This rocks my world

From Ryan Briggs: here and here

If you think that population density is important for political and economic outcomes (I do), this development could be pretty revolutionary. I'd be interested though to know how much of this density is due to Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the East African Community, and how the other 40 or so countries fare.

Kenya

Either I have starry-eyed leaving-Juba syndrome again, or Kenya is amazing.

First the coast. Lamu is like stepping back in time to a medieval town. There are no cars on the island, only donkeys, so the narrow arab streets are covered in donkey-poo and arabs wandering round in robes. Donkey rides are available but I wouldn't recommend them. My backside suffered.

Then you step through to the seafront and it is stunning, like a fantastic mediterranean get-away, except with pirate ships! (ok, fine, "dhows", but they look like pirate ships to me).

North of Lamu is not recommended because there might be real pirates, but the coastline South of Lamu is full of amazing deserted picturesque beaches, and beautiful reefs for diving around.

Ramadan might not be the best time to visit if you're a non-muslim, wondering why everyone is looking at you a bit funny whilst walking down the street munching on some snacks. Then again the iftar is great. There's a kind of battered mashed potato thing which is delicious.

Nairobi just feels completely European. I haven't spent much time here before, but its great just strolling around a proper city with cafes and shops and no baking heat. And doing some supermarket shopping for all those small luxuries.

Anyway back to Juba tomorrow. I've managed to sneakily keep tabs on email on my phone, but I've just opened my feed reader to find 1000 unread items. Jesus Christ.

Monsieur health secretary

For all its pros and cons, you can always rely on The Economist to be consistent. You always know what their opinion on any issue is before you start reading, so you can screen it out easily if need be.

The unrelenting classical liberalism can sometimes grate.

But sometimes there are moments of pure genius.

"three of the English cricketers who defeated [the Australians] in the deciding match of this summer's Test series were born in South Africa. English fans however, weren't too troubled by the moans. Their lot had won... 

These days, when the English football team is playing and the camera pans to the coaches' bench, it has a distinctly Mediterranean hue...Under the current boss, Fabio Capello, it is romping towards next year's World Cup. 

It isn't only in sport. The boards of Britain's big companies routinely look beyond the country's shores, and the firms' own payrolls, for the best people to run them. Bagehot is wondering: if England's football team can be trained by an Italian, why shouldn't the health service be managed by a Frenchman? Or, to put it less facetiously, why does politics, the business of running the country, draw on so much shallower a recruitment pool than most other important enterprises in Britain?"

Access for Africa

Chris Blattman thinks that publishers should "allow textbooks and academic volumes more than a few years old to be printed copyright-free in Africa".

No need Chris.

I just bought a second-hand book on a Mombasa street corner which was DHL'ed from Europe, which obviously makes far more sense.

2009 Mercury Music Prize Winner

is Speech Debelle.

I called it (kind of).

Dotty Data......5 Reasons why measuring GDP from Outer Space is a bad idea!

Everyone seems to be blogging about using night-lights to measure GDP (Marginal Revolution, Brad De Long’s blog, the Economist and WSJ blogs, and even here). It does sound uber-cool: Measuring GDP from Outer Space and has pretty pictures to go with it. But really, before we get too excited, here’s why it’s a dubious idea:

1. The major motivation of the underlying paper is that African countries have bad GDP data. But here’s a thought: a lot of Sub-Saharan countries get a LOT of their GDP from minerals and oil. The minefields don’t really create much light (at least not as much as the oil’s worth!) and often most of this wealth does not trickle into local consumption. Think here of all the usual stuff on political economy of resource curse etc. etc. emember President Obiang from Tropical Gangsters still rules Equatorial Guinea…… So basically underestimation seems built-in

2. It’s true we don’t have city-level GDP data. Yeah but first what you’re measuring is not production but expenditure (which is fine since that’s a perfectly valid way to get at GDP). But if you really want expenditure why don’t you just do a usual LSMS-type budget survey in the cities…? Far cheaper than usual African fieldwork (no rural logistics involved!) and guess what, we already know a lot about how to do them properly!

3. But the biggest problem is do we really know what it’s measuring? Does a low GDP estimate from night-lights, especially in Africa, just show a break-down or inadequacy of public provision, the usual way we get electricity???. Just look at Juba, would you? No city power to speak of (most areas of the town don’t even have connections) and generators are way more expensive, both as a fixed cost and to run, than a usual light connection. Of course, you’d see fewer lights…. And its not just the difference caused by the value of electricity !

