1. We learn that Nigerians are the happiest people in the world. Again. 2. Is Estonia boarding a sinking Titanic? 3. HSBC releases a report titled The World in 2050 4. Obama in Africa: To go or not to go? 5. “The scooter traffic [in Vietnam] more or less lives up to reputation.” 6. “In… Read More »
FT’s Gideon Rachman thinks that the answer to that question might be Yes: The backlash against immigration is particularly visible in Europe. In Britain, the new coalition government has promised to reduce the number of immigrants from hundreds of thousands a year to tens of thousands. International banks and multinational companies are already complaining that their businesses are… Read More »
That is the title of a new book by Gareth Dale. If you are interested in economic history and the history of ideas you should check out the book. Or at least this review. The book is acclaimed as the first comprehensive book on the ideas and legacy of Karl Polanyi. If you have ever… Read More »
As donations, pieces of clothing bear imprints of the aspirations of their donors, and as purchased commodities, they are invested with the desires of their consumers. This article describes a particular configuration of the international trade in secondhand clothing. The trade links Western homes with West Africans families in an intricate web; its history also… Read More »
By FT’s Gillian Tett: … in just a few years, sushi has colonised urban centres with startling speed. The first wave of sushi restaurants cropped up in California in the 1970s, partly to service the estimated one million Americans of Japanese descent. But now they are ubiquitous, serving Caucasians too: teenagers take sushi to school;… Read More »
1. The First Law of Development Stats: Whatever our Bizarre Methodology, We make Africa look Worse 2. On the need for more critical debates on the ‘open aid data’ discourse 3. SSD on Nigeria’s decision to try Dick Cheney 4. Norway examines reports that Muhammad Yunus diverted millions of dollars of aid money from a… Read More »
The abstract of a paper of the same title: For the past decade, the U.S. economy has been driven not by industrial investment but by a real estate bubble. Although the United States may seem to be the leading example of industrial capitalism, its economy is no longer based mainly on investing in capital goods… Read More »
The Economist talks to China Europe Business School’s Africa Programme Director, Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, about the reason the Chinese business school decided to establish a branch in Ghana: CEIBS has been instrumental in developing the business talent that has helped China develop,…. The Europeans and Americans were the colonisers of Africa, but there was not much… Read More »
… is the title of a recently published book by Kate Meagher of LSE’s Department of International Development, my friend and fellow student of African trade networks and informal economy. Nicolas van de Walle writes in Foreign Policy about the book: Within development circles, conventional wisdom has it that successful manufacturing sectors often develop in low-income… Read More »
From a commentary on Owen Barder’s comment on Bob Zoellick’s speech on development discourse: … if we really want to democratise the development discourse we should also publish, say, the minutes of Bank board meetings and other relevant internal documents to understand how ideas and statistics are translated into ‘reality’ through powerful interlocutors like the… Read More »