PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

Labor laws and Mexican spam

How hard is it to fire someone in Mexico? It is apparently sufficiently hard that they offer courses on how to do it.

I spent seven years in Mexico, and I still receive some Mexican spam. Here is my translation of an email I received which was advertising a one day course on how to fire employees:

Firing a person is a delicate process filled with legal “mines.” It doesn’t matter how prepared you feel or how correct your decision is. Not doing it the right way puts you at risk for a lawsuit. No manager should begin this process without attending this seminar!!

Who will be the next president of the World Bank?

It looks like the speculation game has already begun. An article in the Guardian suggests it could be the current president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This would break with the long-standing tradition of appointing an American to the helm.

Sachs vs. Easterly: From saga to mud-wrestling

Back in 2007, we were calling the Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly debates a saga. Now we've been reduced to "two middle-aged white men mud-wrestling." Seriously, guys? I recommend leaving the mud-wrestling to the experts - you're liable to pull a muscle.

The worst NGO, with smiles like that?

Chris Blattman has been carrying on a war against clowns on his blog, claiming that Clowns Without Borders could very well be the worst NGO on the planet. (Full disclosure: I know some of the folks who help organize their events, but haven't been personally involved.) His reasoning?

...it's worth pointing out that people who wear masks and perform magic tricks in Africa are not, as a rule, objects of fun and merriment. Traditions vary from place to place, but my sense is that clowns = devilry in more places than not.

The best 419 scam so far

Apologies if you've already seen this, but I thought this clever satire on a 419 scam from the India Uncut blog deserved a shout-out.

The civil war of the self

I recently blogged about a website that allows people to bet with themselves on whether they will achieve certain weight loss goals. The smart minds behind the website, Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman, have provided an answer to the question I posed at the end of that post - are there any better uses to which we could put these kinds of commitment devices?

In turns out, they have already worked quite well in helping people quit smoking in a developing country context. The researchers carried out a randomized control trial wherein participants deposited money into a savings account and forfeited this money at the end of six months if they failed a nicotine test. (Surprise test visits followed at a later date.) Here's what they found:

Flying business class

Chris Blattman has a question for staff at the World Bank and UN:

I seldom fly business myself, even on Bank and UN consultancies, mostly to conserve my project funds for research assistants and survey expenses. My incentives are just right: money I spend on me comes out of money I'd spend making my research projects just a little better. Not so the rest of the agency?

I also hold back from business for another reason: $6000 for a single ticket? When the purpose of your trip is to contribute (however little) to ending poverty, something about that price tag just doesn't seem right.

The Bankers and UNers have a good response: I'm only there for a week, and I'm much more productive if I can sleep on the plane.

From glamor aid to Twitter aid

In her book Dead Aid, aid critic Dambisa Moyo proclaims that the 2000s were the era of glamor aid. (Think Bono and Bob Geldof.) So what will the 2010s be? I think we already have an idea. This morning I received a newsletter from Kiva, the well-known P2P microfinance lender, and the title proclaimed proudly that "Brad Pitt Twitters about Kiva." (You can even follow a link to get a screenshot of Brad Pitt's twitter message.) I happen to be a fan of Kiva, but I have to wonder - am I the only one whose stomach turns at the prospect of aid flows being driven by the whims of celebrities through their Twitter feeds?

Update: OK, what's worse than aid flows driven by Brad Pitt via Twitter? Aid flows driven by someone posing as Brad Pitt on Twitter. Apparently, the folks at Kiva got a little too excited and forgot to do their due diligence:

Hey Kiva Supporters - we made a mistake when we said that Brad Pitt Twittered about Kiva a few days ago. We were notified today that the Twitter account named “TheRealBradPitt” is not in fact owned by Brad Pitt, the actor. The fake Brad Pitt profile has now been taken down by Twitter. I guess a lot of people were fooled (the profile had tens of thousands of followers), but I feel pretty embarrassed because I thought I had an eye for this kind of thing.

(Thanks to both Jason Resendez and Zahid Torres-Rahman for alerting me to the mistake.)

The unbearable cuteness of economics

Tim Harford, author of The Logic of Life, has managed the impossible feat of turning The Market for Lemons into something palatable for a general audience. Check out Tim's very cute YouTube video on why you can never buy a decent used car. For extra credit, find out why your boss is overpaid.  

Why you shouldn't fear ghosts

The idea of ghosts and spiritual beings often automatically instill fear in some people, but this need not be the case. If ghosts do indeed exist then there would still be no need to fear them, at least not any more than any living entity. If ghosts are rational economic actors then ghosts would have no incentive to severely disturb the living population as it is likely that the costs to the ghost of killing an individual outweigh the benefits. When a ghost kills an individual then that individual could then conceivably turn into a ghost and, as a ghost, annoy its phantom killer for an even longer time period than if left alive... 

That is the abstract of Rational Ghost: Using Basic Economic Principles to Explain Ghost Behavior. Apparently, even ghosts follow the logic of homo economicus.

The implication? You should look to purchase a house that is believed to be haunted. The paper reports that haunted houses sell for about 3 percent less than the average, yet ghosts don't carry any cost. Or something like that. 

