Development
Improving Health Outcomes in Rwanda
Neal Emery’s recent article in The Atlantic highlights Rwanda’s progress in significantly improving its health outcomes over the last decade. Emery claims that some analyses over-state the foreign aid effect—which attributes the successes to a health system completely rebuilt by …
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Paul Collier on African Agriculture and Urbanization
In a recent review of Roger Thurow’s new book, The Last Hunger Season, Paul Collier asks: “Why is Africa so dependent on imported food, despite being the least urbanized and most land-abundant continent?” Though the …
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Return to Sender
The quality of government tends to improve with growth in per capita income. The chart below shows income per capita for 166 countries in 2010 plotted against a Government Effectiveness score, one of the World …
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City-Based Visas
American cities like Baltimore, Dayton, and Detroit are eager to attract immigrants in an effort to stem population losses. And there’s little doubt that many foreign families would happily move in if given the chance. …
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Nathan Nunn on Culture and Economic Development
What explains differences in income per capita across former European colonies? This question has important implications for our understanding of what causes economic growth. In a recent working paper, Nathan Nunn reconsiders two possible explanations. Acemoglu …
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Joseph Young on Ungoverned Spaces
The term failed state is a failed concept. That’s Joseph Young blogging at Political Violence @ a Glance. He offers a useful corrective for the common notion of a failed state, that of “ungoverned spaces.” Most countries …
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The Roots and Shoots of Economic Development
Chris Blattman points to an interesting new literature review. It suggests that “longterm genealogical links across populations play an important role in explaining the transmission of technological and institutional knowledge and the diffusion of economic …
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European City-States and Cardwell’s Law
Mark Koyama points to an interesting new working paper by NYU political scientist David Stasavage. Using population growth as a proxy for economic growth, Stasavage examines the effect of political autonomy on city population growth …
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