Lately in my daily commute, I have been listening to audio books. This past couple of days it has been Flash Boys by Michael Lewis. The book is about how high frequency traders game the stock market exchanges - very complex systems - by front running purchase orders by a millionth of a millisecond. “Front running” is like tapping the right shoulder of the person in front of … [Read more...] about 18 ways to fail
Owen Barder
The 60% solution and the trillion dollar bill
I came across an astonishing mind blowing number in my commute to work the other day, while listening to Owen Barder (@owenbarder) interview with Michael Clemens (@m_clem) on this Development Drums podcast (highly recommended -end of infomercial). The number? 60 percent. Sixty percent of the difference between the income of a person in a developed country … [Read more...] about The 60% solution and the trillion dollar bill
Random Monday links
If you are interested in water and sanitation issues, you should check out our publications. Did you know that Mexicans consume almost 5 times as much bottled water as Americans do, per person? Small is beautiful? A recent evaluation of a major UK government funded Community Driven Reconstruction Program in the Democratic Republic of Congo had the biggest sample ever: 1.8 … [Read more...] about Random Monday links
The top ten blogs and sites for 2012: a randomized list
As 2012 slowly starts, and this being our first blog of the year, here are ten blogs and sites that are fun and interesting, in eclectic and random(ized) order. Roving Bandit is probably the best economics blog in South Sudan, according to its author Lee Crawfurd, who also blogs at the Innovations for Poverty Action site. If you like Thaler’s and Sunstein’s Nudge, then … [Read more...] about The top ten blogs and sites for 2012: a randomized list
Failing successfully
By Belissa Rojas The race for accountability, transparency and clear results is creating incentives to report the positive: demonstrating that project outputs were delivered, and in the best case, that the interventions had the desired impact. A quick look at the monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems from the MDBs shows that there are clear incentives to … [Read more...] about Failing successfully