Is Papua New Guinea the New Niger Delta?

The New York Times reports:

In 2014, ExxonMobil is scheduled to start shipping natural gas through a 450-mile pipeline, then on to Japan, China and other markets in East Asia. But the flood of revenue, which is expected to bring Papua New Guinea $30 billion over three decades and to more than double its gross domestic product, will force a country already beset by state corruption and bedeviled by a complex land tenure system to grapple with the kind of windfall that has paradoxically entrenched other poor, resource-rich nations in deeper poverty.

Will Papua New Guinea’s Southern Highlands harness these revenues to grow economically and reduce poverty, joining the ranks of natural resource success stories like Chile and Botswana? Or will it instead follow in the path of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, where frustration over lost livelihoods and environmental devastation flares up into kidnappings, oil theft and sabotage? Or the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, a failed World Bank project that has become a cautionary tale against investing in extractive industries in a weak institutional environment?

The article doesn’t provide much cause for optimism:

While the West’s richest companies are used to seeking natural resources in the world’s poorest corners, few places on earth seem as ill prepared as [Papua New Guinea’s] Southern Highlands to rub shoulders with ExxonMobil. The most impoverished region in one of the world’s poorest countries, it went unexplored by Westerners until the 1930s…

…[L]ocal leaders worry about the continuing inflow of guns into an area with almost no government presence, and no paved roads, electricity, running water, banks or post offices. They worry that the benefits of the gas project will fall short of expectations, begetting a generation of young men who will train their anger on ExxonMobil.

PNG’s finance minister says that gas revenues will be invested in sovereign wealth funds, a strategy advocated by the OECD and used by Norway and Abu Dhabi to guard their oil revenues for the future, smooth volatility, and protect against Dutch Disease.

If there were a template for a country that could beat the odds and defeat the resource curse, it might look something like this: Strong institutions. A functioning democracy. An independent judiciary and a free press. A demographically homogenous society.  A diversified economy, with some strong, non-resource constituency that will fight to protect itself against resource distortions.

Unfortunately, this isn’t PNG. The largely rural, fantastically diverse island nation, home to hundreds of different ethnic groups and one-tenth of the world’s languages, is saddled with a weak, ineffective and corrupt government. Comparing perceptions of corruption, ease of doing business, and measures of freedom, Papua New Guinea ranks a lot closer to Chad and Nigeria than it does to Botswana and Chile.

The few pictures in the NYT’s accompanying slide show focus on the challenges of development in PNG, while they hint at the beauty that’s at stake.

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Photo credit

The Mystery of Economic Growth

The New York Times is as befuddled as the rest of us:

Development is an unpredictable business. ...One of the central questions facing India — and, indeed, the developing world as a whole — is why some people, or countries, move ahead, while others fall behind.

For all its temptations, however, the search for a policy toolkit toward development is fraught with pitfalls. Over the last 60 years or so, the international development community has come up with model after model, theory after theory, in search of just such a toolkit.

It has, at various times, promoted the benefits of huge, often conditional, inputs of foreign aid, the rigors of shock therapy, the virtues of free trade and the promise of the Washington Consensus (a set of policies prescribed and often imposed by agencies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury).

The author,  Akash Kapur, has superb taste in economists and publications:

Yet for all the efforts to come up with a general theory of development, the truth is that economic growth remains something of a mystery. This is the conclusion of a recent anthology, “What Works in Development?”, published by the Brookings Institution. The essays lead to the conclusion that there is no clear way to ease poverty, and — as the editors, William Easterly and Jessica Cohen, state in their introduction — “no consensus on ‘what works’ for growth and development.”

Mr. Easterly, a former World Bank economist, has elsewhere shown that there is little correspondence between a nation’s economic growth and the extent to which it follows international development prescriptions. Analyzing data for 1980 to 2002, he found that countries that grew the fastest received considerably less foreign aid and spent less time under I.M.F. tutelage than those that grew the slowest. This doesn’t mean that following the orthodoxy harms development, but it does suggest that rapid growth is possible without international aid or advice.

Unfortunately, this could create open season for ignoring Econ 101 (oops!):

Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank ... spoke of the need for “rethinking” development economics and “a questioning of prevailing paradigms.”

