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Marc F. Bellemare Posts

Published March 1, 2012

Free Download of Calestous Juma’s “The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa”

Calestous Juma’s most recent book The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa is now available for free from the Kennedy School of Government website. Here is an overview of the book:

African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa faces three major opportunities that can transform its agriculture into a force for economic growth: advances in science and technology; the creation of regional markets; and the emergence of a new crop of entrepreneurial leaders dedicated to the continent’s economic improvement.

Filled with case studies from within Africa and success stories from developing nations around the world, The New Harvest outlines the policies and institutional changes necessary to promote agricultural innovation across the African continent. Incorporating research from academia, government, civil society, and private industry, the book suggests multiple ways that individual African countries can work together at the regional level to develop local knowledge and resources, harness technological innovation, encourage entrepreneurship, increase agricultural output, create markets, and improve infrastructure.

If you are like me and prefer to have the entire book in a single .pdf file, scroll down on the page for a link to the complete text of the book.

Calestous is also a prolific tweeter. You can follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

Published February 29, 2012

Does Labor Exploitation by Former Colonists Have an Impact on Development?

Looks like it does:

Levels of development vary widely within countries in the Americas. We argue that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era, when colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country. We present evidence consistent with the view that “bad” activities (those that depended heavily on labor exploitation) led to lower economic development today than “good” activities (those that did not rely on labor exploitation). Our results also suggest that differences in political representation (but not in income inequality or human capital) could be the intermediating factor between colonial activities and current development.

That’s the abstract of a forthcoming article in the Review of Economics and Statistics by Miriam Bruhn and Francisco Gallego.

Speaking of colonists, institutions, and colonial institutions, Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson have a started a blog to accompany the launch of their book Why Nations Fail, due out at the end of March.

 

Published February 28, 2012

Aid Bloggers’ Best Award 2011: Thank You!

“A certain measure of righteousness
A certain amount of force
A certain degree of determination
Daring on a different course.”

– Rush, “One Little Victory.”

Because I took the week off from blogging last week to apply for a grant, I had forgotten all about the Aid Bloggers’ Best Awards (ABBAs) until this afternoon, when I read Lawrence Haddad’s post on the topic. Lawrence’s Development Horizons blog came in fifth in the “Best Academic Blog” category.

What really — and I mean, really — surprised me was that this blog came in second in the “Best Academic Blog” category.

Make no mistake: with 59 percent of the votes, Chris Blattman is the clear winner in that category, and I came in a distant second with 14 percent of the votes. But given the sheer size of Chris’ readership (with almost one million page views per year, he also won in the “Best Aid Blog” category), this second place feels every bit like a victory. So I want to thank everyone for their vote. Thank you!