Policy

One of the wonderful things about economic science is that it is the science of incentives. It analyzes how humans respond to incentives and, despite evidence from other social sciences, how these responses tend to be rational. There is a lot of well documented circumstantial evidence that illustrates this rational behavior. Perhaps the best known collections of references are the books Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics and their associated blog, which present everyday life situations where people act according to incentives and behave rationally.

Not surprisingly, Bolivia is no exception. Bolivians have also proven themselves to be economically rational beings who act according to the incentives they face. A friend of mine, Mario Duran, recently wrote an article about the synthetic grass courts that Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, is giving throughout the country as part of the “Evo Cumple” program. Interestingly, the article pointed out that even though these courts are given and built by the government, most of them have become private property. Throughout Bolivia, Neighborhood Councils, Sportive Leagues and other kinds of social organization now charge between 100 to 250 Bolivianos per game for the use of the fields.

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The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Growing up in 1980s and 90s Russia was not easy. For the first few years of my life three generations of my family lived in a tiny two bedroom flat on the fifth floor of a ten story grey Communist monolith. Living in such close proximity, my grandparents on my mum’s side, my parents, and my sister and I shared a lot, except perhaps privacy. With regular state salary payments being rarer than all the world’s blue moons, my mum forwent many meals to keep my sister and I fed. On the flip side, every year, for the best part of the three months that a typical Russian school summer break lasts, my father’s parents inherited the responsibility of taking care of us, the kids. Their apartment, located in a rural town called Gorodovikovsk in the southern Russian Republic of Kalmykia, where my grandmother still lives, was a little roomier, but it lacked many of the amenities that most people living in developed countries take for granted. We used the communal outdoor, hole-in-the-ground latrine, using only old news pages for toilet paper. Meanwhile, on the count of, at best, an unreliable water supply, we filled up every pot and pan in the kitchen with fresh water from the local well, heating just enough every other day to have a quick “bucket wash” (perhaps this explains why I am still unable to take a shower that lasts longer than a minute).

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December is ‘Inspiration Month’ here at INESAD, so it seems an appropriate time to draw attention to some inspirational figures from Bolivia. Up until recently, the country suffered from a lack of upward social mobility and high inequality, making it virtually impossible for anybody to become successful unless they happened to be born to the right parents. But finally, that seems to be changing.   Read More »

As New Orleans braced itself for the arrival of Hurricane Isaac late in August 2012 the thoughts and good wishes of those far away were and remain with city’s residents. It seemed unjust that the city should be hit again and again when the monumental destruction that the 2005 Hurricane Katrina left in its path, and the subsequently inadequate response of the authorities, was already so devastating for the coastal metropolis. The Katrina crisis shone a bright spotlight on the infrastructural, public services, and general poverty and unemployment problems that have festered unchecked in the city and this spotlight brought with it a tsunami wave of anger. Enough was enough—things had to change. For a few, that meant subduing their frustrations and taking practical action with initiatives to turn the city around.

Liberty’s Kitchen—a social enterprise that is dedicated to transforming the lives of New Orleans’ at-risk youth—is one such project. Read More »

Somewhere in the world there is a social movement unfolding even as we speak: perhaps in India Maoists are engaged in organizing armed opposition to a transnational mining corporation; or possibly members of Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST), are holding a meeting to discuss actions to be taken against the eviction of their supporters from occupied lands outside of São Paolo. Over the past decade, we have seen countless mobilizations of people on regional, national, or even global scales, but despite many of these movements having something to say about development, they are rarely treated with seriousness in relation to development or policy change. Read More »

What exactly leads to development is a topic of great debate in academic and practical circles. Proposed cures for underdevelopment vary from providing infrastructure to enacting large-scale macro-economic reforms. Yet, often, there is little conclusive evidence of many solutions’ consistently marked effects on different countries’ economic prosperity or social and environmental cohesion. One factor that does stand out, which is frequently promoted in reports by the likes of the World Bank, United Nations (UN), the OECD, ActionaAid and even Forbes Magazine as the key to achieving all Millennium Development Goals, is investment in the health, education and equality of women.

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Whether the food industry can play a constructive role in battling public health and environmental problems is a heavily debated question. On the one end, global companies like Coca-Cola are touting their own efforts towards sustainability and are claiming to be making significant inroads. Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argues that, despite their sustainability rhetoric, companies like the agriculture giant Monsanto only damage sustainability efforts because they are driven mainly by profits and encourage unsustainable practices like pesticide-use. Whereas, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Professor Marion Nestle of New York University and Dr. David Ludwig of Harvard University, argue that companies could act in the interest of public health and environment only if guided to do so by consumer demand and public policy and regulation.

Forum for the Future—a global independent non-profit that seeks system-wide solutions to global challenges—takes a different view. Read More »

Last July billionaire Bill Gates was criticized for donating around US$10 million to the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom to fund their research which helps the developing world. Why? Because they work on developing genetically-modified (GM) crops. GM crops receive a lot of publicity. They are cast positively as a potential savior of famine-struck countries, with the potential to be more nutritious, higher-yielding, and resistant to pests and extreme weather conditions. Were this true, then surely there would be very little opposition. So why is there so much controversy? Well, because it has become apparent that achieving these goals comes with a lot of difficulty, and because of the threat of potentially disastrous side-effects. Read More »

This week’s The Economist featured a story on rising global epidemic of obesity that was part of the Special Report on Obesity. I was very enthused by the initial discussion that mirrored much of the analysis that the Development Roast has offered in the past. Yet a grave disappointment ensued when the piece entitled Fat Chance seemed to contradict much of the preceding argument when reaching its conclusion.

The article begins with the now very familiar recounting of the global statistics that show obesity and its accompanying diseases such as diabetes, heart conditions and food-related cancers as the biggest killers worldwide, in both advanced and developing nations. It then went on to admit that such a widespread trend, which is imposing a heavy cost on both public and private purses, as well as causing a reduction in labor productivity, presents a dilemma for a magazine. Read More »

The recent history of quinoa production in Bolivia probably tells the country’s most inspirational agriculture success story.  In the five years between 2006 and 2011 quinoa production increased by 163 percent, from 7,750 metric tons to 20,366 metric tons. During the last decade quinoa prices have also shown an unprecedented increase. The price of the specialty crop ‘royal quinoa’ rose from US$1,245 per metric ton to 2007 and an astonishing US$3,237 per metric ton in 2012.

Quinoa is a grain-like crop that is traditionally cultivated in the most un-hospitable parts of the Andean mountain range. For centuries South Americans living on high altitude Andean plateaus have reaped the benefits of quinoa seeds, but little international attention had been paid to the crop. Read More »