Week of September 23, 2011

Here's a snapshot of what captured our attention this week:

• Bill Easterly: One of the nicest aid grumps you'd ever want to meet
• Princeton Goes Open Access to Stop Staff from Handing All Copyright to Journals
• Do you read the FAI blog or visit our site? If so, we need you! Please take 2 minutes (really, that's all it takes) to take our website survey. Your input will ensure that we buid a user-friendly website. 
• Dave Algoso and the Smart Aid Initiative did their own survey on user habits re: aid and development blogs. Their results are here. 
• 10 Things We’ve Learned: #2 – Neither grants nor markets alone will solve the problems of poverty
• Global Dashboard on "What's really happening to inequality?"
• Timothy Ogden on "Revisiting Objections to RCTs" which inspired David Roodman's own contribution on the topic.
• Wikileaks: corruption alleged in Bangaldesh prime minister's office
• Dean Karlan wonders "What Percentage of Microfinance Loans Actually Go to Business Investment?" 
• The Hindu newspaper on a new technological innovation: A slate for micro-finance
• Owen Barder contemplates the future of development cooperation and the creation of "posses" to tackle particular problems.

Week of September 9, 2011

A selection of blogs and articles we have been reading this week:

• The RCT debate rages with an entry from Philip Auerswald (be sure to check out the discussion too!) 
• CGD on “If Randomized Evaluations are so Great, Why Don’t Businesses Use Them?” [joint post by Bill Savedoff and Michael Clemens] 
• The last mile problem and the last yard: What’s needed to get mobile moneyover the threshold from Ignacio Mas 
• Woes mount for SKS’ Vikram Akula 
• Can India tackle poverty? 
• The Guardian on why people should be able to cross borders freely (written by Michael Clemens) 
• Which promised outcomes from aid projects would you bet your own money on? Edward Carr on Development Initiatives and Markets.
• The NYT on 20% of American workers earn poverty-level wages. 
• Chris Blattman’s presention on Impact Evaluation at the DFID: Impact Evaluation 3.0?

Week of September 2, 2011

Stuff we've been reading over the past few weeks of August:

• Can aid become more effective and have greater impact if we engage private sector? 
• NYT: Scanning 2.4 billion eyes, India tries to connect poor to growth 
• Geo-enabling Aid Data: What is, and what’s next
• Achieving Max Long Run Growth (and the Poor) discussed by leading economists
• Ed Glaeser on the future of economics: "Sciences Still Young" in Harvard Magazine
• From the Development Research Institute: Gates and Benevolent Autocrats of the Republic of Public Health, by Alanna Shaikh & Laura Freschi 
• NYU's Jonathan Morduch and Jonathan Bauchet wonder if selective knowledge is hampering microfinance research?
• CGAP asks: Why do the poor not use savings accounts? Can qualitative research help answer the question? 
• Solving the Debate on Absolute vs. Relative Poverty 
• Lies, Damn Lies and Surveys About Foreign Aid by Charles Kenny for CGDev 
• CGAP's CEO speaks about how full financial inclusion is possible in our lifetime, the role of profits and M-PESA, and more

Week of August 8, 2011

Here are a few of the blogs and articles we have been reading this week:

• Has Muhammad Yunus been a more influential intellectual than Richard Dawkins and Paul Krugman? Tyler Cowen on which intellectuals have influence.
• Barbara Ehrenreich: Poverty is becoming a crime, almost literally. 
• Foreign Policy on culture matters, but it changes faster than you think. 
• David Roodman blogs about: Working Papers ARE Working---And Will Work Better If They Show Their Work. 
• A scientific study from the World Bank’s David Mckenzie and Berk Ozler: The impact of economics blogs.

Week of July 25, 2011

Articles and blogs that we found interesting this week include:

• Interesting piece of behavioral psychology re: The Emotions of Aid [and our choice to ignore massive suffering].
• Ignacio Mas and Promoting Formal Financial Savings –another cautionary note on savings and an interesting companion Tim Ogden’s “Is Savings Over-hyped” recent post on FAI. 
• Unhappy news about one of India's great microfinance innovators, which is on the verge of closure. 
• The Poverty Matters Blog on linguistic shifts from the use of “aid” to “development co-operation” –and what it means. 
• Four obvious but wrong assumptions about technology use in the developing world.
• McKinsey Quarterly new report: Mobile India could lead the world. 
• CGAP presents a roadmap to India's microfinance bill.

