- The Commonwealth has announced its first female secretary-general, Baroness Patricia Scotland. The Baroness’ first task should be to beef up the effectiveness of their aid work as The Commonwealth has routinely ranked as one of the worst performing multilateral donors.
- In the first of a two part series that I have co-authored over at Devpolicy we look at trends in Australian development NGO spending since 2000, and in particular how fundraising costs have changed over time (hint: they’ve gone up).
- Terence Wood continues his analysis of new Australian polling data on foreign aid, this time looking at who specifically opposed Australia’s aid cuts.
- Census’ and household surveys in developing countries are rare, unreliable and notoriously expensive. New research shows how many aspects may be recreated at a fraction of the cost by using mobile phone metadata.
- Michael Clemens debunks some of the biggest fears about refugees and their supposed links to violence, terrorism and costing the economy.
- There’s only two weeks left to apply for the 2016 ODI Fellowship Scheme, perhaps the best entry pathway for young economists to work in developing countries.
- In a new podcast Adam Davidson takes a look at all things concrete, with particular reference to the industries overwhelming influence in developing countries and how shoddy concrete is to blame for many deaths when disaster strikes.
- Finally, as we enter the festive season, Tiny Spark has launched a three part ‘guide to good [charitable] giving’ podcast series.