Hillary Clinton gave a big speech at the CGD development thinktank on Wednesday. Here are some of the things that jumped out for me: Strategic importance of development policy: ‘Development was once the province of humanitarians, charities, and governments looking to gain allies in global struggles. Today it is a strategic, economic, and moral imperative — as central to advancing

Taxation is one of those issues that usually causes the eyes of development types to glaze over. At best it’s relegated to the ‘important but braindeath’ category. When we do talk about tax, it’s often just as a way to raise money for schools and hospitals (if aid isn’t enough to do the job, that is). This is a serious

Finally got round to reading ‘Beyond Planning’ Owen Barder’s CGD paper on aid reform. Owen’s a former DFID bigwig turned Ethiopia-based consultant and blogger. Here he writes like a true economist, which can be pretty heavy going, but the paper is worth persevering with. He can also write like a human being, for example in this thoughtful and human defence

Most of the coverage (and hype) around mobile phones and development is based on their potential to improve access to markets for small farmers, especially those in remote areas and to provide easy ways to transfer small amounts of money in the absence of functioning bank networks. But mobiles, which are rapidly becoming ubiquitous in most poor countries (like a

After Copenhagen, allow me some bleak Christmas humour. If you’re a dog lover, look away now. But before you reach for the green ink, remember this is an attempt at satire. I got some fairly aggressive responses to my recent posts on population, and one of the core arguments of the population controllers seemed to be that because climate change

Wow, where to begin. I wasn’t in Copenhagen, but followed it from afar. A couple of reflections and then some highlights from two of the more comprehensive post mortems. Firstly, geopolitics. 2009 began with The G7 still apparently in the driving seat, saw the formal recognition of the shift from G7 to G20 in Pittsburgh, and then ended with the

A few newspapers are running the kind of minute by minute commentaries normally reserved for soccer matches. Gripping stuff, but will it make history? The Guardian The Times

Credit is the lifeblood of farming – you need cash to plant seeds, buy fertiliser and stay alive long long enough to reap and sell your harvest and pay off your loan. But you can’t always get it when you need it. A new Oxfam research paper identifies one of the main market failures resulting from the retreat of the

The momentum behind the Financial Transactions Tax (a tiny levy of 0.005% on all financial trades would raise about $30bn a year for climate change, development and/or filling fiscal holes) continues to grow since my last post (Why has the Tobin Tax gone mainstream?). The French government, which as far back as 2003 was the first to seriously propose the

Last week George Soros was passing through London and invited a bunch of NGO types for breakfast at his very nice house in South Kensington. (In case you’re interested we all got sticky pastries, but George made do with grapefruit and muesli). He was en route to Copenhagen to launch his big new idea – using the IMF to pump

As ministers and heads of state start to fly in, and Copenhagen (hopefully) gets serious,  here’s the companion to my previous post, summarizing key developing country positions in the negotiations. Let me know if there are any mistakes/additions and I’ll pass them on. [sorry for two blogs in one day, but this week is a bit special, and I promise

Here’s a handy guide from our Copenhagen team to all the offers currently on the table from developed countries (I’m now off to do a companion post on developing country positions). Do let me know if there are any mistakes/additions and I’ll pass them on. European Union Emission Reductions At last week’s EU summit, leaders did not agree to 30%