Tom just sent me a great World Bank paper on accountability in service delivery, which references the 2004 World Development Report on "Making Services Work for the Poor," which made me think I should really go and read that properly sometime. This just a week after he reminded me that we should really also read the 2008 Agriculture for Development report sometime (it probably nails the whole "economics of livelihoods" question). I'm also a big fan of the 2009 Report on Economic Geography (one of the most misunderstood economic realities there is?), and really looking forward to the 2013 Jobs Report.
Which brings me to.... drum roll please.... the Roving Bandit World Development Report Bookclub / Blogathon: Because you probably haven't read them either, and if you work in development you probably should have. So I'm going to go back to the beginning and read / blog / discuss one report per approximately-week-ish-length-period-of-time. Who's with me?
Which brings me to.... drum roll please.... the Roving Bandit World Development Report Bookclub / Blogathon: Because you probably haven't read them either, and if you work in development you probably should have. So I'm going to go back to the beginning and read / blog / discuss one report per approximately-week-ish-length-period-of-time. Who's with me?
10 comments:
starting with . . . 1990?
Holy shit! I just glanced at this page (http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/0,,contentMDK:20227703~pagePK:478093~piPK:477627~theSitePK:477624,00.html) and figured I would start at the bottom with 98/99, but apparently failed to click through to the earlier reports which start at 1978 (
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/0,,contentMDK:20308780~menuPK:604546~pagePK:478093~piPK:477627~theSitePK:477624,00.html).
So: change of plan - start from 2012 and work backwards?
I'm in!
I'm keen... but what about the UN HDRs too? (Without wanting to include every big agency report from every year...)
I'm inclined to say no, because
a - Off the top of my head I can't think of a particular single individual seminal canonical HDR report
b - I'm an economist, and I'm guessing the WDR is based on economics much more than the HDR
c - I'm a little skeptical of the HDI which is the one thing I can remember about the HDR - the key critic of the HDI is, you guessed it, a WB economist (http://aidwatchers.com/2010/12/the-hdi-debate-continues/)
d - There are only so many hours in the day
e - I almost made it through this comment without saying anything nasty about UNDP in particular. Wait, I did!
Fair points, my initial thought had been (a) as well, but I was trying to think if there were any HDRs that had an interesting different point of view to the WDR, or if there were any times when the thinking in the HDR was interesting because it was ahead of (or behind) the WDRs. Will have a look and see if there are any particular years worth lookng at because of that.
I'm in, I think. Are you asking folks to read along, or to blog them as well?
Dunno I haven't really thought it through yet. Might be nice to try and do a g+ hangout chat or something?
That would be interesting -- it'd be the first time I've logged into G+ in months! If you announce the day/time and I can make it I'll help advertise it...
Perhaps once the WDRs are done, people could take it in turns to nominate their favourite reports from other agencies. Then we could all make fun of them if we don't agree it was a vintage year.
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