The rise of Southeast Asia (and more recently China... represented a repudiation of textbook views about the proper role of the government and of the relationship between markets and the state.

India’s recent growth, too, can be seen as a result of a determination to follow its own path. ... {to} contravene the conventional model.

It's not going to be easy to conclude after all this, but the article gamely finds a constructive note:

Ultimately, it is... ability to accommodate context and local detail, that works best in development. The type of grinding, sweaty work it implies — time in the field, in villages and on farms, learning about cultures and social structures — is certainly less glamorous than designing overarching theories to rid the world of poverty.

But poverty is an unglamorous business. It is only fitting that the most effective way to address it would be through small, low-key and often backbreaking interventions.

Good, as long as we also recognize the tremendous poverty-reducing accomplishments of another grinding, sweaty, backbreaking, context-sensitive group  -- private entrepreneurs.

Another fake numbers problem on a topic Americans (and NYT) care about even more than world hunger

In the wake of Aid Watch's posts on made up world hunger numbers, the NYT revealed today another scandalous made up numbers problem in another area:

{The methodology} is vilified by professional mathematicians .... {which} turned {the numbers' creators} into the laughingstock of the numbers community.

It is bad enough that one analytical mathematician, the U.C. Irvine professor Hal S. Stern, has called for the statistical community to boycott participation...

{another expert said} “This isn’t a sincere effort to use math to find the answer at all. It’s clearly an effort to use math as a cover for whatever you want to do. ...It’s just nonsense math.”

{Outside evaluators} cannot {fully check the numbers}...because of lack of transparency...Three of the {numbers creators} said the {reporting agency} did not verify the numbers they turned in.

All this fury is directed at a number that Americans DO passionately care about --

college football rankings.

See the full article in the Sports section of the NYT. To my knowledge the NYT  has not run a story on the equally dubious methodology in numbers the NYT reports about areas that we readers apparently care about much less: worldwide maternal mortality, world hunger, and global poverty.

Hey UN Peacekeepers--Congo, we need to talk

Vivek Nemana is a graduate student in economics at New York University and works for DRI.

Jeff Gettleman has an unnerving piece in the New York Times on the inability of UN peacekeeping forces to protect civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In one particularly gruesome consequence last July, rebels gang-raped 242 people (including a one month-old baby and a 110 year-old woman, according to the Guardian) in the village of Luvungi, just 11 miles from where dozens of peacekeepers were stationed. Gettleman writes:

Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task: protecting civilians…many critics contend that nowhere else in the world has the United Nations invested so much and accomplished so little.

On the other hand, David Bosco at Foreign Policy chalks it up to problems of perception:

part of peacekeeping's image problem is that it's asked to handle some of the world's worst conflicts and then given very little credit for moving situations from awful to merely bad.

And Jason Stearns writes in the CS Monitor that while the peacekeeping force may have been negligent, the main problem is corruption within the Congolese army:

So long as ... impunity within the army reigns, these kinds of abuses will continue to happen. Just look at all of officers recommended for sanctions in UN Group of Experts reports and various human rights documents. Almost none have been arrested.

These explanations gloss over a simple necessity that MONUSCO, and many previous failed PKOs and aid efforts, fundamentally lacked: a reliable system of communication. Despite $1.35 billion a year and 18,000 peacekeepers, correspondence between Congolese civilians, peacekeeping troops, and UN officials remains deficient. As Shakespeare could have told the UN, failures in communication between the parts lead to easily-preventable blunders which lead to tragedy.

For instance, Gettleman reports that because “there is no cellphone service in the area or electricity, it is not always simple to know when there is an attack. The United Nations…is now trying to install solar-powered high-frequency radios in some villages.”

Could someone please explain why, if there was no cellphone service or electricity, and peacekeepers had been operating in remote areas like Luvungi for 10 years, these radios weren’t installed before the UN embarrassed itself a little earlier?

But that’s not all. Marcel Stoessel, Oxfam’s country director in DRC, told Voice of America that many of the peacekeepers do not speak French, and do not have interpreters. That means that villagers often can’t inform peacekeepers about major threats or problems.

