Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

By: Lykke E. Andersen* In 2013, Bolivia passed Law No. 348 titled “The Integral Law to Guarantee Women a Life Without Violence” in order to address the high levels of physical and sexual violence against women, and the unacceptably high levels of femicide (basically defined as a woman being killed …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* According to The World Bank’s World Development Indicators, there are now more or less an equal number of boys and girls enrolled in primary and secondary school around the World. The worldwide Gender Parity Index has been going up steadily over the last several decades, reaching …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* Poverty is usually measured at the household level, and since there is pretty much the same number of women as men in each household, poverty rates have almost by definition been identical for men and women. This fact, however, has not prevented thousands of articles from …

By: Luis Carlos Jemio Ph.D.   Historically, Bolivia’s economic growth patterns have depended on export commodity sectors, namely minerals and hydrocarbons, which booms and collapses have determined the behavior of the economy as a whole. Past economic growth patterns have resulted in distorted economic structures, and did not promote better …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* Today I have been married 20 years to an economist, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to update our favorite Development Roast post of all time (21 reasons why you should never date an economist), taking advantage of the creative feedback of our …

By: Lykke E. Andersen I usually don’t write about politics because I worry more about the long-run, structural obstacles to development, instead of bothering about short-term wriggles, which tend to work themselves out quickly. However, I do worry that the upcoming US election might affect the long-run direction of development …

By: Lykke E. Andersen Creating equality of opportunity is one of the most important roles of the government in any country. It is about leveling the playing field, so that children born into disadvantaged families (through no fault of their own, obviously) will not automatically become disadvantaged themselves and will …

By Lykke E. Andersen Like many people, I hate insects, especially the ones that sting or bite; and spiders simply for being spiders. Still, like many people, I regularly worry about the collapse of the honey bee population, since, apart from producing honey and wax, they are clearly very important …

What to do about international migration By: Lykke E. Andersen Inequality is becoming an increasingly concerning issue and recently 176 countries agreed that one of the Sustainable Development Goals for the next 15 years should be to “reduce inequality within and among countries.” One of the specific targets associated with …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* Two of the Sustainable Development Goals recently agreed by all the member states of United Nations are to reduce poverty and to reduce inequality, and for those goals to be realized, the incomes of the poorest 40% of the population have to increase. Designing policies to …