UPDATE: The Knowledge Exchange

While entrepreneurs, civil society and grassroots organizations know best the problems of development in a particular context, they don’t always have access to the resources or expertise to help them evaluate and scale-up projects. At the same time, academic researchers can benefit from better access to practical knowledge from the field. A new DRI program matches development practitioners with academic researchers, by providing free technical assistance to practitioners in exchange for access to the field. Our goal: to improve the quality of development interventions by providing practitioners with the resources and academic expertise to evaluate, replicate and scale-up projects.

For more on the Knowledge Exchange, and to find out how to participate in the program, visit nyudri.org/knowledge-exchange.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: New Ideas Prize

The Development Research Institute is now accepting entries from NYU master’s students for our first New Ideas Prize. This university-wide competition will recognize exceptional work on international development produced by NYU students. Students are invited to submit original research papers, documentary films, or photography projects focused on development in economically poor countries. Each winner will receive a cash prize of $250, will have their work published by DRI, and will be invited to a reception hosted by DRI next semester. The deadline for submissions is December 21, and we will announce the winners at the beginning of the spring semester.

For more on eligibility and submission guidelines, visit nyudri.org/newideas.

(image source)

PUBLICATIONS: Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Best and Worst of Aid Agency Practices

By William Easterly and Claudia WilliamsonWorld Development, Vol. 39, No. 11, pp. 1930-1949 October 2011

Foreign aid critics, supporters, recipients, and donors have produced eloquent rhetoric on the need for better aid practices—has this translated into reality? This paper attempts to monitor the best and worst of aid practices among bilateral, multilateral, and UN agencies. We create aid practice measures based on aid transparency, specialization, selectivity, ineffective aid channels, and overhead costs. We rate donor agencies from best to worst on aid practices. We find that the UK does well among bilateral agencies, the US is below average, and Scandinavian donors do surprisingly poorly. The biggest difference is between the UN agencies, who mostly rank in the bottom half of donors, and everyone else. Average performance of all agencies on transparency, fragmentation, and selectivity is still very poor. The paper also assesses trends in best practices over time—we find modest improvement in transparency and more in moving away from ineffective channels. However, we find no evidence of improvements (and partial evidence of worsening) in specialization, fragmentation, and selectivity, despite escalating rhetoric to the contrary.

Download the paper

Download the accompanying dataset

UPDATE: The AidSpeak Dictionary

By William Easterly This is a sampling of actual posts on Twitter that I requested (@bill_easterly) last weekend for “decodings of aid/development jargon” .  Inspiration was from 40 Publishing Buzzwords, Clichés and Euphemisms Decoded. I don’t necessarily endorse any implied viewpoint, if any.

“beneficiaries” : the people who make it possible for us to be paid by other people @monanicoara

“bottom-up” : don’t ask someone what might work, just make something up instead @thejoeturner

“baseline” : a point which is so low that positive results are the only possible outcome @ANLevine

“accountability for results”: we keep all our promises by  issuing new promises @bill_easterly

“bottoms-up development”: downing single-malt whiskey in one shot at Davos @Arvind11d123

“civil society involvement”: consulting the middle class employee of aUS or European NGO @dangay

 “community capacity building” : teach them what they already know @fauvevivre

“demand-driven approach”: you create the demand and then you respond to it

“empowerment” : what is left when all the quantifiable variables give non significant results @MarianaSarastiM

“entrepreneurial” : vaguely innovative and cool, but definitely nothing to do with the hated “market” @jselanikio

“experienced aid practitioner” : has large number of air miles in account @thejoeturner

“expert” : I read a book about the place on the plane @savo_heleta

“field experience” :  I can’t bear DC anymore @MarianaSarastiM

“gender” : counting how many women attend your meeting @liamswiss

“Global North” : White academics; “Global South” : Indian academics  @Isla_Misty

“innovation” : we’re sexy, you want to be associated with us @DarajaTz

“leverage” : we’re not paying for all of this @katelmax

“low overhead” : volunteers run headquarters @thejoeturner

“low-hanging fruit”:  we were already going to achieve this anyway @Global_ErinH

“mainstreaming” : forgetting @swampcottage

“microfinance” : not as good as sub-prime lending @lippytak

“meetings” : our grant said we had to host an event @Global_ErinH

“per diem”: what we have to pay local officials to attend our meetings @Afrophile

“participatory stakeholders” : people who should solve their own problems @UCGHR

“participation” : the right to agree with preconceived projects or programs @edwardrcarr

“partnering with other institutions” : we’re raising barriers to entry @JustinWolfers

“political will” :  I have no comprehension of the incentives faced by the people who I wish would do stuff I want @m_clem

