Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

“Money often costs too much.” Ralph Waldo Emerson If children were to learn just one thing in school, it should be The Power of Compound Interest. If everybody understood and applied that simple principle, poverty could be permanently eradicated in one life-time. Let me explain how it works by comparing …

The perception that women are disadvantaged and discriminated against in Bolivia is almost universal. Achieving gender equality is of so high priority that it is very difficult to get a research proposal funded, unless you promise to analyze the gender dimension of whatever topic you are interested in. But is …

Economists usually make the simplifying assumption that salary is roughly equal to productivity, but that is at most acceptable for informal and self-employed people who are not exploited by an employer, not subsidized by tax-payer money, do not exploit non-renewable natural resources, and do not pay significant taxes. A few …

Giving birth the natural way (vaginally) is extremely painful and often inconvenient, which is why some women decide on a planned Cesarean section instead. According to the latest national health survey in Bolivia (2003), 47.1% of mothers in the richest quintile have C-sections, while this only happens to 4.0% of …

I recently came by a simple but astonishing experiment that shows you how easily you can be deceived. If I told you too much about it, I would ruin it for you, so please do the experiment yourself before reading my comments. You will have to watch a short video …

At this special anniversary of the Monday Morning Development Newsletter (75 issues), I would like to thank the faithful readers for all the comments, ideas and encouragements you have been sending over the years. Without all the positive feedback we have been receiving, the Newsletter certainly would not have survived …

“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.” Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?'” Don Marquis Most poor people work in the informal sector in precarious, low-paying jobs with no forms of social security. So key to …

“100 years from now we will know that the biggest crime against humanity was vaccines.” Guylaine Lanctot, MD In Bolivia, vaccination rates depend strongly on the education level of the mother. More educated mothers are more likely to have their children vaccinated than less educated mothers (1). In United States the …

By Fabian Soria Poverty has been created by the economic and social system that we have designed for the world. It is the institutions that we have built, and feel so proud of, which created poverty. It is the concepts we developed to understand the reality around us, made us …

In China, when you are one in a million – there are 1300 other people just like you. Microsoft saying in Beijing Globalization has recently shifted into warp drive, integrating the world and increasing competition in a way we have never experienced before. Many services that used to be non-tradable (like …