Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

“The world demand for commodities have increased considerably over the last 10 years, owing to the entering of China to the global capitalist economy, and the rapid growth exhibited by this country since then. This has brought about large increases in world prices of natural resources, such as food, energy …

In Bolivia, agricultural land generates on average three times as much GDP per hectare as standing forest (1), which is one of the reasons why the Bolivian government largely ignores the quarter million hectares of illegal deforestation that occurs every year. However, forests provide many valuable functions that are not …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* “Why is it that a child’s death amounts to a tragedy, but the death of millions is merely a statistic?” Patrick McDonald. Human beings depend heavily on ecosystem services for their survival and well-being. Basic needs like drinking water, fresh air, food and construction materials are to a …

The challenges for poor residents in urban areas can be different to those living in rural areas when it comes to achieving basic food security in developing countries. Firstly, they are likely to have less access to – or likely to have access to less – land, thus self-reliance on …

By Paola Barrientos. Neoclassical growth theory predicts convergence among countries with similar structural characteristics (i.e. preferences, technologies, and rates of population growth). In the case of Bolivia and Chile, despite of their differences, they have many common characteristics that could make us think that there should be some sort of …

During the last few years a new economic setting has emerged in the Bolivian economy lead by the fiscal sector that can be summarized by three facts: i) For the first time in history the Bolivian economy has recorded fiscal surpluses several years in a row; ii) there is a …

Bolivia’s current development model relies heavily on non-renewable natural resource extraction (especially natural gas and minerals) and the mining of nutrients from newly deforested soils for agriculture. This kind of activities clearly cannot be sustained forever. However, if the depleted natural capital is converted into other types of productive capital, …

Green National Accounting (1) corrects one of the flaws in conventional national accounting, which is ignoring the important role of nature as a source of inputs into production processes. In some sectors these environmental inputs are very important (e.g. forestry, farming and fishing), while in other sectors they play a …

The Second Bolivian Conference on Development Economics (BCDE 2010) was held in La Paz last week with approximately 150 participants and 55 presenters, including keynote speakers Máximo Torero from IFPRI and Beatriz Armendáriz from Harvard. The principal organizers were the Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD, the Society of Bolivian …

“Money often costs too much.”–Ralph Waldo Emerson – The development community has for years been heralding microcredit as a means to escape poverty, but some very simple math suggests that we need to be cautious about pushing it too much. To do this simple math, let’s compare the life-stories of …