Tag Archives: Economic growth

Words, Spirits and History: A review of Gilbert Rist’s The History of Development

I was looking through my computer earlier today and I discovered a review I wrote during my first weeks as a Masters in Development Studies student at Uppsala in Sweden. The first thing those guys did was to encourage us to question the whole idea of development by making us read Gilbert Rist’s The History… Read More »

On financial services in Africa

From a new Accenture report titled At the tipping point: Financial services in Africa comes of age: The Accenture research study… highlights new growth triggers for financial services, pointing to rapid market development in some countries. While the paths to growth vary, these triggers often include innovation through (very) low-cost offerings and distribution, dramatically opening up… Read More »

Does Aid work for Growth and Development?

Based on a thorough review of the professional research literature and a re-examination of key hypotheses, our answer is “yes”. That is from Channing Arndt, Sam Jones, and  Finn Tarp, all of University of Copenhagen. They continue: Our study represents the most carefully developed empirical strategy employed in the aid-growth literature to date. The results… Read More »

William Easterly on development economics

It is ‘the study of how to get rich without knowing how’. What must we do to end world poverty? At last, an answer: OK, that’s too good to be true. There has been a search for sixty years for the right answer. Now most economists confess ignorance how to raise the rate of economic growth… Read More »

Mobile phones in Africa

The current issue of The Economist has this in a leader about mobile money in Africa: ONCE the toys of rich yuppies, mobile phones have evolved in a few short years to become tools of economic empowerment for the world’s poorest people. These phones compensate for inadequate infrastructure, such as bad roads and slow postal… Read More »

Long road to recovery

Krugman speaking on Finland: Speaking at a forum on Finland’s economic development organised by the Finnish Innovation Fund, Sitra, Krugman said that technically the global economy began to rebound at the end of the summer. He added, however, that unemployment could worsen for up to a year and a half, despite growth. “Prospects for slow… Read More »