Just as you cannot help a child develop by doing his homework, giving him all the toys and candy he wants, and protecting him from all potential dangers, you cannot help a country to develop by giving it money, writing its poverty reduction strategies, or protecting it against basic market forces. (Continue reading...)


Do Your Aid Projects Hurt the Poor? (L. E. Andersen)

There are many aid pessimists, like me, who would much rather be aid optimists. However, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of foreign aid is depressing, especially in poor countries where aid constitutes a significant share of GDP, as in Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Any particular aid project is unlikely to actually hurt the poor – at worst it may be ineffective and a waste of time and money. However, a continuous series of thousands of aid projects have the capacity to change the behavior of both individuals and government, and often in unanticipated and undesirable ways. (Continue reading...) 

Poverty on a 62-foot yacht in the Pacific Ocean (L. E. Andersen)

Most of the people who write about poverty have never themselves been poor (including myself). This is not so strange, since the poor are too poor to write, even if some of them have the ability. They do not have the surplus of energy and time alone that is required to sit down and write to record or transmit their feelings, thoughts and ideas. They do not write blogs or diaries and they virtually never get hired as consultants to study poverty.

Might it be the case that the ones writing about poverty don’t really understand it? (Continue reading ...)