinant of terrorism, the evidence is more uniform that individual poverty does not make people more likely to support or participate in terrorist activity. In a survey of 6,000 Muslims from 14 countries, the poorest respondents were the least sympathetic to terrorism (Fair and Haqqani 2006). Krueger and Laitin, Laitin and Shapiro, and Llussá and Tavares, in this volume, review evidence showing that individual terrorists are neither poor nor uneducated.

The second question of concern to this volume’s contributors is whether weak governance and closed political systems foment terrorism. Results in Krueger and Laitin and Blomberg and Hess, though using substantially different approaches, coincide in finding that terrorism is more likely to originate in countries that exhibit closed political systems. Their findings lend strong support to policy maker assertions that good governance and political responsiveness to citizens are fundamental deterrents of terrorism.

Krueger and Laitin and Blomberg and Hess also agree that the economic characteristics of countries affect whether they will be the target of terrorist activity. This leads to a provocative dichotomy. The origins of terrorism seem to be in countries that suffer from political oppression; the targets are countries that enjoy economic success....

The conclusion that terrorists are driven not by personal poverty, but by the political and economic climate of the countries from which they come raises new questions. Why should the social environment be more important than individual income? Why are terrorist organizations more common in countries with difficult political climates? In their chapter, Laitin and Shapiro provide reason to believe that the answer lies in the challenges of constructing a terrorist organization. Even though terrorism is not a purely ideological phenomenon, terrorist organizations depend on ideologically motivated, educated recruits. Unlike, for example, trench warfare, terrorism requires individual initiative and the exercise of judgment. Close monitoring by terrorist leaders of their “employees” is not possible. Ideological commitment helps solve part of this contracting problem. So also does an emphasis on recruiting well-educated individuals, who are most likely to come from more prosperous families.

Laitin and Shapiro emphasize that terrorism is not simply the direct outcome of irrational behavior. Terrorism is a complex strategy to achieve economic and political goals, having roots in distinct cultural and religious differences and using ideological commitment to sharpen its organization. Their conclusion is not surprising and could extend to the role of cultural and religious factors in social conflict throughout history. The One Hundred Years War is just one example of prolonged conflict in the West in which religious motivations were intertwined with other serious economic and political differences.

Their argument explains why terrorists themselves are rarely poor and why terrorist organizations are most likely to emerge in politically closed countries. On the one hand, terrorist organization is difficult and requires individuals with substantial human capital, which is more prevalent in families rich enough to educate their children well. On the other hand, to persuade such well-educated, relatively prosperous individuals to join a terrorist organization in democratic countries is difficult: the ideological payoffs are fewer and peaceful alternatives to terrorist methods are more abundant and effective. This also explains the paradox that individual poverty is less associated with terrorist activities than national poverty. National incomes and the political responsiveness of national governments are closely related: political environments that are repressive enough to facilitate terrorist recruitment are less likely to attract substantial investment and entrepreneurial activity.

Related;
The Riddle of Terrorism
Economics and Terrorism: What We Know, What We Should Know and the Data We Need

Terrorism and Civil War
Kto Kogo?: A Cross-Country Study of the Origins and Targets of Terrorism

A World Free for Tigers

From the World Bank;
TIGER CONSERVATION: MOVING LESSONS LEARNT TOWARDS A WINNING STRATEGY

Related;
Hoisted from Comments by Tony Whitten;

As one of the Bank's team which organized the Tiger Event on June 9 and the author of the blog to which you link, let me give my perspective on this reasonable question. I regard biodiversity protection (e.g. of tigers) as an integral part of development and is part of our obligation to support countries which have signed the Convention on Biological Diversity. The continued survival of wild tigers is a good indicator of sound forest management, rural development strategies, infrastructure development, and governance. The conservation of biodiversity (and other global public goods is a major part of the sustainability agenda) and this is clearly recognized in the MDGs. Biodiversity conservation can also produce significant co-benefits to communities living in and around natural habitats. All the biodiversity work we support is done with a view to social condition and social impact and as such is an integral part of poverty alleviation and economic growth. Details of our large portfolio of biodiversity projects can be found on www.worldbank.org/biodiversity.

The Changing Middleast

In Jordan, God's Work on Modernity's Doorstep

Related;
Islam and Economic Development
Religion as the solution to collective action problems

International Development Happy Hour?

I wonder what would Dani Rodrik, Chris Blattman and Easterly think of this crowd.

Celebrity endorsements for World Bank

"By committing to help wild tigers, the World Bank is sounding its intention to be a global leader in biodiversity conservation. I commend this commitment and look forward to seeing it in action."

-Harrison Ford

What do the readers think? I've no comment- after all World Bank's motto is a World Free of Poverty.

Life of Guano workers, Peru

Peru Guards Its Guano as Demand Soars Again

• Guano is an undeniably strenuous enterprise from the perspective of the laborers who migrate to the islands to collect the dung each year. The laborers rise before dawn to scrape the hardened guano with shovels and pick-axes.

• Many go barefoot, their feet and lower legs coated with guano by the time shifts end in the early afternoon.

• The workers earn monthly salaries of about $600, more than three times what manual laborers earn in the impoverished highlands, where most of them are from

• Guano in Peru sells for about $250 a ton while fetching $500 a ton when exported to France, Israel and the United States. Its status as an organic fertilizer has also increased demand, transforming it into a organic niche fertilizer sold around the world.

Indonesia- A Budding Democracy

Vice-president thinks the country is 'too free'?

A Course on Poverty and Development from Google

Ted Miguel / Davesh Kapur / Steve Redelet


Lant Pritchett



Seema Jayachandran / Ted Miguel


Janice E. Perlman
/Ananya Roy


Nancy Birdsall / Raymond C. Offenheiser

Predict and Prevent

Gods Must Be Crazy, updated

Stupid working paper titles

Has Inflation Hurt the Poor? Regional Analysis in the Philippines

From Asian Development Bank

The Perfect Storm

Safia Ali, mother of five, has not eaten in seven days. Her 1-year old son, Farhan, has fallen ill.

The consensus now is that all the same elements of the early 1990s — high-intensity conflict, widespread displacement and drought — are lining up again, and at a time of the biggest spike in global food prices in more than 30 years. The United Nations says 2.6 million Somalis need assistance and the number could soon swell to 3.5 million, nearly half the estimated population. If there is excellent rain or a sudden peace, the crisis may ease. But weather projections and even the rosiest political forecasts do not predict that.

-Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa

A sad sad story

Myanmar Peril Escalates;

As many as 1.5 million people -- including more than 200,000 now believed to be congregating in temporary camps along the coast -- face an increasing risk of malaria, cholera and other potentially deadly epidemics, aid workers said.

Myanmar Junta Still Blocking Much Cyclone Aid

Myanmar in Crisis

Understanding Myanmar

Burma Clears U.S. Aircraft To Deliver Storm Relief