Week of July 21, 2011

Articles and blogs we've been reading this week:

• Tom Murphy worries about aid bloggers group think. 
• Hat tip to Chris Blattman for bringing our attention to Harvard's Gary King and his article on the future of social sciences
• As R&D budgets are being slashed, the Atlantic Magazine's Alex Madrigal ponders the question "Can science survive the 'Age of Austerity?'"
• “Taking Stock” of the financial education landscape for the poor, a new report from the MasterCard Foundation and what works and doesn't. 
• The Nation Magazine excerpts "What Makes Life Good?" (from Martha Nussbaum's Creating Capabilities), an insightful piece on creating equitable economic growth. 
• Mother Jones on Elizabeth Warren being passed over for the CFPB Post and more on Richard Cordray, President Obama's nominee for the position.

Week of July 7, 2011

Articles, blogs and commentary that we’ve been reading or listening to in the past week:

• Draft microfinance bill gives RBI total control and puts sector under strict watch 
• Global Poverty Rate Falling according to the UN
• Esther Duflo on the power of data in decision making and, interestingly, aid as venture capitalism
• Interview with Susan Davis at BRAC on her history with microfinance, standing up to dictatorship in Bangladesh, and more 
• An "MBA" for the Bottom of the Pyramid
• Owven Barder on what the "dollar a day" poverty line really means 
• The Talk of Groningen: Milford Bateman and David Roodman go head-to-head

Week of June 20, 2011

• Part 1 of Timothy Ogden’s extended interview with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo is now up 
• An overview of current state of mobile phone use & services in East Africa 
• Monetary Theory and Mobile Banking - Lessons from Kenya 
• The MLK project on “Is there a business case for microinsurance?” 
• Richard Thaler on smarter public policy in new McKQuarterly
• Reaching the Poor and Very Poor with Appropriate Savings Services
• The problem of WIZZIT vs. the success of M-PESA in serving the BOP 
• New info re: low-income client financial behavior. Very useful for mobile money productdesign
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau likely to be driven by Warren's tenets
• Jonathan Morduch's recent Science article in its entirety and unedited: “Why Finance Matters,” a commentary on Karlan & Zinman Philippines microfinance study also published in Science (gated)
• Ignacio Mas contrasts 2 e-payment Success Stories: PayPal and M-PESA 
• "The Microfinance Contagion Scenario" by Timothy Ogden and David Roodman’s response and disagreement with the piece

Week of June 2, 2011

This edition features everything from posts about where the next microfinance crisis will likely strike to new articles from Jeff Sachs and Bill Easterly and much more.

• Cory Doctorow interviews Financial Times columnist Tim Harford about his new book Adapt
• David Roodman analyses data to pinpoint the next microfinance crisis, for the June edition of Beyond Profits
• Karuna Krishnaswamy examines “Microfinance in India: What caused the mass defaults in Karnataka and what can we learn from it?” for CGAP
• Interesting piece on customized mobile apps to connect the ultra-poor to funding opportunities
• New article from Karlan and Appel: “You Can't Always Get What You Want”  for Foreign Policy
• From JPAL: Charging small fees dramatically reduces access to important products for the poor 
• FAI’s Barbara Kiviat makes a call for better language: what does microfinance really mean?
• Contrary to Bill Easterly's thesis on economic growth under autocrats, Jeff Sachs looks to “Nigeria's Historic Opportunity" for development under a less autocratic ruler
• Microfinance Focus on microfinance for water and sanitation: lofty dream or wave of the future?

Week of May 16, 2011

Here is our short list of must reads for the week.

• FAI’s Jonathan Morduch and Barbara Kiviat preview the launch of a new research project on the financial lives of low-income Americans
• Two trends in global poverty --New report from Brookings 
• A new report from the World Economic Forum on mobile finance
• The NYT and "India’s Anti-Poverty Programs Are Big but Troubled"
• Tina Rosenberg on Microinsurance for the NYT Fixes blog 
• The Wall Street Journal on Financial Inclusion 2.0 & the need to focus microsavings 
• Stuart Rutherford on "Saving Up is Hard to Do"
• David Bornstein on "A Book In Every Home, and Then Some" for the NYT Fixesblog.
• Gift Cards as Tools of Financial Inclusion 
• Karlan and Appel on "Microfinance works, even without a Hollywood ending" 
• Nick Kristof on smarter aid, economists, and Michael Kremer's work on deworming
• Is credit a human right? Yunus says yes. NYU's Gershman and Morduchdisagree in a new paper
• In letter to 8 million Grameen members, Yunus warns of gov attempt to take over  
• Regulatory Architecture of India’s Financial System