“practical solutions” : photogenic solutions @thejoeturner

“pro-poor” : the rich know best @james_tooley

“RCT” : research method yielding same results as qualitative work at 10 times the cost –@texasinafrica

“rent-seaking behavior” : everything not nailed to the floor will be stolen- @charcoalproject

“outreach” : intrude @langtry_girl

“ownership” : we held a workshop @dangay

“raise awareness” :  no measurable outcome @jonathan_welle

“scale-up” :  It’s time for follow on grant @HunterHustus

“sensitize” : tell people what to do @zw1tscher

“sustainable” : will last at least as long as the funding @thejoeturner

“tackling root causes of poverty” : repackaging what we’ve already done in a slightly more sexy font @thejoeturner

“UN Goals”: making up targets for problems we don’t understand paid for with money we don’t have @jacobhorner

Notes: I have done some very minor editing for spelling and clarity. 

ARTICLE: Gates a benevolent dictator for public health?

Laura Freschi and Alanna Shaikh for Alliance Magazine, September 2011 edition The public health landscape today looks unquestionably different from how it did in the late 1990s when the Gates Foundation strode on to the field. To its credit, the foundation has brought about a resurgence of interest in global health issues at a time when the cause was running low on energy and funds. Before Gates, global health funding covered little more than HIV and emerging infectious diseases – a bare shadow of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health for All vision of the 1970s. But Gates’ support for global health also raises questions: is it pushing us too much towards simple technological responses to multifaceted problems? With its influence so far-reaching, who will be willing and able to offer objective feedback?

The influx of serious new money (as opposed to the stirring of existing donor pots that often takes place at international conferences) and attention from the Gates Foundation have revitalized the field as a whole. Today, the foundation’s annual spending on global public health – about $1.8 billion – is larger than the WHO’s yearly budget. Donors have started thinking about global health as a broad and important discipline once again. With the launch of Gates’ Grand Challenges Initiative in 2003, some of the world’s best scientific minds turned their efforts to solving the problems of the world’s poorest.

>>Read More (Courtesy of Alliance Magazine.)

VIDEO: Professor Easterly Speaks at the Carnegie Council

Why is honesty so important? Professor Easterly discussed this cardinal value in his own career, and in the context of international development, with Julia Kennedy and Devin T. Stewart at the Carnegie Council on September 15. "People do know a lot about their own problems at their own level," he said. "They can give you feedback on how you're doing, if you are trying to solve their problems from the top, from government. In a democracy, you give feedback on how well, or how badly, the government is doing.

"So individual rights is also a way to mobilize all the knowledge in society that we need to make the economy work. It's the individual that has the particular knowledge so that they know how to run their factory, to employ people, to be a worker themselves, to start new businesses."

Professor Easterly previously discussed Globalization and Creative Capitalism at previous Carnegie Council events.

Watch the video below:

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/78371999]

Or, listen to the podcast:

[audio http://media.carnegiecouncil.org/carnegie/audio/20110915_Easterly_v2.mp3]

>>Ethics Matter: A Conversation with William Easterly (Carnegie Council Website)

ARTICLE: Inception Statistics Revisited

Professor Easterly and Laura Freschi wrote a letter to the Lancet Medical Journal criticizing the methodology in a 193-country study on stillbirths, in which researchers could obtain actual data on stillbirths from only 33 countries and twice modeled the stillbirth estimates for the other countries:

Many will argue that modelled numbers (or in this case, twicemodelled numbers) are better than no numbers at all. To this we ask, better for what, and for whom? We question the wisdom of creating policy based on fi gures with such a tenuous basis in reality. Could the irresponsible lowering of standards on data possibly refl ect an advocacy agenda rather than a scientific agenda, or is it just a coincidence that Save the Children is featured among the authors of the new data?

The correspondence includes a response from the authors of the original study, who argue that "improving data quality and quantity is a high priority but in the meantime modelling is indispensable."

They previously discussed the issue in an April 2011 post on the Aid Watch blog.

Read More: >National, regional, and worldwide estimates of stillbirth rates in 2009 with trends since 1995: a systematic analysis (The Lancet, April 14, 2011) >Inception Statistics (Aid Watch blog, April 18, 2011) >Correspondence published in the Lancet, with the authors' reply (September 3, 2011)

LECTURE: Mapping Africa's Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Africa’s entrepreneurs get far too little credit for their contributions to economic growth, and too little help from the international community to access capital and find partners.  The Kauffman Foundation is using mobile phones to map the evolution ofAfrica’s entrepreneurial networks, and study the factors that help or hinder entrepreneurs.