The Guardian wrote that MONUSCO insists it didn’t know about the attacks for more than a week, adding, “Two UN officials in Kinshasa told the Associated Press they heard it from media reports, even though the UN’s small civil affairs office in Walikale is charged with protecting civilians.”

In fact villagers did warn the peacekeepers about a coming attack, but their entreaties were lost in translation – the interpreter-less peacekeepers dismissed it as a false alarm.

While many things can complicate a peace-keeping operation, we shouldn’t excuse the UN for failing on something as simple as installing radios or hiring interpreters.

In memoriam, Linda Norgrove, humanitarian in Afghanistan

The New York Times reports:

A Scottish aid worker who was taken hostage two weeks ago by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan was killed by her captors early Saturday during an unsuccessful rescue raid, according to the British Foreign Office.

The aid worker, Linda Norgrove, 36, was regional director of a jobs program financed by the United States Agency for International Development for Afghanistan’s eastern region.

Former colleagues described her as a person of enormous warmth and kindness who was deeply committed to helping people in poor areas of the world and who had spent years in Peru and Laos as well as in Afghanistan.

Ms. Norgrove loved Afghanistan from the first time she arrived in 2005 on a United Nations mission, colleagues said. While many United Nations workers stay for a year or two, she stayed for more than three years working on environmental programs and helping to administer an alternative livelihoods program for farmers in poppy farming regions.

In her latest job she was the only expatriate in the Jalalabad office of DAI, directing about 200 Afghan professionals and coordinating with Afghan ministries and local companies. Sensitive to local tradition, she always wore the long, loose tunic and trousers known as a shalwar kameez and covered her hair with a large scarf. “I’ve seen few people among Afghan and Muslim people like her,” said a man who worked with her who gave his name as Bakhtiar. “She was very kind, very helpful, a lovely lady, a very respectful woman.”

Deepest condolences and sympathies to Linda Norgrove's family and friends.

Government warns against global travel and/or staying at home

UPDATE 1PM: let's be fair to our beleagured security officials (see end of post) The NYT correctly mocks the new US government travel alert:

Where is the threat? Europe. What is the target? Subways, railways, aircraft, ships or any “tourist infrastructure.”

The government's cluelessness is even more breathtaking once we include two simple truths about risk:

(1) a warning covering an extremely broad area implies the risk in any one location is very low.

(2) risk must always be judged relatively, not absolutely. How does the risk of travel in Europe compare to the risk of staying at home? At home, you are likely at greater risk from a much more dangerous group than Al Qaeda: your fellow drivers every time you take the road. In Europe, you won't be driving as much as you traipse through picturesque Euro-sites.

Oh, wait, you will be driving more than usual because the government also tells you that --  if you are foolish enough to brave Europe -- you should avoid the safest forms of transportation: subways, railways, aircraft. It's obvious you should minimize risk by using non-seat-belt-equipped tiny taxis made out of aluminum and cardboard piloted by speeding cabdrivers.

What point is Professor Aid Watch making with this post today? Perhaps that we should worry about any government  this stupid about elementary probability theory when it takes on any other areas that require risk management such as just about everything. Maybe some tax money should be spent on economists, statisticians, and mathematicians giving probability courses to government officials?

UPDATE: let's give our security officials a break and exempt them from considering other risks of everyday life, so the Europe alert should be compared only to security at home -- where the threat level is also on high alert (either  YELLOW: SIGNIFICANT RISK OF TERRORIST ATTACK or for airline flights it is ORANGE: HIGH RISK OF TERRORIST ATTACK.)

Could our government kindly clarify WHICH it is recommending: that we should be attacked at home or in Europe?

Osama Bin Laden, aid expert

From the New York Times:

We are in need of a big change in the method of relief work because the number of victims is great due to climate changes in modern times

Lessons after the Meles speech at Columbia: Let Ethiopians debate Ethiopia

It's sure was nice to see mainly Ethiopians vigorously participating in a debate about Ethiopia, in contrast to the usual Old White Men debating Africa. The Meles visit to Columbia had the unintentional effect of promoting this debate.  We were very happy at Aid Watch to have had the privilege of turning over our  little corner of the web to host some of this debate, and then just get out of the way. Here's more in the aftermath of the Meles speech:

Africa Didn't Ask You (honestly):

New School Thoughts on Africa:

(both of the above are students in the class of New School Prof Sean Jacobs, who founded the group blog Africa is a Country)

There are two blog posts on HuffPo from Professor Alemayehu Mariam: Veni, Vidi, Orator, Fugio! Mr. Zenawi Goes to College!

