Chris Blattman has kicked off a heated debate on whether aid officials should fly business class, see here for example Over on global dashboard, Mark Weston provides an overview on land grabs William Easterly applies his tests for dodgy regressions to Paul Collier’s latest book and Chris Blattman (again, when does he work or sleep?) joins in the fun by adding Karl

Remittances sent to developing countries in 2008 from migrant workers overseas came to a massive $305bn – two and a half times greater than the (record) volume of global aid. But how are they weathering the global crisis? I’ve just been reading the World Bank’s latest (OK, end of March – I’m playing catchup as usual) Migration and Development Brief.

What can an NGO like Oxfam do to help build women’s grassroots leadership and participation? Just been reading a series of case studies from around the world, which throw up a strikingly similar set of conclusions. Drawing on experiences in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the UK, the study finds that progress relies on tackling structural barriers to women’s participation

I was in a conversation on genetically modified crops with a feminist economist and a leading ecologist the other day (Chatham House rules, so no names, alas). As often happens, the unusual combination of disciplines led to some thought-provoking exchanges. After lamenting the way most new biotech and GM research is top down and biased towards both rich country agriculture

The Financial Times recently published an excellent special report on Combating Malaria (can you name any other newspaper that would do that?). It pulls together a really good overview of the disease, including the science, politics, examples of successful eradication in Mozambique and elsewhere, the role of community health workers, the debate over bed nets, impact of climate change, and

Chris Blattman gives a (very long) list of essential items for ‘field work in the tropics’ Alex Evans discusses the latest on China’s new-found assertiveness William Easterly explains the selective use of regressions Eurosnouts in the trough: The New York Times shows how the largest beneficiaries of EU farm subsidies in 2008 include an Italian bank in Milan, a French

Can you have prosperity without growth? Yes and what’s more, we have no choice, argues the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission in a new report. As you would expect from the UK’s first ‘Professor of Sustainable Development’, author Tim Jackson is a bit of a heretic – particularly impressive because the SDC is an independent advisory body to the UK government.

The Asian Development Bank produces a remarkable amount of frequently high quality analysis. Here are two recent examples on climate change and the impact of the economic meltdown. On the meltdown, a recent ADB Economic Working Paper uses the latest national projections for growth and past poverty performance to refine the predicts that poverty across the whole of Asia will

Has the G20 revived the neoliberal, austerity-wielding IMF of the 1980s and 90s, are has it ushered in a new IMF 2.0 (in the words of Time Magazine) that cares about countercyclical economic policies, public services and jobs? In late April, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan wrote to NGOs saying ‘I would like to make it clear that we do not

‘Growth with Equity’ is motherhood and apple pie in economic policy-making these days. But in a great new book, Spirit Level, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that ‘economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work.’ Above a certain average income (the authors put it at $25,000 per

What are developing country governments doing to respond to the damage being inflicted by the global economic crisis? Answer, according to two new papers: not much, and they could be doing a lot more. A study from the Overseas Development Institute pulls together the draft findings from studies in ten countries. The ODI finds that in terms of economic policy

There is a strong statistical link between income inequality and the prevalence of HIV around the world. Göran Holmqvist, of  the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm and Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, has an IPC paper out on it, and a one page summary.