Just how diverse is the senior leadership of international aid organizations? Colleague Astrid Haas and I recently launched a research project to attempt to answer exactly this for a key dimension of diversity: gender. Data and R code used in the analysis are provided at the bottom of the post Although I label myself 'an economist' at cocktail parties (or would, if I were invited to any), much of my career has been spent in the 'international development'. For those unfamiliar with what this means, in essence much of my work focuses on the challenges faced by nations, communities and…
Teaching men to fish
Having worked on a variety of projects designed to improve the lives of poor, I’ve frequently heard the idea floated that we should always focus on ‘teaching people to fish’. In short, we should aim for sustainable solutions that are designed to reduce the dependency of target beneficiaries, after all: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Completely reasonable advice: after all, why shouldn't beneficiaries be empowered to provide for themself rather than relying on the generosity of others? The answer…
Everything is Correlated(?): How Common are Significant Cross-Country Correlations?
An (unscientific) approach for determining the 'typical' frequency of significant cross-country correlations using World Bank data and R. What attracted me to the field of economics when introduced to it in high-school was the apparent abundance of solutions it offered for everyday problems. Does your country have low life expectancy? No problems: research has found that countries that invest more in public health perform better on this measure. Low GDP per-capita? Just improve your governance; as better governed countries tend to be richer. Suffering from internal conflict? Rough-terrain is statistically linked to conflict, perhaps you could invest in earth-moving equipment?…
Open Myanmar Initiative’s Budget Explorer Launched – Budget Data Visualization in R
Yet another quiet couple of months on the blogging front can be explained by me feverishly working on a number of projects as I reach my 2 year anniversary in Myanmar. The latest of these has been the launching of the Open Myanmar Initiative's Budget Dashboard, which is now available online here: http://mmbudgets.info/ The website, which I helped develop using the open-source R language and the free Shiny library provides the first user-friendly interface for exploring Myanmar's budgets both at the Union level and across all 14 States and Regions. Although there is still a long way to go before…
New Journal Article: Estimating the Global Costs of Violence
For those interested, I have just had another one of my pieces of research published. Those with access to ingentaconnect can access it by clicking here.