Committee to Protect Journalists blog: As Zenawi speaks, editors are grilled in Ethiopia

Columbia Spectator: World Leaders site raises eyebrows Columbia’s invitation to Zenawi sparks outrage

Heated debate with John McArthur on MDGs and accountability

In 2000, nearly every country in the world made a promise to achieve a set of eight goals, including poverty reduction, women’s empowerment and universal primary education by 2015. How far have we gotten? Host Michel Martin speaks with two opposing voices about the progress made this far: John McArthur, CEO of Millennium Promise, and William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University.

Listen to the interview on NPR's Tell Me More. Once in the media player, the segment is called "UN Convenes to Assess Global Progress"- it's 12 minutes long.

The Millennium Development Goal that really does work has been forgotten

UPDATE 12 noon: this  is a dueling oped with Sachs on ft.com, debate has moved on and even some agreement (see end of post) from a column in the on-line Financial Times today ; for ungated access and a picture of the handsome author go here. The Millennium Development Goals tragically misused the world’s goodwill to support failed official aid approaches to global poverty and gave virtually no support to proven approaches. Economists such as Jeffrey Sachs might argue that the system can be improved by ditching bilateral aid and moving towards a “multi-donor” approach modelled on the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But current experience and history both speak loudly that the only real engine of growth out of poverty is private business, and there is no evidence that aid fuels such growth.

Of the eight goals, only the eighth faintly recognises private business, through its call for a “non-discriminatory trading system”. This anodyne language refers to the scandal of rich countries perpetuating barriers that favour a tiny number of their businesses at the expense of impoverished millions elsewhere. Yet the trade MDG received virtually no attention from the wider campaign, has seen no action, and even its failure has received virtually no attention in the current MDG summit hoopla.

This is all the more misguided because trade-fuelled growth not only decreases poverty, but also indirectly helps all the other MDGs. Yet in the US alone, the violations of the trade goal are legion. US consumers have long paid about twice the world price for sugar because of import quotas protecting about 9,000 domestic sugar producers. The European Union is similarly guilty.

Equally egregious subsidies are handed out to US cotton producers, which flood the world market, depressing export prices. These hit the lowest-cost cotton producers in the global economy, which also happen to be some of the poorest nations on earth: Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad.

According to an Oxfam study, eliminating US cotton subsidies would “improve the welfare of over one million West African households – 10 million people – by increasing their incomes from cotton by 8 to 20 per cent”.

Brahima Outtara, a small cotton farmer in Logokourani, Burkina Faso, described the status quo to the aid agency a few years ago: “Cotton prices are too low to keep our children in school, or to buy food and pay for health.”

To be fair, the US government has occasionally tried to promote trade with poor countries, such as under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a bipartisan effort over the last three presidents to admit African exports duty free. Sadly, however, even this demonstrates the indifference of US trade policy towards the poor.

The biggest success story was textile exports from Madagascar to the US – but the US kicked Madagascar out of the AGOA at Christmas 2009. The excuse for this tragic debacle was that Madagascar was failing to make progress on democracy; an odd excuse given the continued AGOA eligibility of Cameroon, where the dictator Paul Biya has been in power for 28 violent years. Angola, Chad and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo are also still in. The Madagascan textile industry, meanwhile, has collapsed.

In spite of all this, the great advocacy campaign for the millennium goals still ignores private business growth from trade, with a few occasional exceptions such as Oxfam. The burst of advocacy in 2005 surrounding the Group of Eight summit and the Live 8 concerts scored a success on the G8 increasing aid, but nothing on trade.

The UN has continuously engaged US private business on virtually every poverty-reducing MDG except the one on trade that would reduce poverty-increasing subsidies to US private business. And while the UN will hold a “private sector forum” on September 22 as part of the MDG summit, the website for this forum makes no mention of rich country trade protection.

