Published January 24, 2011
Month: January 2011
Published January 24, 2011
Development Policy Quote of the Week
“[I]n the world of development, good intentions can often have negative consequences. Unfortunately, the result of such good works is that many villagers now see volunteers and development workers as little more than easily tapped sources of funding for projects that, if the communities were truly interested, could have been initiated by the villagers themselves. (…) Economic development is a relay that takes place over generations, and no single runner can expect to finish the race. Members of the Peace Corps do the most service where they cheer, but do not lead, local development activities.”
— Robert L. Strauss, former Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia and former Peace Corps country director in Cameroon, in response to a New Yorker article on Peace Corps volunteer Rajeev Goyal.
Published January 23, 2011
On My Nightstand: Famine, Work, and Market Failures
Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter. As a development economist working on food policy, I simply had to read this book after reading Pankaj Mishra’s review in The New Yorker. Dikötter, a historian at the University of Hong Kong, has exploited a new Chinese law which has opened up some of the Communist Party’s archives. With an estimated death toll of 45 million, the Chinese famine of 1958 has been one of the worst famines in history, the Chinese version of the Holocaust or the Gulag. This book illustrates the spectacular failings of centrally planned economies, but it is not for the faint of heart, as the final chapters discuss the many ways — including cannibalism — in which people survived. UPDATE: It turns out Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution has also been reading this book. Here is his review.