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William Easterly has a blog, ostensibly about aid effectiveness, but the first post consists of inaccurate swipes at an article by Robert Zoellick. Let's hope it gets better.
links for 2009-01-26
27-Jan-09
links for 2009-01-24
25-Jan-09
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Israel shelled Gaza with white phosphorus, so that's another violation of international law to add to the list, this time a particularly despicable one given the effects of the weapon.
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Funding to keep public transport services and employment going even at current levels makes more sense as 'stimulus' than new roads and other infrastructure that won't be built for years.
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"collective action problems in spatial association can produce undesirable outcomes like concentrated poverty … This paper examines what it would mean to view problems of spatial association as resource dilemmas. I argue that the rich literature surrounding the allocation and protection of entitlements can and should be used to gain analytic traction on group formation decisions that are capable of producing sustained, problematic spatial concentrations. My analysis centers on a single context: concentrated poverty in metropolitan neighborhoods. However, the article probes outward from that focal point to consider the relationship between property and association more generally and to identify conceptual stopping points for the application of property theory to matters of association. By doing so, I make the case for an appropriately limited notion of associational entitlements. "
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as humans continue to drive species towards extinction and degrade critical habitats, we are losing the life-giving services they provide and the potential for countless new medical discoveries … The current rate of species extinction is hundreds to even thousands times greater than historical background levels … nearly one-third of the approximately 6,000 known amphibian species (frogs, toads, news, slamanders) are threatened with extinction.
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Drive around Google Earth in a milk truck
links for 2009-01-20
21-Jan-09
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A.O. Scott says Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" is a great and important film. I think he's right.
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Their review of the CEO debate places equal emphasis on the market, in showering capital gains through stock options, and an arbitrary management-power hypothesis based on numerous non-market aspects of executive pay. "CEOs, through compensation committees and inbreeding of boards of directors, have a unique ability to control their own compensation," the authors write. "Furthermore, if a director approves a higher compensation package, that may subsequently lead her to receive more compensation at her own firm." …
Furthermore, the survey cites a study showing "ample evidence that firms work to disguise the magnitude of CEO pay," such as lifetime healthcare, below-market-rate loans, and above-market-rate loans when CEOs defer their compensation, to lessen shareholder outrage. Such research "is important because it tells shareholders what to expect and where their outrage constraint should be set," the authors write. -
"For the recent period we estimate that rents accounted for 30% to 50% of the wage differential between the financial sector and the rest of the private sector".
links for 2009-01-17
18-Jan-09
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Alison Bechdel on the curse of the ever-lengthening reading list
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Aerial photos of Africa by George Steinmetz
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The editorial written by slain Sri Lankan newspaper editor Lasantha Wickramatunga to be published in the case of his assassination.
links for 2009-01-11
12-Jan-09
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It's a pretty long list
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Wise words: "An investment. When you subsidize homeownership you are, among other things, encouraging people to save in the form of housing rather than stocks or bonds or whatnot. At the margin, this causes people to live in larger houses than they otherwise would have. That increases the amount of energy it takes to heat the house. And it increases the amount of energy it takes to cool the house. And it increases the amount of energy it takes to provide light to the house. And it increases the distances between stuff, pushing people to drive further."
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"Rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and, without adaptation, will leave half the world's population facing serious food shortages, new research shows."
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""I risked it all because I thought it was my duty as England captain to say that things were not right," he said in his News of the World column.
"[But] I feel I've got unfinished business as captain of England.""
What a dick this man is.
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"For immigrant workers, as with so many of us in the suburbs, life boils down to the job, the bed and the travel between. But when you live in a landscape designed for cars, and you are poor, and it is too far to walk to work, and there’s no bus to take you there, the only option is two wheels. This is what is cheap and effective. It can also be deadly."
links for 2009-01-10
11-Jan-09
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Gives you the best walking route between A and Z, including lower-pollution options.
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"Donations are drying up as the recession bites - exposing the nonsense of the Tory belief in charity replacing the welfare state"
links for 2009-01-09
10-Jan-09
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"The Obama people combined very tight top-down message control and campaign coordination with a fair degree of openness at the bottom to independent initiatives by volunteers. As long as everyone agreed on the same underlying goal (beating the Republicans), this worked. But as that overwhelming imperative recedes, people are going to start pursuing their own objectives – and the ‘open’ architecture that the Obama people have constructed provides them with plenty of opportunities to do this."
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"child benefit programs in Canada had significant positive effects on test scores, as has been featured in the existing literature. However, we also find that several measures of both child and maternal mental health and well-being show marked improvement with higher child benefits."
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"a $1,000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6% of a standard deviation in the short run. The gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families"
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Argues that the World Food Programme's move to buying local food instead of shipping it from donors is generally welcome, but has the potential to exacerbate problems in areas like the Sahel where supply is relatively inelastic.
links for 2009-01-08
09-Jan-09
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Lies, then a cowardly cover-up: thank God for our fearless press corps.
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Hmm: Survey statistics suggest Inner London kids take less drugs but are also more miserable than their peers Oop North. Far be it from me to suggest a causal relationship there.
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"All the words in the world. Pronounced".
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Outrage over the crazy notion that if your home is more valuable you should pay more council tax.
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This is brilliant.
Distorting the distortionists
08-Jan-09
It’s great to see the new Statistics Authority coming out with a code of practice for official statistics and embarrassing the government into abiding by it. I can’t help but feel, however, that this is a classic case of well-intentioned regulation causing a distortion in the market, as neither the code nor the Authority’s powers apply to political parties (most relevantly, the non-government parties) or the media, who remain free to spin, dissemble and lie at their pleasure.
I’m not sure it’s actually possible to keep up with the torrent of bullshit that politicians and the papers come out with, but we’ve got more and more specialist bloggers out there who are starting to pick these things up. Today’s example comes from Ben Goldacre and Tim Lambert, who both catch out the Telegraph making up nonsense about climate change and then refusing to own up to it.