4. How are lights and GDP related? Even the paper’s evidence shows there just isn’t a one-to-one relationship between growth in GDP and growth in night lights… Read this: In Hungary, Poland and Romania, where incomes rose by 41%, 56%, and 23%, the respective rises in lights were 46%, 80%, and 112%. The relationship doesn’t even seem STABLE!

5. And for the parting argument: Aren’t two error-prone measures better than one? Well, not if the measurement error in the second measure is just far worse than the first one (even if we did know what we were measuring with lights!).Keep everyone guessing which is the ‘right’ number! If you really want more measures, there are other options to choose from: smaller sample surveys possibly? You want local level estimates - how about some small area estimation stuff? Seriously there is enough to complain on the Penn World Tables and GDP estimates: Don’t make it worse!

P.S. This is not your usual correspondent. I’m his usual skeptical audience over beer most days…. Just decided to make the most of his absence from Juba

P.P.S. Lee, before you get to it, measuring population by huts where a Census exists is ALSO a bad idea! And this has nothing to with my love for my day job!!!

Rest and Recuperation

I'm going to lie on a Kenyan beach, so this might be quiet for a week.

But not before I sneak in a quick aid-worker-moan, who generally get "R&R" every 6 weeks or something ridiculous because Juba is such a hardship post. The poor things. My last holiday was 5 months ago. Yes I'm jealous.

Ronald Coase, the theory of the firm, and principal agent problems

Coase's Nobel Prize-winning theory essentially states "outsource as much as you can until the transactions costs become excessive. Then stop."

Looks like nobody told the US embassy in Kabul who are paying guards to guard the guards.

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has banned alcohol and assigned American personnel to watch over the embassy's security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters.

This is nearly as funny as the US needing to build a wall around their fence.

(AP) –

TIJUANA, Mexico — Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana say they have arrested six men for stealing pieces of the U.S. border fence to sell as scrap metal.

Why are Arabic streets so narrow?

...asks Tyler Cowen. He isn't convinced by Chris Wickham's answer: 

"the Arab states did not use processions as a major part of their political legitimization; the assembly in the mosque courtyard was sufficient for that. The need for wide boulevards ended" 

Ryszard Kapuscinski in "The Shadow of the Sun" inadvertently offers an alternative hypothesis: 

"...one enters the narrow streets typical of old Arab towns. I cannot say why these people built in such a cramped and crowded fashion, why they pressed together this way, practically one atop another. Was it so that they would never have far to walk? Or to be better able to defend the town? I don't know. But one thing is certain: this mass of piled stone, this accretion of walls, this layering of balconies, recesses, eaves, and rooftops, somehow secured, as though in an icy treasury, a corner of shade, a tiny breeze, and a bit of coolness during the most terrifying noontime heat." 

Maybe Arab streets are designed for this bit of coolness?

Update: Philip Blue also weighs in.

Dambiso Moyo is right. Stop Aid to Africa. But not why you think.

This argument is going to be a little bit half-baked, but then as Simon says, "One of the wonderful things about a blog, is that you can write down thoughts which may or may not be interesting but without claiming to have done in-depth research or have in-depth knowledge – you are just 'putting it out there'."

I should also credit Abhijeet for most of these ideas.

Aid to Africa should stop.

Not because it is detrimental to growth, as Dambiso Moyo argues. But because it is SO DAMN EXPENSIVE. Southern Sudan is an extreme case. It is more expensive than most places in Africa. But it is not qualitatively different to the rest of Africa. The reasons it is expensive to operate in are essentially the same across the continent; low population densities, people dispersed across large distances, along with insecurity and political barriers to trade and migration, all making transactions costs huge.

Operating in Asia is cheaper because people are closer together.

What this means is that your money goes much further in Asia, as any backpacker can tell you. This also includes your aid money.

India's national school-feeding programme, which now reaches over 150 million kids, costs 2 cents per day per child. For their school-meal programme (operating in over 80 countries, including in both Africa, Asia and Latin America) WFP want $25 cents per day per child.

Some more back-of-an-envelope calculations (based on figures from BSF South Sudan and India's national primary school programme) reveals similar cost ratios for school construction in India and Southern Sudan, basically at least 10:1.

Now if what we care about is poor PEOPLE and not COUNTRIES, then how can we justify spending money on poor Africans, if it means choosing 1 poor African ahead of 10 poor Asians. On what ethical grounds is that fair?

This is not to say forget about Africa, just that Aid as our means of assistance is ridiculously cost-ineffective. So let's look at some other ways we can help, such as:

Trade - As Paul Collier has called for - lets have EU-US wide preferential market access for Africa, guaranteed for 15 years. (And maybe lose the subsidies? Please? No? Ok fine just the market access then.)

