Made in Africa?
Monrovia is awash in $1 apples. Apples aren’t grown here; word on the street is the fruit were American grown, shipped to China, delivered to the Chinese troops peacekeeping in Liberia, and finally...
View ArticleNGOs: Please stop training
NGOs love nothing like a good training. Or better yet: training of trainers. What better way to give services to 20,000 people? So much sexier than serving just 200. I’m in central Liberia observing...
View ArticleRandom field notes
The only periodicals stocked in the UN guesthouse in central Liberia? The National Enquirer. Headline: Bush does cocaine, in White House. There is a picture of him scratching his nose. The post Random...
View ArticleDevelopment blog clusters
Two of my four collaborators in Uganda have blogs. Two colleagues on my Liberia projects are twittering. Now this: I am eating lunch on the patio of the Green Forest guesthouse in Weasua, Liberia, a...
View ArticleDevelopment blog clusters
Two of my four collaborators in Uganda have blogs. My Liberia RAs are twittering. Now this: I am eating lunch on the patio of the Green Forest guesthouse in Weasua, Liberia, a dusty town in the north...
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Rules of the road
UNHCR lent our project three Land Cruisers, prompting me to finally overcome my irrational aversion to driving in developing countries. I had no idea what I was missing. While my 60-year old father...
View ArticleLuxury in economy
After eight weeks of frantic field work, I am headed home. My diatribe against business class in development seems to have generated good travel karma: I had a whole coach row to myself from Abidjan to...
View ArticleWhat do surveys, whales, and manimals have in common…?
Our team just finished an impossible survey in the middle of Liberian rainy season. Once again I will miss the victory party. My insurance company will be happy to hear there is no fire dancing (this...
View ArticleMarx vs Smith: The randomized evaluation
The laborer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labor-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labor, the productive activity of the laborer, the creative...
View ArticleIronic censoring
It took me a day to figure out how to put up that last post (Marx vs. Smith). Ethiopia uses the same monitoring software as does China, and half my post would not save or upload. Likewise, I can’t...
View ArticleShall Atlas shrug or workers unite?
My Marx vs. Smith post generated a hitherto unprecedented flurry of emails and comments from political theorists. I’ve been getting lessons in Marx from left and right (pun intended) all week. What is...
View ArticleManimals, continued
Last Liberia trip, my survey staff tried to convince me that Liberian hunters have the power to transform themselves into animals. I bet them otherwise, and they pledged to prove it the next time I...
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Underpants games
One of our Liberia studies is tracking 1,500 ex-combatants over two years. In the beginning, these particular ex-coms were illicitly mining diamonds or gold, occupying a rubber plantation, or making...
View ArticleManimal update
There have been updates in the manimal case, but I’ll save those for the end. Possibly a more worthwhile a topic: one commenter was disappointed in the whole affair, thinking it demeaning and...
View ArticleThe times they are a changin’
While running yesterday in Monrovia, I received nearly as many “Chinaman! Chinaman!” and “Nihau! Nihau!” as “Whiteman! Whiteman!”. My colleague Rob received a less coveted “Chingchong!” The post The...
View ArticleAfrica’s coming disaster?
Tyler Cowen links to reports of African drug users deliberately injecting themselves with another addict’s blood to share the high. When I think about Africa’s future, what worries me aren’t the drug...
View ArticleRandom and inexpert thoughts on Addis
I’m in Ethiopia for a week to check in on my industrial job experiments. Everything is going wonderfully except for the pesky fact that many of the businesses have yet to open. The next few months look...
View ArticleThe trials of randomization
One of my busiest projects at the moment is working on behavior change in Liberian street youth, aiming to reduce poverty, crime and violence. One of the interventions dispenses $200 cash grants to...
View ArticleHow to pick a dissertation project (and why it should not be a field experiment)
I have pointed students to advice on how to start a thesis. I have also posted my thoughts on what to do (and not to do) in empirical research. For the past few weeks, though, I find myself giving the...
View ArticleThe most interesting email I received today (and why I’m learning less than I...
From my email inbox this morning, one of my research assistants reports issues on a large field experiment and crime victimization survey I am running in Colombia: In Santa Fe the prostitutes and...
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