The Rumors [of the Death of Liberalism] Have Been Exaggerated

A review of The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce and The Fate of the West: The Battle to Save the World’s Most Successful Political Idea by Bill Emmott, for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

The cost of the American dream

Inequality of opportunity is a big deal in America.  For the Economist.

Racist behaviour is declining in America

Trump's pandering is to a declining and small minority.  For The Economist.

Expanding and Measuring Opportunities

Expanding and Measuring Opportunities is a working paper for the Center for Development and Enterprise.  The idea that circumstances and free choice can be neatly divided is open to considerable debate. The [equality of] opportunity framework begs the question, ‘what is in the control of the individual?’ Regardless, equality of opportunity is about ‘birth luck egalitarianism’-minimizing the variance of birth luck-- while maximizing or expanding opportunity is about efficiently raising the average birth luck. One advantage of ‘opportunity expansion’ over ‘opportunity equalization’ is that an accounting between free will and determinism is unnecessary–there is no concern with estimating the impact of genetic or in utero factors on outcomes, for example. However, if we are worried about maximizing or expanding opportunities rather than equality of opportunities, the approach that is appropriate when defining equal opportunity (the state when measured exogenous factors have no bearings on relative outcomes within a country) does not work. This is because we cannot take the stock (or flow) of outcomes as a given or an irrelevance.  Empirically, allowing the stock of outcomes to vary suggests a goal of expanding or maximizing opportunity may involve a markedly different set of policies than equalizing opportunities. This is because variance in opportunities within countries is far smaller than variance across countries.  That implies a focus on raising national average opportunity may have a far bigger payoff than redistributing opportunities or trying to raise the minimum opportunity to the mean within a country --although greater equality of opportunity is likely to be a method to increase absolute levels of opportunity. 



Unproductive entrepreneurship is increasingly common in America

Baumol in the US --for the Economist.

Stop blaming poor countries’ poverty on corruption—sometimes it’s just bad luck

Poor countries aren't a lot more corrupt than rich countries.  For Quartz.

Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption

Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption is a CGD book.  

In the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan, the US Agency for International Development supported the Afghan Ministry of Public Health to deliver basic healthcare to 90 percent of the population, at a cost of $4.50 a head. The program played a vital role in improving the country’s health; the number of children dying before the age of five dropped by 100,000 a year. But accounting standards at the Ministry of Public Health concerned the US Special Investigator General for Afghanistan. There was no evidence of malfeasance, nor argument about the success of the program. For all that the results were fantastic, receipts were not in order. The investigator called for the health program to be suspended because of “financial management deficiencies” at the ministry.

Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption explores how an important and justified focus on corruption is damaging the potential for aid to deliver results. Donors treat corruption as an issue they can measure and improve, and from which they can insulate their projects at acceptable costs by controlling processes and monitoring receipts. But our ability to measure corruption is limited, and the link between donors’ preferred measures and development outcomes is weak. Noting the costs of the standard anticorruption tools of fiduciary controls and centralized delivery, Results Not Receipts urges a different approach to tackling corruption in development: focus on outcomes.

Trump's Flawed Global Vision

For US News and World Report --the world is getting more peaceful and collaboration is increasingly important to US and global well-being.

We can honour the sacrifice of our troops by deploying more women peacekeepers

For Irin news, with Tanvi Jaluka.

The data are in: Young people are increasingly less racist than old people

For Quartz --the world is slowly getting less racist.

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