Migration - Come on, let's ease up just a little huh? It's good for us too I promise. Make it temporary or something.

Technology - Lets get serious about funding technology for Africa. That includes IT and tropical disease research.

Security - Yeah OK this one is a bit more controversial, but I'm broadly with Collier.

And then there's investment and the environment, which I know next to nothing about, but I'm sure there's plenty we can do.

Bottom-line - there is LOTS we can do to help in Africa without giving a penny of aid for service delivery.

And I'm not even saying stop aid, just send it where you get bang-for-your-buck.

Thoughts anyone?

Migration-Watch-Watch

The Cheek!

Apparently being an immigrant in Britain does not disqualify you from complaining about immigrants (that's right Amanda Platell, you were born in Australia if you hadn't remembered which would make YOU an immigrant). I suppose complaining about immigrants is kind of the national sport though. Maybe we should put it into the Citizenship test.

Q. The communist Labour government is still letting loads of dirty foreigners in. What do you think should be done about it?

a) Build a big wall around the coast so noone can get in. And close all the airports. Right after I've got in that is.
b) Have a warship stationed in the channel to sink anything with brown people on it.
c) Take away all their benefits. Because immigrants are all child-molesting criminal single-mothers sitting around getting paid £50,000 a week in benefits.

Rod Liddle has a marginally better attempt. At least he tries to explain why a large population is a bad thing. Sadly, his efforts are a bit pathetic.

"the pressure to pave over more and more countryside greatly increases flood risk."

What?!!

Monday Links

1. Frank Field says to stabilise UK pop then immigration must balance with emigration. Do you think I could get in the Guardian by arguing that to stabilise the queue at the post office we need to balance the people being served and the people walking in?

2. USAID is still missing an administrator in part because of the vetting process, in which "candidates for the USAID post have to detail everywhere they've lived in their adult lives, and every foreign citizen they know."

3. A novel strategy to ease arrests?

4. Moisés Naím (Editor of Foreign Policy) is pessimistic on Dutch Disease.

"It is not that their leaders fail to realise the need to diversify; in fact, all oil countries have invested massively in other sectors. Unfortunately, few of these investments succeed largely because the exchange rate stunts the growth of agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and other sectors ... Unlocking the secret of [Chile and Botswana's] escape from the resource curse could spare millions from the devil's excrement. But nobody has done it yet."

Winehouse Drug-athon to raise money for Ugandan School

From The Daily Mash:

WINEHOUSE DRUG-ATHON TO RAISE MONEY FOR UGANDAN SCHOOL

SINGER Amy Winehouse is launching an attempt on the world drug-bender record to raise money for a Ugandan primary school.


The children begin each day with a hearty rendition of 'Rehab' 

During the mammoth session the 'Back to Black' star will be consuming crack, heroin, cheap speedy pills and a two gallon jug of paint stripper. 

A spokesman said: "She's been in training with some of the country's top junkies, including the legendary 'Norwegian Dale'. 

"The plan is that when she starts to glaze over from the brown, the Es and crack will perk her up again and give her the energy to stay on it. She really is an inspiration to everyone who wants to take drugs for charity." 

Winehouse's record attempt will raise money for a school in the Ugandan village of Katosi, which desperately needs a new roof. 

Head teacher Akiki Balunda said: "We are very grateful to Amy for this and have faith in her bison-like constitution. 

"We wanted to help her out by sending some drugs, but all we could find was a few out-of-date malaria tablets." 

The existing world drug-bender record is held by a 44-year-old from Manchester known simply as 'Cheb', who consumed nine times his own body weight in poor quality street opiates during a two month ming-up which ended when he jumped naked into a local zoo's Komodo dragon enclosure. 

He wished Winehouse well in her record attempt, adding: "Mint. Bangin'. Mint. Mint. Totally fuckin' mint" 

Cheb said he given up endurance drug taking so that he can focus on trying to kill an owl with a crossbow in the belief that if he eats it he will become Dolph Lundgren.

Possibly the most complicated elections in the world?

In a country where there haven't been any elections in some time, (a good electoral history is at the Rift Valley Institute), the Southern Sudanese are being asked to complete TWELVE ballots next year.

1. President of Sudan
2. President of Southern Sudan
3. State Governor
4. National Assembly - Constituency MP
5. National Assembly - Women's List (Proportional representation)
6. National Assembly - Party List (Proportional representation)
7. Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly - Constituency MP
8. Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly - Women's List (Proportional representation)
9. Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly - Party List (Proportional representation)
10. State Assembly - Constituency MP
11. State Assembly - Women's List (Proportional representation)
12. State Assembly - Party List (Proportional representation)