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Advocating For a Better Economic Environment for Refugees
Refugee youth in Kakuma Refugee camp embody the endurance of the human spirit. A study carried out by the International Financial Corporation (IFC) in 2018 took a unique look at Kakuma Refugee Camp a...
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Development Banks and Anti-Corruption

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is taking the necessary steps to hold companies accountable for corrupt behavior. [ADB] last year banned 40 firms and 22 individuals from working for the multilateral agency due to corruption, the Manila-based bank said today. Since the bank began investigating corr...

Hope Grows in the Killing Fields

Jan Mohammad, Governor of Uruzgan Province, has known little but war throughout his life.  A man with one eye, uneducated, yet wise from years of conflict against the Russians and the Taliban.  His militia is everywhere, and when we arrive in a military convoy from the U.S. military base in Tarin ...

The Baker’s Son

Nineteen year old Sadaar's father started a bakery several years ago, shortly after his family returned to Kabul. They lived in Peshawar, Pakistan for years as refugees, waiting for a time when they could return to their native Kabul, surrounded by the towering Parwan mountains. As we walked up to t...

Starting a Business in Africa

African entrepreneurs share their stories on starting a business on the BBC website.   There are some very interesting on-the-ground experiences, from good I think Ethiopia must be the best and the easiest place to start a business today. Yes it used to be very hard to start a business in Ethiopia...

Brazil and Argentina Regulate Trade

Last week, two members of Mercosur, Brazil and Argentina, reached a landmark trade agreement, hailed by the governments of both countries.  But if you think the agreement is supporting free trade between the two countries - afterall, free trade is what Mercosur is all about - think again.  How ab...

Demographic Crisis in Russia

Someone, hit the panic button!  Russian population shrunk by nearly 700,000 people in 2005, according to official Russian government statistics, and the life expectancy of a Russian male is now a meager 58 years.  In all, since the early 1990s, the Russian population has been declining at a r...

The role of the media in MENA reform

An independent and pluralistic media is a central pillar of democracy. The role of the media in a democratic society is one that informs the public, enhances political participation, and acts as a government watchdog. The media in the Middle East North Africa region is not able to fully perform th...

Palestinian Elections: Revisiting the “Chicken vs. Egg” Conundrum

Recently, National Public Radio conducted an interview with Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  The interview was ostensibly about possible outcomes from the recent elections in the Palestinian territories, and thus it adds some additional perspectives to a previous thr...

Googling Change

The big news in the technology pages these days is, surprisingly, not about Steve Jobs' newest toy.  Instead, folks are getting steamed up about Google's recent decision to acquiesce to local regulations concerning censorship when starting up its new search engine in China.  Google will also refra...

Who Makes People Poor?

Making people poor is not an easy task, and governments have to work hard to do it.  Ronald Bailey explores this issue in more detail in his piece on "Economics of Ruin 101" that appears in The African Executive, a weekly magazine published by CIPE's partner the Inter-Region Economic Network (I...

What is there to argue about?

Last Friday (January 27), NPR broadcast a piece about a new study, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, which purports to show that emerging democracies are more likely than other countries to become involved in wars.  The study, authored by Professors Edward Mansfield of the Un...

Components of Progress

In this op-ed, Marifeli Perez-Stable of the Inter-American Dialogue links markets, democracies, and progress in a very simple equation - "Democracy+Market Economy=Progress."  Despite strong anti-market sentiments in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, it seems that many other countries in the re...

Economic Implications of Palestinian Elections

Palestinian elections have been making the headlines for the past few days – with most stories focusing on the political consequences of the results.  Not too many people at this point, however, are talking about the economic implications of this week’s elections – yet the econom...

Free-Market NGOs

I got this one from the Globalisation Institute's blog: Hilary Benn, the UK's International Development Secretary, used a speech yesterday evening to attack the anti-capitalism embedded in some of the left-wing NGOs. He said: The Make Poverty History and other campaigns last year focused on more an...

Can We Afford to Stop Funding Reconstruction in Iraq?

Plenty has been said recently about the likelihood of the U.S. not providing further funding for reconstruction in Iraq.  Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post articles offer insights into the rationale involved in doing so.  Most of the arguments used to justify this position emphasize the...

Opening Up The Economy…In India

India continues to take the necessary step to integrate into the global economy.  The latest move is liberalization of the retail market to allow foreign investors to open their own retail outlets.  Although not all restrictions are being lifted at this point and some pre-conditions remain in plac...

Illusion of Price Controls

There is a nice article in the China Daily on government's efforts to establish price controls to keep natural gas prices in check. The problem - rising prices of liquefied natural gas.  The solution - introduce the legislation strengthening price controls.  The result - ...government efforts h...

Ineffective Public Projects

This week Sudan is hosting the African Union Summit. The African Union is a regional effort to bring together the resources of African nations to combat poverty and help African economies join the global economy.  It looks like Sudan has been preparing for the summit, clearing the streets of the i...

Grant-Eating Organizations (Part 2 of 2)

(the first part can be found here)  The lesson for international donors is not that they should disappear, but that they should present partnership opportunities only when they are certain that local demand is driving an initiative. A lesson can be drawn from social research, such that a researcher...

Grant-Eating Organizations (Part 1 of 2)

In a recent Washington Post article titled, "Reforming Foreign Assistance" it was stated that, "reliance on U.S. organizations undermined poor countries' sense of ownership of their development programs, damaging the long-term struggle to foster self-sufficiency." The same point can be made on the m...
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