It’s Labor Day in the USA today, and so it seems a good moment to talk about a flourishing US industry that is built on socialist lines. Every year, by general agreement, the most talented new staff are allocated to the weakest firms to ‘keep things fair’. Firms are subject to salary caps and/or taxes on excessive wages (are you

This weekend the finance ministers of the G20 – the world’s most powerful nations -will meet in London.  While the rich world’s green shootists apparently feel that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us, the poorest countries are being hammered, with those living on the margins of the global economy paying the highest price for the bankers’ folly.

Jetlag is a wonderful way to catch up on your paper backlog. Just been reading UNCTAD’s 2009 Least Developed Countries report (published in July). Limpid prose it ain’t, but it sets out a coherent case for a post-Washington Consensus push for state-led industrialization in the world’s poorest countries. (I blame the turgid nature of UN-speak for the over-lengthy nature of

The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (a UNDP-funded thinktank, based in Brazil) has published an excellent 35 page ‘Poverty in Focus’ on public v private provision of basic utilities, especially water and sanitation, (but also touching on electricity). Some highlights from the overview, based on a series of country case studies: ‘Rapid urbanisation and informal settlements pose particular problems

Normally I’m not a big fan of those ‘roundtable’ pieces in current affairs mags that usually feature 3 or 4 big egos all scoring points and showing off to each other. But the roundtable on the financial crisis in this month’s Prospect magazine is an exception. Featuring Adair Turner, (the chair of the Financial Services Authority, Britain’s financial regulator, see

Chris Blattman raves (in a good way) about a comic book (sorry, graphic novel) about the civil war in Uganda And links to a fascinating attempt to apply the lessons of conditional cash transfer programmes in Mexico and Brazil to…… New York The FT finds much to celebrate in Jacob Zuma’s first hundred days ‘The astonishing thing about the current

Back from Bangladesh and still processing both the real life and blog discussions on microfinance institutions (MFIs), following last week’s post and the good debate in the comments. A few final (probably…) observations: Microcredit v Microfinance: point taken. A lot of the doubts and criticisms apply to microcredit (loans), not to the wider range of financial services (insurance, savings etc)

Wading through tidal salt water pouring across a rapidly eroding road in an area of the coast that had never previously seen anything on this scale, climate change has never seemed so immediate. In May, Cyclone Aila breached the embankments and produced a humanitarian disaster, killing hundreds and affecting some 5 million Bangladeshis. Three months on, 300,000 are still homeless and

Just spent a week on a ‘busman’s holiday’ (where the distinction between work and leisure gets very blurred), visiting Bangladesh with younger son Finlay (17). A few headlines, and then tomorrow, something more substantial on climate change. Prawns, raised in paddy fields for export, have long had a bad press in Bangladesh, and no wonder. Prawns need salt water, rice

I spent some time yesterday with a group of 20 Bangladeshi small farmers (13 men, 7 women) linked to a sustainable agriculture NGO, Unnayan Dhara (sorry, they don’t yet have a website). Among other things (climate change, access to markets etc) I asked them about microfinance, given my post on Wednesday and the subsequent discussion on the comments. Here’s a

There has been significant progress in recent years in getting kids into school, but what’s the point if the teachers don’t show up for work? In general, the poorer the country, the higher the level of absenteeism. The explanations are both obvious (wages are so low, teachers need to look for second jobs, or funnel their students into private tuition)

The intellectual battlefield of development is littered with magic bullets. New ideas or technologies such as the internet or mobile phones are picked up, promoted as panaceas that will end poverty and transform societies, and then rapidly cut down to size by scrutiny and research. That process seems to be well under way on microfinance. As it happens, I’m in