Got back from Costa Rica (fab holiday, here’s a taste of one of the more exciting moments – yep that’s me) to find a Chaplinesque backlog of social media, emails, draft blog posts etc etc. That’ll teach me to go offline.
‘Economists tweet less, mention fewer people and have fewer conversations with strangers, and use less accessible language with more abbreviations and a more distant tone than a comparable group of scientists’.
Despite their increased level of public advocacy on good causes, ‘most US companies spent little or no money to lobby Congress in support of advancing social justice issues. Instead, they spent millions of dollars to push for lower taxes.’ A new Oxfam America report follows the money.
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson gets a lesson in extreme manspreading from Uganda’s President Museveni.
Why is nobody talking about prisons? Thought-provoking piece by Debora Zampier (one of my LSE students) on a neglected topic in development.
Lant Pritchett’s top six politically incorrect research findings in development economics ht Jake Allen
Feel-good number crunching from Max Roser. 1950 on first (click to enlarge): Global life expectancy was 46 years. In Africa the average was 36 In India 35 years 2015 on the right: Global life expectancy is 71 years. In Africa it is 61 (same as Japan in 1950) In India it is 68 (close to the healthiest country in 1950 – Norway with 72)
It’s not enough for research to be useful to policy actors; researchers must avoid being coopted and push for deeper change too. Nice piece from IDS’ James Georgalakis
“When the aging gorilla is confronted with the much more virile, new alpha-male, he shows submissiveness by grooming the alpha-male, but the gesture is actually a vain attempt by the old gorilla to humiliate his much younger rival.” — primatologist Jane Goodall ht Andrew Bradley. May not be an actual quote, alas.