Barriers to Financial Access

One of the studies I’m working on (Informative Advertising and Spillovers) partially involves studying ways to encourage people to save more.  Consequently, I’ve been thinking a lot about why people don’t save more and, in particular, why so few people in the developing world have formal bank accounts. One interesting explanation I’ve heard recently from [...]

More on Kristof and Danger in the developing world

Chris Blattman responds to Kristof’s column on tips on living in developing countries (I wrote about this same Kristof column last week).  I especially liked Blattman’s closing line: “[...] foreign does not equal dangerous.  Dwelling on the potential bandit round the next corner will make you miserable, paranoid, and [...] even a bit prejudiced.”

Should we think of poverty as a human rights violation?

On Bill Easterly’s Aid Watch blog there has been an interesting debate about whether poverty is a human rights violation.  The discussion was promped by Amnesty Internationals 2009 report that named poverty as a human rights violation.  Easterly argues that poverty is not a human rights violation and that thinking about poverty as a human [...]

Low Overhead and NGO’s

In December, Nicholas Kristof’s had an interesting blog post about the emphasis on “low-overhead” among charitable donors.  Kristof writes: […] when I counsel a young person beginning a career […] I know that if they join a big bank, they will get first rate career training and preparation. In an aid group, it’s typically more [...]