The US government, for its part, announced recently its “strategy to meet the millennium development goals”. The proportion of this report devoted to the US government’s own subsidies, quotas and tariffs affecting the poor is: zero. News coverage reflects all this – using Google News to search among thousands of articles on the millennium goals over the past week, the number that mention, say, “cotton subsidies” or “sugar quotas” is so far: zero.

It is already clear that the goals will not be met by their target date of 2015. One can already predict that the ruckus accompanying this failure will be loud about aid, but mostly silent about trade. It will also be loud about the failure of state actions to promote development, but mostly silent about the lost opportunities to allow poor countries’ efficient private businesspeople to lift themselves out of poverty

UPDATE: this was a dueling piece with an oped by Sachs today on FT.com.

One of us also got a prestigious slot in the print edition of FT :>)

Surprising new agreement with Sachs, where he says:

{Bilateral aid doesn't work because it's} "largely unaccountable," "programmes are scattered among many small efforts," {and it creates mainly an} "endless spectacle of visiting dignitaries from donor countries."

Continuing disagreement with Sachs when he says:

The most exciting example {of success} is the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria. ...while a decade ago all three diseases were running out of control, now all are being reined in with millions of lives saved.

Jeff, could you clarify a bit what you mean saying that AIDS is "being reined in" when for every 100 people added to AIDS treatment, 250 people are newly infected with HIV?

India tells UK to turn off the aid tap already

Reported yesterday in the English language daily newspaper the Indian Express*:

The External Affairs Ministry has instructed the Finance Ministry to inform London that India will not accept further aid from next April...

“…[I]t would be better if our decision not to avail any further DFID assistance with effect from 1st April 2011 could be conveyed to the British side in an appropriate manner at the earliest,” [Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao] wrote to Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla.

Ahead of Cameron’s visit, India had considered rejecting DFID offer in view of the “negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID”.

Welcome to the paradox of aid to India. On the one hand, the World Bank still classifies India as a “lower middle income” country. With a per capita GNI hovering around $1000, it is home to one-third of the world’s poor, and 75 percent of its population lives on less that $2 per day.

On the other hand, India is the world’s 11^th largest economy. It has a space program, a nuclear weapons program, and it is projected to grow by 9 percent this year and 8 percent the next.

At the same time that India is telegraphing its readiness to lessen its dependence on official aid, it is also positioning itself as a donor, using its aid money just as traditional donors do, to gain friends and influence among its neighbors. Though no one knows exactly how much aid India gives out (it does not have one central development agency, nor does it report aid statistics to the OECD) India recently offered a $1 billion loan package to Bangladesh and announced $25 million to aid Pakistan’s flooded areas.

Over the last decade, India has consistently been the largest recipient of the UK’s aid, receiving some $3.3 billion since 2001. But last month, we learned of a major change in Britain’s criteria to allocate aid, requiring that aid projects make “the maximum possible contribution to national security.” The UK development secretary has basically admitted that this means places of current military-strategic interest, like Afghanistan, are in, while holdovers from colonial- and Cold War eras, like India, are out.

Apparently, India got this memo as well and has decided to preempt UK cuts by announcing that India no longer needs the aid anyway, thank you very much.

*Thanks to reader Luke Seidl for the tip.

Constructivist cartography

The development blogosphere recently lit up with news of South Sudan's plan to rebuild some of its urban centers in the shape of various animals.

The plan elicited no shortage of guffaws, as is appropriate. But in the interest of maintaining AidWatch's contrarian reputation, this post argues that we should be careful about focusing our ridicule on the Sudanese. Criticism should to be leveled at the appropriate target: cartography! constructivism.

Cartography actually suffers from the same schizophrenia that besets economics. At its best, it provides striking depictions of and keen insights into the bottom-up forces shaping social reality. (Even the burgeoning subdiscipline of cartozoology--obviously salient to the Sudanese plan--usually focuses on this important descriptive work.)

But, like economics, cartography has also been employed as a tool of central planners. The Sudanese are not alone in having put to paper visions of grandeur that seem goofy upon reflection. At least one such cartographical monument to the hubris of constructivist planning actually exists: Evita City in Argentina.

