Featured image for “The Global role of Grandmothers in the Care Economy”

The Global role of Grandmothers in the Care Economy

February 1, 2023
In recent years, Oxfam’s been doing some pioneering work on the ‘care economy’, aka the bit Adam Smith left out (example here and here). My uninformed mental image of this had been all about the role of parents, generally mothers, in running the household and bringing up the kids, so I was struck by a recent Economist piece on the
Read more >>
Featured image for “Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies: the politics of saving the planet”

Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies: the politics of saving the planet

January 17, 2023
Neil McCulloch introduces his new book Hands up if you would like petrol prices to go up?  I’m guessing not too many hands.  The cripplingly high costs of energy (whether petrol, diesel, gas or coal as well as electricity) have posed a huge challenge for households and firms all around the world.  Massive increases in these costs, driven by the
Read more >>
Featured image for “Taxation of the World’s Super-Rich has collapsed: as 1 in 8 people go to bed hungry, that has to change”

Taxation of the World’s Super-Rich has collapsed: as 1 in 8 people go to bed hungry, that has to change

January 16, 2023
Max Lawson introduces Oxfam’s 2023 Davos report, ‘Survival of the Richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality’ Walter is the father of my son’s best friend at school. He works nights as a security guard at a bank in the City of London. He has three kids. They are really struggling, as the prices of everything
Read more >>
Featured image for “Loss and Damage fund established at COP27: what happens next?”

Loss and Damage fund established at COP27: what happens next?

November 29, 2022
Saleemul Huq, one of the most persistent long-term advocates of a ‘loss and damage’ fund on climate change, explores the origins and potential of the breakthrough at the recent COP. For thirty years the vulnerable developing countries led by the small island states had been demanding under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the creation of a fund
Read more >>
Featured image for “Austerity as Gender-Based Violence”

Austerity as Gender-Based Violence

November 26, 2022
To mark this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, Oxfam’s Dana Abed introduces its new report: The Assault of Austerity: How prevailing economic policy choices are a form of gender-based violence, (here’s the online summary with graphics).This post first appeared on Oxfam’s Views and Voices blog Feminist economists have warned for years that the global economic system is violent
Read more >>
Featured image for “Ha-Joon Chang on Economics v Science Fiction and other great ways to end your weeks this autumn – the LSE’s Cutting Edge lectures are back”

Ha-Joon Chang on Economics v Science Fiction and other great ways to end your weeks this autumn – the LSE’s Cutting Edge lectures are back

October 6, 2022
Ha-Joon Chang on Economics v Science Fiction, and other great ways to end your weeks this autumn – the LSE’s Cutting Edge lectures are back Heads up for this year’s LSE ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ lecture series, which kicks off next Friday (14th October). We’re moving into hybrid mode this year, with a mix of online
Read more >>
Featured image for “Book Review: Gambling on Development, by Stefan Dercon”

Book Review: Gambling on Development, by Stefan Dercon

August 30, 2022
Ah the summer reading backlog. A hammock, sunshine (lots of it) and some good books. Top of my reviews list this year was Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose, by Stefan Dercon. He summarized his book on this blog back in May, but I wanted to read (and review) it for myself. Dercon is a big
Read more >>
Featured image for “Hopelessness?”

Hopelessness?

July 20, 2022
I’m a huge fan of Branko Milanovic’s writing. In both books and blog he is consistently original, erudite and thought-provoking. A genuine old-school European intellectual. Here’s the latest post on his Global Inequality blog. That today’s world situation is the worst since the end of the Second World War is not an excessive, nor original, statement. As we teeter on
Read more >>
Featured image for “Africa is so rich in farmland – so why is it still hungry?”

Africa is so rich in farmland – so why is it still hungry?

July 13, 2022
Guest post from Oxfam’s Anthony Kamande and Dailes Judge, ahead of this week’s African Union meeting It’s been more than two months since it rained in Nakuru County, Kenya, and Jane’s bean crop is long gone. Her only hope on her small plot of 0.8 hectares is the maize crop – but it will also be gone if it doesn’t
Read more >>
Featured image for “Starving civilians is an ancient military tactic, but today it’s a war crime in Ukraine, Yemen, Tigray and elsewhere”

Starving civilians is an ancient military tactic, but today it’s a war crime in Ukraine, Yemen, Tigray and elsewhere

July 5, 2022
Aid organizations, including Oxfam, where I work part time, have been trying to draw attention to the looming hunger crisis across much of Sub-Saharan Africa. But some have been criticised for portraying the causes as mainly about drought, when in fact, war and conflict in countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia have been crucial factors. So I’m reposting this excellent
Read more >>
Featured image for “Latin America in turmoil, an update”

Latin America in turmoil, an update

June 29, 2022
Throughout the 1980s and 90s I was a ‘Latin Americanist’, living and travelling in the region, writing about it first as a journalist, then as a writer of region-wide books on the rise of market economics, child rights or, well, everything. Most of what I’ve thought and done since then has been shaped by those years, but living in the
Read more >>
Featured image for “Why We Fight: This Year’s Big Book on Development?”

Why We Fight: This Year’s Big Book on Development?

June 24, 2022
Why We Fight, by Chris Blattman, a prof at the University of Chicago, is shaping up to be this year’s Big Book – it’s everywhere on my timeline, the FT book of the summer etc etc. A summary and some thoughts. Usually I decide early on if I like a book or not, on the basis of a) does it
Read more >>