Cato on Campus - Economics: Economic Development

The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:49:00 EDT

By Johan Norberg: "To make her case, Klein exaggerates the free-market reforms that take place in times of crisis, often by ignoring central events and rewriting chronologies. She uses loose metaphors and wild distortions to claim that free markets are a form of violence. She confuses libertarianism with corporatism and neoconservatism and blames Milton Friedman for encouraging reform by stealth. To do so, she engages in one of the most malevolent distortions of a thinker that has been done in a major work in recent years."

In Defense of "Sweatshops"

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:20:00 EDT

Benjamin Powell: "Because sweatshops are better than the available alternatives, any reforms aimed at improving the lives of workers in sweatshops must not jeopardize the jobs that they already have."

American Idol and Poverty

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:10:00 EDT

Ed Crane, President of the Cato Institute, suggests that celebrities take a good look at how to help the poor of the world create their own wealth.

Roberts on the Least Pleasant Jobs

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:33:00 EDT

"EconTalk host Russ Roberts talks about the claim that for capitalism to succeed there have to be people at the bottom to do the unpleasant tasks and that the rich thrive because of the suffering of those at the bottom. He critiques the idea that capitalism is a zero sum game where to get ahead, someone has to fall back. He also looks at the evolution of the least pleasant jobs over time and how technology interacts with rising productivity to make the least pleasant jobs more pleasant."

Peace Won't Come to Zimbabwe

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:27:00 EDT

By Marian L. Tupy and David Coltart: "The case against Mr. Mugabe and the ZANU-PF for crimes against humanity would be compelling. They have turned one of Africa's most prosperous and relatively free nations into an Orwellian nightmare. Since 1994, the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 34 from 57 for women and to 37 from 54 for men. Some 3,500 Zimbabweans die every week from the combined effects of HIV/AIDS, poverty and malnutrition."

Don Boudreaux on Globalization and Trade Deficits

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:02:00 EST

"Don Boudreaux, of George Mason University, talks about the ideas in his book, Globalization. He discusses comparative advantage, the winners and losers from trade, trade deficits, and inequality with EconTalk host Russ Roberts."

The Real Key to Development

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:22:00 EST

By Mary Anastasia O'Grady: "The Index [of Economic Freedom] also reports that the freest 20% of the world's economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated."

The Micromagic of Microcredit

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:03:00 EST

By Karol Boudreaux and Tyler Cowen: "If a poor family is able to keep a child in school, send someone to a clinic, or build up more secure savings, its �well-�being improves, if only marginally. This is a big part of the reason why poor people are demanding greater access to microcredit loans. And microcredit, unlike many charitable services, is capable of paying for �itself��which explains why the private sector is increasingly involved. The future of microcredit lies in the commercial sector, not in unsustainable aid programs."

Paths to Property

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:24:00 EST

By Karol Boudreaux and Paul Aligica: "The study finds that the �easy option� of agencies entering less-developed countries and using blueprints to try to recreate institutions in Africa that work effectively in the West often fails miserably. Indeed, the failures of such approaches can give the whole privatisation and property rights process, vital for sustainable economic growth, a bad name."

Mugabe's Apologists

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:33:00 EST

By Marian Tupy: "Robert Mugabe's participation in the European Union-Africa summit in Lisbon over the weekend was a triumph of Zimbabwean diplomacy. Both African and EU leaders must share the blame for this farce. Zimbabwe's foreign ministry managed to portray the octogenarian dictator, who has presided over widespread violations of human rights and an astonishing economic collapse, as the victim of a Western conspiracy."

Economics in Many Lessons: A Better Brew for Rwanda

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:36:00 EST

By Donald J. & Karol C. Boudreaux: "In some parts of the long-suffering continent, good things are happening and too few people, in Africa and elsewhere, know about them."

Let Them Eat Laptops

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:59:00 EST

By Daniel R. Ballon: "The '$100 laptop,' which actually costs $188, can only be purchased at a minimum quantity of 250,000. OLPC targets countries like Nigeria, where one out of three children suffer from malnutrition. There a $50 million minimum investment could instead be used to feed more than a million children for an entire year."

What Can the United States Learn from the Nordic Model?

