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Category: Commentary

Published October 2, 2013

Standing Up for GMOs

Science

Rice is the major dietary staple for almost half of humanity, but white rice grains lack vitamin A. Research scientists Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer and their teams developed a rice variety whose grains accumulate β-carotene. It took them, in collaboration with IRRI, 25 years to develop and test varieties that express sufficient quantities of the precursor that a few ounces of cooked rice can provide enough β-carotene to eliminate the morbidity and mortality of vitamin A deficiency. It took time, as well, to obtain the right to distribute Golden Rice seeds, which contain patented molecular constructs, free of charge to resource-poor farmers.

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Published September 30, 2013

What You Won’t Get Out of a MOOC (Updated)

(Credit: catspyjamasnz.)
(Credit: catspyjamasnz.)

I have been toying for a while with the idea of writing something about massive open online courses (MOOCs). But the more I thought about MOOCs, the more I struggled to come up with an original angle, and with something that hasn’t already been said better elsewhere.

It wasn’t until Sunday morning, which is when I usually sit down to write blog posts for the week, that I thought of something interesting enough to be shared here when I thought of one of my favorite essays in development economics.

The essay in question is by Lant Pritchett and is titled “The Policy Irrelevance of the Economics of Education.” It was published in 2009 in a Brookings collection of essays edited by Jessica Cohen and Bill Easterly titled What Works in Development?

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Published September 16, 2013

Development Bloat

I can’t even have a road built without including a nutrition component as part of the project. A nutrition component–as part of a road construction project!

That’s how a former student who works for one of the biggest development organizations in the world expressed his frustrations with development and aid work these days when I had dinner with him in Washington, DC last summer. In my student’s view, “development” had become too many things.

I was initially skeptical of his claim. After all, one of the first things I teach the students in my development seminar is that there are no silver bullets; the causes of underdevelopment are many, and tackling just one problem is unlikely to lift an entire country out of poverty.

But the more I think about it, the more I remember often having had a “That is development?” reaction when reading articles about development in academic journals, specialized magazines, and newspapers. For example, here is a list of things that are considered by many to be part of the process of development:

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