The point is this: we can and should mock the absurdity of the Sudanese scheme. But it should be mocked for its faith in central planning. Reinforced stereotypes of incompetent African rulers are at their most harmful when they serve as an excuse for wealthy governments and international agencies to throw their weight around, for that merely replaces domestic planners with foreign planners. These maps are a fine example of the absurdity of constructivism and the demeaning character of collectivism; it would be shame for them to contribute to more of the same.

Besides, I'm less worried about actual cartographical collectivism than the figurative kind.

Pete Boettke: economist extraordinaire

The WSJ has a well-deserved, laudatory profile of Peter Boettke of George Mason University. The Journal stresses mainly his role in the Hayek vs. Keynes debate. I have learned from him in the area of Hayek vs. central planning, the subject more relevant to my own interests in long-run development. He is also a generous colleague and friend. Congrats, Pete!

This just in: there was a flood in Pakistan

We have chronicled here on Aid Watch how media coverage of disasters influences disasters, and how late the US media has been to the story of the disastrous flood in Pakistan, with apparently anemic donor response as a result. Puzzlement deepened this morning at 7:30 am when I picked up my NYT off my doorstep and saw the four column front-page headline: Much of Pakistan's Progress is Lost in Its Floodwaters.  The NYT devotes not only the huge front-page space to the flood, but also two prime pages inside of the first section. Could somebody please explain the mysterious alchemy by which a tragedy going on for a month already finally become a huge story?

In praise of the NYT, the story is great, and also has great pictures and maps like this one shown here. So please go back and read Laura's many posts on Pakistan flooding.

Laura in NYT debate on Can Aid Buy Taliban's Love?

NYT DEBATE: Can Flood Aid Weaken the Taliban in Pakistan?

Or is it more likely that extremist groups will capitalize on the chaos created by the disaster?

Laura Freschi's answer: aid doesn't help with the Taliban, but give anyway.

The idea that flood aid will change Pakistani perceptions about the U.S. in a lasting and meaningful way is both unproven and based on simplistic, even condescending assumptions about the beneficiaries of America’s aid.

....

There may well be cases in which U.S. disaster aid could be used to promote security objectives, but we don’t know enough to say that it will now in Pakistan. And if ever there was a time for U.S. aid to demonstrate that it is not always and everywhere only about U.S. strategic interests, this would be a good time. As the floods continue to endanger lives and livelihoods in Pakistan, the U.S. should give quickly, fairly and generously. Not because we want something in exchange, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Media now cares about Pakistan; aid workers’ surprising lack of confidence in Afghan army protection; North Korean jeans

Now abundant coverage of Pakistan flood, is it making up for previous non-story? Sorry, Karzai, Aid workers do want to keep their own guards in Afghanistan, as compared to corrupt and incompetent offical Afghan forces.

I always argue that comparative advantage is surprising, but even so was caught off guard by newly fashionable North Korean jeans.

Is it OK to neglect disaster in Pakistan because it’s not a tourist destination? If not, see below

The latest story on the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan is about how it hasn’t been a story. Compared to the response to the Haitian earthquake, media coverage of the Pakistan floods has been paltry. While news coverage isn’t correlated with need, it does have a major effect on the amount of disaster relief aid given. An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy yesterday reported that eleven US charities had so far raised only $5 million for Pakistan flood relief, compared to $560 million raised by 39 US groups in the two and a half weeks after the Haiti earthquake.

The difference in initial death toll reports may be one obvious explanation. The early figures for Haiti were 200,000 lives taken, compared to the 1,600 people reported to have died so far in Pakistan. But less than ten percent of the variation in amount of TV news coverage given to foreign natural disasters can be explained by severity, according to one academic study.

The same study found that one third of the variation in how much TV attention a disaster gets is explained by how popular the affected country is with US tourists. Sadly for the flood survivors, Pakistan is nowhere on the list of top destinations for US travelers in Asia and the outlook’s not great: the World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan 113 out of 133 countries in its latest Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report.

