Papua New Guinea: LNG to double economy, now for good governance

Written by on October 1, 2011
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The first 50 days of Papua New Guinea’s O’Neill-Namah government have seen reforms take off, including decisive action being taken to tackle corruption, public enterprises being cleaned up, and an 800 million kina (US$362 million) supplementary budget passed focusing on free education and infrastructure. The next nine months provide an opportunity to put the economic foundations in place for better management of the mineral boom. According to the latest numbers from Treasury, the economy is growing fast, including non-mineral [...] Read more »

Crowdsourcing: Fix my road

Written by on July 18, 2011
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Imperfect information on the delivery of basic services make its difficult for policy-makers to manage principal-agent problems in the delivery chain and for recipients to hold their governments accountable. Crowdsourced information can help to fix feedback loops and new technologies and apps are making this feasible. I wanted to test out one of the most talked about platforms–Ushahidi. So before a recent trip to PNG I set up the FixMyRoad website using Crowdmap–a web-based version [...] Read more »

Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex

Written by on July 18, 2011
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Tim Harford’s new book Adapt is essential reading for anyone interested in how to improve development aid. In this TEDTalk, Tim worries about the prevalence of the ‘God complex’ among politicians, doctors and economists in a world where problems and their solutions are multifaceted and complex. Tim is a big fan of adaptation through variation and selection, trial and error, to find solutions to complex problems. His thesis is that in order to get closer [...] Read more »

The life you can save?

Written by on July 18, 2011
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Saving lives is an important reason for giving development aid. In this excellent debate, Bill Easterly and Peter Singer discuss what people in rich countries can do to save lives. Peter argues that we have a moral responsibility to give more aid. Bill adds that we also have a moral responsibility to make sure that the NGOs and aid agencies that act on our behalf actually save lives. Read more »

Aid innovations

Written by on July 12, 2011
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It’s a myth that aid is static, there are some exciting changes taking place. What are the new innovations that are improving aid effectiveness in the 21st century aid? As you read this blog post, keep at the back of your mind the determinants of aid effectiveness. (For more on this see a new discussion paper by Stephen Howes.) We can improve the quality of recipients by selecting on the basis of performance and results, and (trying) to improve [...] Read more »

Australia’s Aid Review

Written by on July 12, 2011
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As a former treasury economist I’m always delighted when reviews put numbers around their recommendations. It is good for transparency and brings greater clarity. There’s a lot in Australia’s new Aid Review report to think about and the panel have made a compelling case on how to spend an increasing aid budget aid wisely. This blog takes a look at some of the numbers in their plan. How much extra aid? The Aid Review forecasts that the aid [...] Read more »

Virtual economy report

Written by on April 19, 2011
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A new study by the World Bank Group’s infoDev program shows that virtual online currencies and digital work now provide real income opportunities to poor and unskilled workers in developing countries. infoDev is a global technology and innovation-led development finance program of the World Bank and IFC. The new study, Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy, finds that more than 100,000 people in countries such as China and India earn a living through online games [...] Read more »

How many people on Twitter?

Written by on April 3, 2011
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I’m a big fan of infographics–such a powerful way to communicate–and especially liked these ones on Twitter’s stellar growth. Read more »

The future of UK aid

Written by on March 7, 2011
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Simplicity is something that is rarely associated with aid, yet DFID have done an excellent job of summarising their aid review onto a single page. Many donors talk about focusing on results, this aid review identifies specific results for UK aid to deliver. And sets out how DFID will make UK aid work better. Read more »

Evaluating the impact of TA

Written by on March 4, 2011
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Rigorous impact evaluations of technical assistance seem to be few and far between, but this one is worth reading. Many public programs and operations by multilateral organisations include technical assistance to the direct beneficiaries of the program in addition to pure financing. However, there is no substantial body of studies that calculates the additional impact; in the sense of exclusively attributable to, of technical assistance on the outcome of interest of the program. We propose [...] Read more »

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