- Bryan Caplan makes the argument for his “Trillion Dollar Idea” – international open borders, which would allow productive labour to work in productive places.
- A group of Stanford researchers found Russian-run fake Facebook accounts attempting to influence public political opinion in four African countries.
- With recent media and political attention surrounding corruption in Ukraine, George Ingram sheds some light to how USAID is helping Ukrainians deal with the problem.
- To welcome Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission, ODI pens an open letter with four recommendations: invest in people to end extreme poverty, ease migration, halt public financing of fossil fuels, and strengthen democracies.
- In this conversation, Dylan Matthews analyses Rob Reich’s new book Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better and the concept that mega donors can undermine democracies.
- In Timor Leste, remittances have become the second largest non-oil source of income, before coffee but after aid. Michael Rose looks at the reasons along with the hopes for the local tourism industry as well as agriculture.
- In Albania, productivity in the average Albanian firm is poor – some five times lower than in the EU, for instance. But authors writing at the Brookings Institute have a set of recommendations to bridge this productivity gap.
- More on the Nobel Prize for economics awarded this year to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty,” here a good summary of Duflo and Kremer’s work.
- Mass street demonstrations are a political tradition in Chile. However, the Piñera government finds it difficult to negotiate reforms that will satisfy most of the population. Richard E. Feinberg explains why.
Aid links: the financial boon of open borders, Timor tourism, more
Links and stories from the aid and development sector.
Photo: Mark Garten/United Nations
Published 6 Nov 2019
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