Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

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 …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* Returns to education in Bolivia have been dropping steadily over the last 15 years, to the point that some researchers have argued that education no longer pays[i]. Nevertheless, a record number of young people are in school or university. Are they all wasting their time? In …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* The World’s most famous equation is undoubtedly Einstein’s E=mc2, and while it stipulates that the total amount of energy in the Universe is constant and cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed, I will argue that the harnessing of energy for human purposes is what has …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* Bolivia has recently changed from a low income country to a lower-middle income country, and with that increase in incomes the disease burden has also changed. In 1990, Bolivia’s disease burden was dominated by infectious diseases and maternal health problems (pink group), which is typical of …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” William Gibson The scale of inequality in this world is almost unfathomable. In 2013, the average inhabitant of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Qatar earned more in one day than what the average inhabitant of Malawi and …