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:03:00 EST

By Daniel J. Mitchell: "Conservative critics correctly condemn the large welfare states, but often overlook the positive results generated by laissez-faire policies in other areas. Liberals, meanwhile, exaggerate the economic performance of Nordic nations in an effort to justify welfare-state policies, while failing to acknowledge the role of freemarket policies in other areas."

What Do We Really Know About the Spread of AIDS?

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:45:00 EDT

By Emily Oster. Emily Oster, a University of Chicago economist, looks at the stats on AIDS in Africa -- and comes up with a stunning conclusion: Everything we know about AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is wrong. We look for root causes such as poverty and poor health care -- but we also need to factor in, say, the price of coffee, and the routes of long-haul truckers. In short, there is a lot we don't know; and our assumptions about what we do know may keep us from finding the best way to stop the disease.

Let's Take a New Look at African Aid

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:05:00 EDT

By Andrew Mwenda: "In this provocative talk, journalist Andrew Mwenda asks us to reframe the "African question" -- to look beyond the media's stories of poverty, civil war and helplessness and see the opportunities for creating wealth and happiness throughout the continent. Most important, he says, the solution to Africa's problems is not more aid."

Stockholm Syndrome

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:11:00 EDT

By Michael C. Moynihan: "Western Europe's most famously socialist country is slowly plodding toward free-market reforms."

Economic Freedom Breeds Prosperity

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:21:00 EDT

By James Dorn: "The key lesson from Hong Kong's "small government, big market" model of development is that economic freedom is the best path toward sustainable development, understood as increasing the range of choices open to people. "

Peace on earth? Try free trade among men

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:50:00 EDT

"Much of the political violence that remains in the world today is concentrated in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa -- the two regions of the world that are the least integrated into the global economy. Efforts to bring peace to those regions must include lowering their high barriers to trade, foreign investment, and domestic entrepreneurship."

What Can Foreign Aid Do for The World's Poor?

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:25:00 EDT

"Billions upon billions have been spent by governments and institutions like the World Bank over the last half-century to launch less developed countries onto a trajectory of growth. Yet despite all this money�or perhaps because of it�many countries continue to languish in abject poverty. Do we need to spend even more, faster?" William Easterly, Branko Milanovic, Deepak Lal, Jules S. Coleman, and Steve Radelet engage in a debate about the problems with foreign aid and what can be done about it.

Why Does Latin America Fail?

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:12:00 EDT

By Mario Vargas Llosa: "Institutions cannot flourish in a country if the people don�t believe in them�if, on the contrary, people have a fundamental distrust of their institutions and see in them not a guarantee of security, or of justice, but precisely the opposite."

Private Education is Good for the Poor

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:46:00 EDT

by James Tooley and Pauline Dixon: "Our findings from a two-year in-depth study in India, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya suggest that these conclusions are unwarranted. Private schools, we argue, can play�indeed, already are playing�an important, if unsung, role in reaching the poor and satisfying their educational needs."

Underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa: The role of the private sector and political elites

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:48:00 EDT

In this paper, Moeletsi Mbeki explains how economic growth in Africa, as in the rest of the world, depends on a vibrant private sector. Entrepreneurs in Africa, however, face daunting constraints. They are prevented from creating wealth by predatory political elites that control the state. African political elites use marketing boards and taxation to divert agricultural savings to finance their own consumption and to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state. Peasants, who constitute the core of the private sector in sub-Saharan Africa, are the biggest losers.In order for Africa to prosper, peasants need to become the real owners of their primary asset � land � over which they currently have no property rights.

The Disregard of Reality

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:16:00 EDT

By Peter Bauer: "The tendency to disregard simple realities has undermined the poise, self-assurance, and stance of the West in the international arena. It has also underpinned the uncritical acceptance of ideas and policies damaging to the West, and much more so to the peoples of the Third World. This is not surprising. Polities and societies bent on disregarding reality must be vulnerable to adversity, and also to threats from within and without."

Ending Mass Poverty

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:45:00 EDT

Economic growth is the "only path to end mass poverty," says economist Ian V�squez, who argues that redistribution or traditional poverty reduction programs have done little to relieve poverty. V�squez writes that the higher the degree of economic freedom -- which consists of personal choice, protection of private property, and freedom of exchange -- the greater the reduction in poverty. Extending the system of property rights protection to include the property of poor people would be one of the most important poverty reduction strategies a nation could take, he says.