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Marc F. Bellemare Posts

Published December 15, 2011

Nice Words from a Student

And a current class, a graduate-level course on the microeconomics of international development policy, especially appeals to her because of its real-world applications. “It’s about the way policies are implemented in places like Africa and about how to implement policies more efficiently,” she explains. “Once you can apply it, it’s pretty cool.”

From a profile of Allison Vernerey, center for the Duke women’s basketball team, in the November-December 2011 issue of Duke Magazine. Here is Allison’s player profile on GoDuke.com.

I will let the reader guess who teaches that course she is talking about…

Published December 14, 2011

Payday Loans and Microfinance

Consider the fuss that people now make about microcredit — small loans, often at interest rates well above 50 per cent a year that are said to help the very poorest families manage their finances and even become entrepreneurs. That’s a story that many people are happy to accept without examining the evidence, while at the same time condemning payday loans, which appear to be a similar product. Are you sure [that’s] not just reflecting a prejudice that credit-starved Bangladeshis are heroic would-be entrepreneurs while credit-starved westerners must be trailer trash?

That’s Tim Harford, in a post on whether payday lending is wrong.

Each fall, when I teach the students in my development seminar about credit rationing, I tell them “If you think credit rationing is a developing-country phenomenon, think again.” I then encourage them to drive up North Roxboro Street north of I-85 to see how the market responds to failures of the credit market in Durham.

Published December 13, 2011

The #SWEDOW Sideshow Slideshow

Courtesy of Foreign Policy, a slideshow showing the various things (too many people think) developing countries need:

Most of us don’t have billions of dollars to give away like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. But the charitable impulse is still strong: combined, Americans gave away almost $300 billion in 2010. Sometimes, though, good intentions have questionable results. In the rush to help after a crisis, public and private donors from around the world sometimes give without quite realizing what the needs on the ground are. Do Haitians really need your used yoga mat? Do the Balkans lack for clowns?

Pop-Tarts, yoga mats, and teddy bears, oh my!