The lego theory of development
Is economic growth more like accumulating masses of putty, or assembling many hundreds of different lego pieces?
events
The G20 tries to get hip
Usually, the term 'G20' induces images of interminable meetings and high-minded but vaguely worded communiques. But the G20 is trying to get hip. It is sponsoring a competition to crowdsource ideas for one of the perennial problems of development (and one greatly exacerbated by the financial crisis) -- access to finance by SMEs. Here are the details:
Re-reading Keynes
Editor's Note: Nadia Piffaretti is assistant and advisor to the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Development Economics.
“The world has been slow to realize that we are living in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history”. This could be the opening to any one of the dozens of Op-Eds appearing since the start of the crisis, but they are the words of J. M. Keynes from his 1930 piece The Great Slump of 1930.
A road network for private firms
F. Halsey Rogers, a World Bank economist in the Development Research Group, has put together a helpful summary of the impact of the crisis on development thinking. Clearly, financial markets in rich countries went haywire. What should this mean for the role of markets in developing countries?
Charter cities, the neo-colonial solution to poverty?
This month's edition of The Atlantic contains an excellent profile of economist Paul Romer and his campaign to create charter cities. Money quote:
Creating problem-solving systems
Bill Easterly argues that development is about creating problem-solving systems, and not just individual solutions or interventions for specific problems (e.g. malaria, access to finance, etc.). The whole post is worth reading in full, but here is a snippet:
Investing Across Borders 2010
Editor's Note: Kusi Hornberger is an Investment Policy Officer with the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group.
Defining priorities to improve competitiveness in Latin America
Editor's Note: Esperanza Lasagabaster is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Group of the Latin America and Caribbean region.
A brief summer hiatus
The PSD Blog will be going on a brief summer hiatus. We'll be back July 8 refreshed and ready for more blogging. I am hoping to introduce a new regular contributor on gender issues and investment climate on my return -- stay tuned!
Keynesian stimulus according to Taleb
I just realized that what is called "Keynesian stimulus" works differently when the government is starting off a situation of deficit. The math would produce different results, which makes me wonder why economists cannot spot it (I inject more perturbations and see massive fragility). In one case, to make an analogy to an individual, you can invest money you have on the side(assuming you've had suspluses [sic] from the past). In the other, you fragilize yourself by borrowing, and transfer the liabilities cross-generations.