Mellena Haile, a researcher from the Foundation, spoke about this program, called E-Pulse, at a DRI and Africa House luncheon on August 15. E-Pulse will survey entrepreneurs in over 50 African countries about their business activities via text message. The data will be used to mapAfrica’s “entrepreneurial ecosystems,” and to help entrepreneurs connect with one another.

The Kauffman Foundation’s research in Africa is founded on Expeditionary Economics, which seeks to develops indigenous entrepreneurship and spur economic growth in post-conflict countries.

PODCAST: Professor Easterly on Development and Individual Freedoms at Columbia Panel

What should we do to end world poverty? Not only do we not know the answer to this question, said Professor Easterly, but this is also the wrong question to ask. He joined Yuval Levin (National Affairs magazine), Meir Kohn (Dartmouth) and James Otteson (Yeshiva University) in a panel discussion on “Seeking the Good Life and Raising Others’ Estates” at the Columbia Tikvah-Hertog Summer Institute on Economics and the Common Good. Listen to the podcast to learn more about answer-finding mechanisms, professional skepticism and M. Night Shyamalan’s aid worker doppelganger. [audio http://dri.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/20919/Columbia_SeekingTheGoodLife_081011_EXCERPT.mp3]

>>Download the podcast (25.7 MB)

PUBLICATIONS: Benevolent Autocrats

By William EasterlyDRI Working Paper No. 75 May 2011

Benevolent autocrats are leaders in non-democratic polities who receive credit for high growth. This paper asks two questions: (1) do theory and evidence support the concept of “benevolent autocrats”? (2) Regardless of the answer to (1), why is the “benevolent autocrats” story so popular? This paper’s answer to (1) is no. Most theories of autocracy portray it as a system of strategic interactions rather than simply the unconstrained preferences of the leader.  The principal evidence for benevolent vs. malevolent autocrats is the higher variance of growth under autocracy than under democracy. However, the variance of growth within the terms of leaders swamps the variance across leaders, and more so under autocracy than under democracy. The empirical variance of growth literature has identified many correlates of autocracy as equally plausible determinants of high growth variance. The growth effects of exogenous leader transitions under autocracy are too small and temporary to provide much support for benevolent autocrats. This paper addresses question (2) by analyzing the political economy of development ideas that makes benevolent autocrats a politically convenient concept. It also identifies cognitive biases that would tend to bias perceptions in favor of benevolent autocrats. The answers to (2) do not logically disqualify the benevolent autocrats story, but combined with (1) they suggest much greater skepticism about many claims for benevolent autocrats.

>>Download the paper, “Benevolent Autocrats”

PODCAST: Professor Easterly talks to EconTalk about Growth and Benevolent Autocrats

William Easterly talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the oft-heard claim that poor countries led by autocrats grow faster than poor countries that are democratic. Drawing on a recent paper, “Benevolent Autocrats,” Easterly argues that while some autocracies do indeed grow very quickly, a much greater number do not. Yet, the idea that the messiness of democracy is inferior to a dictatorship remains seductive. Easterly gives a number of arguments for the perennial appeal of autocracy as a growth strategy. The conversation closes with a discussion of the limitations of our knowledge about growth and where that leaves policymakers. [audio http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2011/Easterlybenevolent.mp3]

>>Download the podcast (30.0 MB)

VIDEO: Professor Nyarko at the 2011 Milken Institute Global Conference

In the 50 years since the end of colonialism, wealthy countries have contributed trillions in official development assistance, yet so many African nations have failed to thrive. Much of the funding has been wasted, stolen or misused, often to keep corrupt autocrats in power. Systemic reform is overdue, but what's the best approach? An emerging concept is to facilitate a greater degree of coordination between investors seeking opportunities, host governments trying to attract private capital, and international aid agencies seeking to ensure development aid is spent on projects that will achieve measurable results.

Does this approach increase the potential for success? Could it increase Africa's attractiveness to investors? Can the public interest be served while also improving potential returns for investors?

Prof. Nyarko moderated a panel considering these questions at the Milken Institute's 2011 Global Conference inLos Angeles.  The panel featured Amina Salum Ali, African Union Ambassador to the United States; Mauro De Lorenzo, Vice President of the John Templeton Foundation; Oscar Kashala, President of Union for the Rebuilding of Congo; Kola Masha, Managing Director of Doreo Partners; and Joe Sive, Chairman and CEO of the African Investment Fund.

Visit the Milken Institute website to watch footage of the discussion.

VIDEO: New Directions in Development

 These videos come from DRI's annual conference at the Cooper Union on March 4, 2011. Speakers included DRI co-directors Bill Easterly and Yaw Nyarko, Yale's Chris Blattman, NYU Economics' Raquel Fernandez and NYU Law's Kevin Davis.

Bill Easterly - From Skepticism to Development

Yaw Nyarko - Information Technology and Development

Download Yaw Nyarko's Powerpoint slides here.

