I thought this was a very interesting and readable paper about aid effectiveness by François Bourguignon and Mark Sundberg. They describe an emerging consensus for the aid architecture, based on what they call implicit aid contracts: The use of implicit aid contracts, based on monitorable evidence of improvement in Read more…
Among some bloggers (such as Tim Worstall), and now on the BBC, it is becoming fashionable to say that Nicholas Stern's analysis of the economics of climate change overstates the case for intervention to prevent climate change, because it overstates the value we should attach to the income of future Read more…
One of the most important and cost effective ways that rich countries can help poor countries is to invest more in R&D, especially in products that would benefit the poor (such as a malaria vaccine, cheap solar panels, or a cassava plant resistant to mosaic virus). We do have large research programmes; and I took part yesterday in an interesting discussion about whether we should fund such research by paying the researchers directly, or whether we should create financial incentives for the private sector to invest its own money in looking for solutions.
My conclusion is that we need a judicious combination of "push" funding (e.g. subsidies to research institutes) and "pull" funding (e.g. guaranteed markets, or prizes). Push funding is especially useful for R&D that produces basic science of general value which cannot be mainly appropriated by a firm through the sale of products; pull mechanisms are more efficient for R&D that is specific to a particular product.
David Wessell has an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on January 25th the use of prizes to spur innovation. I thought this was particularly interesting:
One surprise: The further the problem was from a solver's expertise, the more likely he or she was to solve it. It turns out that outsiders look through a completely different lens. Toxicologists were stumped by the significance of pathology observed in a study; within weeks after broadcasting it, a Ph.D. in crystallography offered a solution that hadn't occurred to them.
One of the merits of prizes over government-directed research is that they encourage engagement by a more diverse range of investigators than would be likely to be supported by cautious and risk averse bureaucrats. This finding suggests that might be rather important.
Full text of WSJ article below the fold.
Many progressives here in the UK have a stereotyped view of US politics (roughly speaking: 'Democrats good, Republicans bad'). These assumptions have been reinforced by negative perceptions of the Bush presidency. And so there is an assumption that the Democrats are more likely to pursue policies that are good for Read more…
The Washington Post reports the death of Ryszard Kapuscinski: Ryszard Kapuscinski a Polish writer and journalist who gained international acclaim for his books chronicling wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world, died of a heart attack, his literary agent said. He was Read more…
Here is my ha'porth, for the record. It is no excuse to say that your religion requires you to discriminate against gays. We would not tolerate the same argument to justify discrimination against people on grounds of race. Nor is it a defence for the churches to say that it Read more…
Very funny parody of second life: www.getafirstlife.com. I particularly enjoyed the recommendation to “fornicate using your actual genitals“.
Scientific American discusses the need for better forecasting of need for drugs and vaccines: Unpredictable demand creates a three-way catch-22 problem, as pointed out in a 2002 study commissioned by the GAVI Alliance, formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. Poor countries have to know the price of a Read more…
Andrew Jack wrote in the Financial Times on Wednesday about measures to reduce AIDS in Africa. In a nutshell, he says that there has been too little support for campaigns to change sexual behaviour, even though these efforts appear to have worked in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Kenya. By contrast, there has been more investment in drugs to treat AIDS and condoms to help prevent it.
Purnima Mane, director of policy evidence and partnerships at UNAids, the United Nations' Aids agency, says: "In the last 10 years, the focus has been highly biomedical. Social scientists have withdrawn a bit. They have been seen as playing second fiddle." Furthermore, when programmes have been launched, monitoring and evaluation has often been lacking. "We have launched boutique projects rather than scaling things up," she says. "We don't establish what makes them effective. That has been the tragedy, because we have wanted to act quickly."
I drew several conclusions from this:
The Center for Global Development report on the Evaluation Gap looks at these issues in more detail. Their conclusion – with which I agree – is that we need a coordinated international effort to increase statistically rigorous evaluation of social programmes in development.
This all sounds very dry and technical. But read the article in the FT: if we had better, more rigorous evaluation evidence we might have done better at reducing the AIDS epidemic in Africa. And that would be quite something. (more…)
The UK Government is going to consult more widely on its proposals for data sharing within government. A national identity register that allows data sharing across government could be the technological underpinning of a huge improvement in the provision of government services. (It is important that the technology will not Read more…