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Aid & development links: Aid ethics, costs of air pollution, Jim Kim and more

Aid & development links: Aid ethics, costs of air pollution, Jim Kim and more
Published 12 Sep 2016   Follow @jonathan_pryke

  • The ABC has published an extract from Paul Collier, which discusses the ethical underpinning of foreign aid and argues that 'actual practice of aid has at times drifted quite far from a secure ethical anchor, which is necessary to prevent abuse of collective power'.
  • GiveDirectly, a charity which provide cash transfers direct to individuals in developing countries, has a fascinating blog post discussing how in one area of Kenya roughly 45% of households declined to be enrolled in the program (95% usually accept).
  • A new report from the World Bank estimates that air pollution costs the world more than $5 trillion in lost work days and welfare costs per year. The Guardian provides a summary of the findings here
  • Sri Lanka is the latest country to have eliminated malaria, giving hope that dozens more countries could potentially drive it out by 2020. 
  • The New York Times Magazine has profiled a tenured economics professor who returned to Ethiopia to lead a rebel militia. (h/t Devpolicy).
  • The Centre for Global Development has announced its new president, Masood Ahmed. Ahemd has spent the last eight years as the Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the IMF. 
  • The World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, is up for re-election while facing internal accusations of being the worst leader in the institution's history. Justin Sandefur puts this characterisation to the test by looking at the numbers
  • The latest episode of Planet Money discusses the contest two Yale economists had to find out why farmers in sub-Saharan Africa don’t invest more in their fields. 



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