Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

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 …

Most of the people who write about poverty have never themselves been poor (including myself). This is not so strange, since the poor are too poor to write, even if some of them have the ability. They do not have the surplus of energy and time alone that is required …

It is not quite clear which is the best way to use exceptional oil and gas revenues (1), but the worst way is probably for the government to use expected future revenues as collateral to borrow money. This would not only increase inequality and poverty during the boom (see How …

There are many gigantic problems in the world (hunger, diseases, wars, corruption, lack of safe water, pollution, climate change, etc.), but there are also a great many efforts to solve these problems (hundreds of professional development organizations, thousands of NGOs, millions of volunteers, billions of dollars of foreign aid). So, …

“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.” Charles Franklin Kettering “Some people change their ways when they see the light; others when they feel the heat.” Caroline Schroeder It has happened to most of us, even the poorest of the poor. We used to feel …

The Precautionary Principle basically says that we should not do something unless we are sure it will have no harmful or potentially harmful side-effects. On the face of it, that may sound reasonable, but in reality it is a one-sided consideration, which completely ignores the benefits or potential benefits of …

“Everything has its limits – iron ore cannot be educated into gold” Mark Twain, 1835-1910 Even if you could educate iron ore into gold, it would not necessarily be a good idea to do it. Steel is incredibly versatile and useful and we need a lot of it, whereas gold is …

Since the main purpose of education is to raise the future income generating capacity of the students, it will take several decades before we can truly know how well our present education system is doing. Past experience is of little help as both the education system and the structure of …

The potential benefits of a more integrated World are huge, but unevenly distributed. Globalization requires adjustment, flexibility, mobility and change, but many people are ill-equipped to handle change and unable to turn change into new opportunities. The ability to take advantage of change is highly correlated with education, which is …

For many years I thought that the reason why natural resource abundance could turn into a curse was that people and governments reacted in an irrational and counter-productive way when confronted with new natural resource wealth. That seemed logical because it didn’t seem possible that additional money distributed fairly and …