Friday Music Video: Lose Yourself to Dance

Here is a more feel-good Friday afternoon music video to start your weekend. If for some reason you have not heard the new Daft Punk album (Random Access Memories), this song might encourage you to stop everything and go buy it. Critical summer party music. Now on to the dance lessons:

Friday Videos - Poverty Action Advertisements?

This past week, with family visiting for graduation, I was riding in NYC taxicabs quite a bit. During these travels, I saw an interesting series of ads played on the tv screens in the back seat: ads for Innovations for Poverty Action. I was a bit surprised to see these ads, because while fundraising campaigns for non-profits are common throughout the city, IPA has been a bit quieter than most. Also, I thought it might be tougher for them to raise funds, as they do not implement many programs but instead focus on evaluating existing programs to see what works. They, along with JPAL, are the primary performers of impact evaluations for international (and domestic) development projects as promoted by the must-read development book Poor Economics (which I eventually read last summer). Anyways, the ads certainly stand out from others, though I have not decided if I like them or not. But I am curious to learn what the intended audience (aka potential donors) think. So take a look!




Those pamphleteers have to be IPA employees, right?

Political Economy of Development Cheat Sheet

I had my last grad school exam today. It was for Chris Blattman's "Political Economy of Development: Africa and the World" class. We were allowed a single study sheet for the exam. Mine featured some highlights of the authors we read throughout the class - I thought it would be fun to share it with you all, with a few slight adjustments (inspired by this and this).

Nicolas van de Walle

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Jeffrey Sachs

William Easterly

 

Esther Duflo

Abhijit Banerjee

Jeffrey Herbst

Dambisa Moyo

Dani Rodrik

Chris Blattman

Feel free to add your own in the comments, or create some more!

A Health Warning for Value Chain Analysis Research

While working on my Micro-enterprise Development final, I reread a document that has one of the funniest introductions I can recall. The document, A Handbook for Value Chain Research by Kaplinsky and Morris, begins with the following warning:

In case you have trouble seeing the image, or want an abridged version, here are some of the best lines:

Lest anyone feel overwhelmed by the depth of detail in this Handbook, especially with respect to the sections on methodology, we would like to emphasise at the outset: this Handbook is not meant to be used or read as a comprehensive step by step process that has to be followed in order to undertake a value chain analysis. We know of no value chain analysis that has comprehensively covered all the aspects dealt with in the following pages, and certainly not in the methodologically sequential Handbook set out below. Indeed to try and do so in this form would be methodologically overwhelming, and would certainly bore any reader of such an analysis to tears.

It is not an attempt to restrict researchers within a methodological strait-jacket, but rather to free them to use whatever tools are deemed suitable from the variety presented below.

...as an array of possible technical tools, some of which may be usefully adopted and methodologically applied either partially or fully depending on circumstances; or whole parts can be skipped and not read at all.

...it is not even our intention that everyone should read the Handbook in the way one would go through a (good) novel – sequentially, and from cover to cover. We therefore urge readers to use their common sense and treat it as one does an edited book, or researchers to read it in the same way one reads a mechanics manual for finding out about one’s car. Treat the contents page as an à la carte menu, read the bits that are interesting, take what is relevant for whatever research task is at hand, and skim what is not relevant.

While the rest of the text loses the sense of humor, it is a pretty useful document. Get the pdf here.

Friday Video - David Foster Wallace

Graduation season is upon us, which means it is time to revisit David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon commencement speech. You can read it here, it's pretty awesome. But there is also a new video featuring an excerpt of the audio:



Basically, it is a reminder to be aware. I think this is a particularly good concept for those of us graduating from programs focused on international development: be aware, recognize the complexity of every situation, and do your best to avoid just going-through-the-motions. And remind yourself: this is water...

(Granted, that is just a small part of the meaning in This is Water, so listen or read and then draw your own conclusions).

You can read it here in book format, as well: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life