If you think that popularity with holiday-makers is a fair way to allocate disaster relief, no problem. For the rest of you, accepting the status quo may not be so attractive. In Pakistan, estimates of people affected by the floods—who may have already lost their homes, their belongings or their livelihoods, and who now lack basic services—are at 20 million. UN officials have recently been predicting a “second wave of deaths” from water-borne diseases as the flooding continues and people remain without clean water, food and medicine. Children and the very poor are among the most vulnerable.

For individual donors wanting to help, some advice:

1. Give to an established organization already on the ground and with experience working locally.
2. Give cash, not goods. Pakistan is far away and shipping items there is expensive. With cash, organizations can buy what they need closer to the disaster site.
3. Don’t earmark your donation, but give to an organization that you trust to allocate your money wisely.

Also check out this more comprehensive set of guidelines from Good Intentions Are Not Enough.

Ideas on where and how to give:

• One reader wrote in about perceptions that there are no Pakistani NGOs participating in the relief efforts, or that all of them are inherently corrupt. She countered that organizations such as the Edhi Foundation and Islamic Relief (which is an international NGO but has worked in Pakistan for many years) have solid reputations in Pakistan and abroad and have been effective in the past in getting aid to where it is most needed.
• Hillary Clinton announced last week that Americans can text the word "SWAT" to the number 50555 to donate $10 to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide tents, clothing, food, clean water and medicine to Pakistan.
• The Global Giving website has a list and description of their partner organizations working on flood relief.
• BRAC is the largest non-profit based in the developing world (it was launched in Bangladesh in 1972) and it is accepting donations through its US-based branch.
• Tonic and Interaction both have lists of organizations accepting donations for flood relief.

Feel free to add others in the comments.

Why can't leading conservative magazine understand freedom?

Found this  mysterious transmission on a robot named R2D2 Twitter from  joshuafoust: "National Review Online endorses authoritarian capitalism. Help us, Obi Wan @bill_easterly, you're our only hope!" I won't let you down, Leia&Luke AKA @joshuafoust...  The bizarre article in question is titled China Teaches the U.S. Lessons about Economic Freedom. The argument seems roughly to be that China's rapid growth is explained by its positive change in economic freedom after 1978. Throw in a few qualifiers, and I would agree. Then things get bizarre: the article notes that after 2003, there was negative change in Chinese economic freedom, but says it had no effect on China's growth. Next it argues there was a negative change in freedom under Obama, which WILL have a devastating effect on the US growth rate, which for unexplained reasons responds differently than China's. The punchline:

Where economic freedom expands, growth follows. Where economic freedom is stifled, economies stagnate. Sadly, China’s former leaders understood this better than do its current leaders, or America’s.

--or better than the author, one might add. And should we maybe give 1 or 2 Brownie points to America's leaders for not shooting and imprisoning peaceful dissidents? And maybe America's leaders understand better than the leading conservative magazine the indispensable link between political and economic freedom understood by Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek (perhaps this is why the latter wrote an essay "why I am not a conservative?").

Sorry, leading conservative magazine, as long as you are dishonest or incoherent about the f-word, you're not making any converts in these parts.

Rodrik on The Myth of Authoritarian Growth

I really agree with Dani's great article on this (HT Chris Blattman).

When we look at systematic historical evidence... we find that authoritarianism buys little in terms of economic growth. For every authoritarian country that has managed to grow rapidly, there are several that have floundered. For every Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, there are many like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo.

Democracies ... provide much greater economic stability, measured by the ups and downs of the business cycle. They are better at adjusting to external economic shocks (such as terms-of-trade declines or sudden stops in capital inflows). They generate more investment in human capital – health and education. And they produce more equitable societies.

Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, ultimately produce economies that are as fragile as their political systems....

At first sight, China seems to be an exception. ... Even though it has democratized some of its local decision-making, the Chinese Communist Party maintains a tight grip on national politics and the human-rights picture is marred by frequent abuses.

But China also remains a comparatively poor country. Its future economic progress depends in no small part on whether it manages to open its political system to competition, in much the same way that it has opened up its economy. Without this transformation, the lack of institutionalized mechanisms for voicing and organizing dissent will eventually produce conflicts that will overwhelm the capacity of the regime to suppress. Political stability and economic growth will both suffer.

The case of USAID and the flying suitcases

My Wall Street Journal column today (here is link to ungated version).