Warming increases risk of civil war in Africa

Ouch!

Ed Miguel is red-hot. Climate change and civil war in ONE PAPER?! Can anything stop this man!!

Blogging and Academia

I've just been reading the latest draft of a paper by Miguel, Saiegh and Satyanath which measures the correlation between violence on the football (soccer) field in European leagues (yellow/red cards) and violence in a player's home country (civil war). Blattman blogged about an earlier draft a while ago.

Great paper, but what caught my eye were the acknowledgements:

"We are grateful to Dan Altman, Ray Fisman, Matias Iaryczower, Abdul Nouri, Dani Rodrik, seminar participants at Stanford, UCSD, UCLA, IPES, and at the 4th Annual HiCN Workshop at Yale, and a host of anonymous bloggers for useful comments, and Dan Hartley, Teferi Mergo, Melanie Wasserman and Tom Zeitzoff for excellent research assistance. All errors remain our own."

Proper academic acknowledgement of bloggers! Is this a first?

What does corruption have to do with development?

A commentator suggests that a "tolerable administration of justice" needs to incorporate "zero-tolerance of corruption." I agree about the importance of predictability, but corruption is a pretty broad concept, and is it always the most binding constraint?

Mushtaq Khan at SOAS has some great work skewering the cross-country approach to corruption and growth which dominates the literature. This chart in particular articulates that old favourite: Correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

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Update: Mushtaq Khan and Daniel Kaufmann are on the next Development Drums, send your questions to Owen Barder

Test Drive Google SMS Services (Uganda)

This is cool. Health and agriculture tips, and a "marketplace" all via SMS. I hope it takes off.

The Challenges of Budgeting in Oil-dependent Economies

Does the Guardian care about Development?

I generally applaud the Guardian's Katine project for the attention it brings to development. But I am exasperated by the lack of clarity on issues this important.

Does the Tory party care about aid? 

In a recent green paper on international development, the Conservative party sought to establish its commitment to aid.

Aid is not the same thing as development. They cannot be used interchangeably. They are not synonyms.

Development happens when governments have strong leadership pointing in the right direction. External assistance can help, and it can take many forms, of which aid is one.

Treating aid and development as if they are interchangeable narrows our thought and blocks off discussion of all the other ways that rich countries can help poor people enjoy better lives.

On a different note, I want to meet the 7% of Guardian readers who vote conservative. And the 14% of Torygraph readers who vote labour. Who are these people?

Monday Links (On Tuesday)

My job is getting in the way of blogging. That and whoever forgot to pay the internet bill (again).

1. I'd like to second Matt's call for 'economic crimes against humanity'

2. Duncan Green explains the importance of economic growth. Redistribution within poor countries can't get rid poverty. (Obviously. But I'm still glad that someone has run the numbers).

3. The best productivity blog ever (HT: Marginal Revolution)

Photo of the Day

From the excellent Independent (Uganda) blog

Why Migration Matters for Development

Damn you Matt, you scooped my "Migration and Development" post, and even got some climate change in. I love it though. Compensate poor countries for Western carbon emissions by letting their citizens move there.

Anyway, my post was going to be that Lant Pritchett is (was) in Juba today (yesterday) to give a talk about Growth Strategies. Which was good and will probably help shape the Growth Strategy for Southern Sudan. But it was also a grim reminder of the limits of growth. Ten years of insane Chinese-style growth will probably take Southern Sudan to Kenya's level of income. Ten years of ridiculously optimistic growth.

How about a development intervention which can take a Sudanese citizen's income to US levels overnight?

The potential gains to poor people of being allowed the opportunity to work in a rich country for even a few weeks blow every other conceivable anti-poverty measure completely out of the water.

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The picture up top comes from this presentation.

Development Poll - Update

The results are in and it's a dead heat, 7 in favour, 7 against and 2 "what the fuck"? The difference definitely isn't statistically significant at any rate.

"little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things"

I'm sticking to a "yes". Firstly, he does say "little else", so it isn't entirely these three things but primarily them.

Secondly, he is talking about the "highest degree of opulence" speaking from 18th(?) Century England, which translates to barely middle income by today's standards. I reckon this lot of absolute basics can get a country easily to middle-income, and only then do you really need some fancy growth-diagnostics-jiggery-pokery.

The conclusions of the World Bank Growth Diagnostics on Southern Sudan? Your top priorities are security and roads. Oh er... thanks for that...

Monday Links

1. Possibly the finest all-purpose political t-shirt slogan ever conceived - From Ben Goldacre (via Rob Crilly):

2. Pure Genius from Harry Rud. I'm not looking forward to becoming an ex-expat (HT: TH)

3. Top 10 things that the Save Darfur Coalition spent more on than direct aid to Darfuris in 2008 (also TH)

UN Golf Association of Southern Sudan

I've never played golf in my life but now could be the time to start. This is in the UNMIS compound where the leopard was supposedly sighted. You can also see Ban-Ki Moo, allegedly a gift from Salva Kiir to the UN Secretary General (who presumably thought his cow would be safe with the Indian peacekeepers).

Juba Business Plan of the Day: Fruit and Veg Delivery

So my girlfriend was nagging me last night about not getting my 5 fruit'n'veg-a-day. Admittedly my dinner of cake (thank you new Syrian bakery, I love you), Indian potato snacks and a tin of pineapple (that's fruit!) last night was a particular low.

My excuse is that it's difficult to stock up when you have no fridge or TESCO express. And all the shops near my house are shut by the time I get home. And even when they're open they only have tomatoes and onions from Uganda (does anyone know of any good tomato and onion-only cookbooks?). All the good markets are on the other side of town.

Short of TESCO opening a new branch in Hai Tarawa (my preferred solution), someone should set up a fruit'n'veg delivery service. Loads of expat khawajas and probably a few wealthy Sudanese are too busy/lazy to get to the market. This even works in the UK for organic veg.

You probably just need a couple of people and a van. A local to get some decent bulk prices from the market, and someone savvy enough to advertise this properly to the people with money.

Come on Juba entrepreneurs!

Correction

Sorry Danny, but I got a bit carried away calling the tweet of the week on a Monday. It actually comes from the US ambassador to Kenya.

USAMB4REFORM: Despite warnings by some, I will still speak out supporting reforms in Kenya. President Obama and the Kenyan people demand nothing less!

!!!!

A humble suggestion to any ambassadors in Sudan - fancy twittering about CPA implementation?