Chris Blattman - Does Poverty Lead to Violence?

Download Chris Blattman's Powerpoint slides here.

Raquel Fernandez - Culture Matters

Download Raquel Fernandez's Powerpoint slides here.

Download her working paper, "Does Culture Matter?," here.

Kevin Davis - Law and Development

Download Kevin Davis's Powerpoint slides here.

PICTURES: New Directions in Development

These are photographs from DRI's annual conference at the Cooper Union on March 4, 2011. Presenters included DRI co-directors Bill Easterly and Yaw Nyarko, Yale's Chris Blattman, NYU Economics' Raquel Fernandez and NYU Law's Kevin Davis.  

VIDEO: Intelligence Squared Debate - Aid To Africa Doing More Harm Than Good

In this Intelligence Squared Debate in New York City, Bill Easterly, George Ayittey and David Rieff debate C. Payne Lucas, John McArthur and Gayle Smith on whether aid to Africa is working or failing.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/8533592]

PUBLICATIONS: Democratic Accountability in Development: The Double Standard

By William EasterlySocial Research, Vol. 77, No. 4, pp. 1075-1104 Winter 2010

The Development Establishment today tolerates a shocking double standard on democracy for the rich versus democracy for the poor. Despite both the moral and pragmatic argument for democratic rights for all, development policy discussions give little emphasis to rights for the poor. Worse, influential Western policymakers and thought leaders sing praises of autocrats such as Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, who has strong record of repressing minority groups and political opponents.

Democratic accountability is important to governance, and fundamental in promoting development. To begin with the obvious Civics 101 view, accountability is a crucial mechanism to ensure that government does good and not ill to those affected by its actions. Under democracy, citizens can use many mechanisms -- such as voting, popular protests, and spoken and written criticisms -- to penalize governments that are harming individuals (even if it is only a minority of individuals).

The same mechanisms reward political actors that do good by, for example, supplying public goods. When such mechanisms work, the government is accountable to its citizens. The opposite of accountability is impunity -- the government can do whatever it wants to its citizens without consequences.

>>Download the paper

VIDEO: Peter Singer and Bill Easterly on Bloggingheads TV

In time for the holidays, Professor Easterly and Professor Peter Singer from Princeton debate aid approaches on bloggingheads.tv. Watch video on the Bloggingheads.tv website.

VIDEO: DRI and the John Templeton Foundation

In this interview from the Templeton Foundation, Bill Easterly discusses why we need independent critics to criticize the mainstream aid establishment, and talks about his view of how successful development actually happens.

[vimeo 12647044]

VIDEO: DRI Wins BBVA Award

DRI received the international award for its work helping to ensure that the economic aid rich countries provide to the developing world is better utilized, and for questioning mainstream assumptions in development cooperation, like the idea that more generosity on the part of rich donor countries will have an automatic pay-off in poor country development. The BBVA jury recognized DRI for "its contribution to the analysis of foreign aid provision, and its challenge to the conventional wisdom in development assistance."

Find more information about the award and browse 2009 award winners in other categories at the BBVA foundation website.

DRI Wins BBVA Foundation Award

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/pCCyP4GKB2w&hl=en_US&fs=1&amp]

William Easterly and Yaw Nyarko discuss DRI and the BBVA Foundation Award

[youtube=http://youtu.be/gbdyY8gEHL0]

CONFERENCE MATERIALS: Best and Worst of Aid 2010 (Incentives, Accountability and Effectiveness)

DRI's 2010 annual conference presented new findings, discussions and debates on the best and worst of what happened in aid. The full conference agenda is available here. More presentations and audio clips will be posted as they become available.

Presentations:

Aid and Development Today: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times - William Easterly, NYU, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of DRI

The Best and the Worst of International Efforts on Failed States - Clare Lockhart, CEO, Institute for State Effectiveness

[slideshare id=3525592&doc=thebestandtheworst-100323141946-phpapp02]

What Works and What Does Not Work in Aid, and the Transformative Challenges Ahead - Isabel Guerrero, Vice President, South Asia Region, World Bank

Thoughts on Aid - Andrew Mwenda, Founder and Owner, The Independent

Historical Lessons: What did Development Aid Do Best? What Did it Do Worst? - Lant Pritchett, Harvard Kennedy School

[slideshare id=3478075&doc=pritchettthebestofaidnewslides-100319094830-phpapp02]

Coverage on the Aid Watch Blog: March 15, 2010 - Worst in Aid: The Grand Prize March 17, 2010 - Best in Aid: The Grand Prize March 22, 2010 - How is the aid industry like a piano recital? A defense of aid March 31, 2010 - Three Afghan Success Stories