(Hat tip: The Perfect Substitute)  

Oligarch, ahead of his time

Russia's oligarchs have been suffering through the financial crisis. (It must be hard having to give up the chateau in France and the penthouse in London.) But one oligarch already pointed the way years ago. German Sterligov, the man who set up Russia's first commodities exchange after the fall of communism, gave up the oligarch's life for that of a peasant some years ago. He lives on a farm with his family outside Moscow, where, reportedly, "old-fashioned tutors visit their home to teach them maths, history, Russian and hand-to-hand combat."

And for those of us suffering through the financial crisis, Sterligov offers a bit of peasant wisdom: "Not just for my oligarch friends but for everyone in this crisis - buy products, flour and salt and sugar. All of you. You will need them."

(Hat tip: Eternal Remont) 

Doing Business, now in Antarctica!

One intrepid soul has managed to take Doing Business to a whole new latitude. Tom Davenport, a senior manager in FIAS, arrived at the South Pole on January 2, and he made sure to bring along his Doing Business flag. Tom has made a bit of an heroic journey to get to this point - he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in December 2006, and underwent chemotherapy and surgery in the following ten months. But this hasn't stopped him from trekking on skis from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole and back - a journey of more than 700 miles each way (not to mention the changes in altitude).

As for a Doing Business ranking for Antarctica, Tom reports that we might not be there just yet. There are only a handful of private firms operating in Antarctica, and they use the regulations of the treaty members to which they belong. Perhaps the Doing Business team could calculate an aggregate of the treaty members' rankings, weighted by the number of firms each has operating in Antartica?

To follow Tom's return journey to Hercules Inlet (and for a very cool map of his trip), check out his blog - fromend2end. And while you're at it, you can make a donation to the Colon Cancer Alliance or the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada, two organizations Tom is supporting in his journey.

Permits in everything, Christmas edition

Apparently, Moldovan police have "arrested" a Christmas tree intended for Chisinau's main square. Why, you ask? It did not have the appropriate permits:

Moldovan police have demanded that the driver of a vehicle carrying the city government’s Christmas tree to the main square, produce a license to purchase fir trees as well as a permit from the State Environmental Inspectorate... Representatives of the country’s Forest Management Association, however, say there is no need for such a permit in this case. But police detained the vehicle nonetheless and then said the fir tree is ‘under arrest’.

(Hat tip: Eternal Remont)

The limits of Development 2.0

While new Web 2.0 technologies carry some promise in furthering the development agenda, photographer Filippo Minelli graphically reminds us of the limits of what these things can achieve. From Minelli's ongoing Contradictions series:

Eurovision vs. financial crisis

As an American, I have to confess bewilderment at the amazing annual spectacle that is Eurovision. Unfortunately, for one nation the current economic environment is creating some tough choices concerning the event. Blogger Ali Novruzov discusses Azerbaijan and Eurovision 2009:

For me personally, it is not a big problem who would represent Azerbaijan in Eurovision 2009 - but what really concerns me are these three things...Not to use our public money for [a] maybe million-dollars-worth Resurrection Mission. [The] World Economic Crisis is already threatening to empty our coffers, and Azerbaijan can't afford another costly Eurovision Adventure.

As econ 101 teaches us, we live in a world of scarcity. I'm just sorry that may mean less Eurovision for all of us. Isn't this a public good worth investing in?   

Holiday gift ideas

If you've followed the discussion over at Creative Capitalism, the book version of the debate is now available for purchase (at under $18 for the hardcover version, creative capitalism is looking cheap these days!). Conor Clarke, one of the participants in the debate, points out that it's available "just in time for the holidays." He also asks tough questions about the relevance of the concept in the face of the ongoing financial crisis:

Capitalism has done a lot of soul-searching recently (along with some collapsing). Creative Capitalism isn't particularly relevant to much of that process. Actually, one of the big themes of this discussion -- "how can we expand the wonderful incentives of capitalism into areas where they have not previously operated?" -- seems woefully ill-timed. But another one of the themes -- "should companies pursue goals besides profit maxmization" -- strikes me as pretty relevant.

Franksgiving - one more lesson from the Great Depression

Faced with the scale of the current financial crisis, many economists have turned to the Great Depression to look for policy lessons. Tyler Cowen, a professor at George Mason University, shared his thoughts on the topic recently in the New York Times. His take? The New Deal Didn’t Always Work, Either. Faced with an unprecedented crisis, Roosevelt experimented with a mix of policies, and some worked and some did not.

Here's one of the (now long-forgotten) policies that did not work: Franksgiving. Nowadays, the U.S. celebrates the holiday of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It wasn't always that way, though. Traditionally, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. Every few years, there are five Thursdays in the month of November, and 1939 was one of those years. Unfortunately for retailers, this meant that the Christmas shopping season would be very short.

How to defeat witchcraft

If you're a fan of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you'll know how. Since a witch burns, she must be made of wood, and since wood floats and ducks also float, logically a witch will weigh the same as a duck (or something like that). And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, this video clip from the absurd 1975 film should clear it up:

While witchcraft might seem to be the stuff of medieval legend, it is actually a tricky sociological - and, as it turns out, economic - question in some developing countries. Last week Raymond Fisman, a rising star at Colombia Business School, came to the World Bank to speak about his new book Economic Gangsters (coauthored with Edward Miguel). One of the stories from the book that Fisman related concerned witch killing, which is apparently not an uncommon phenomenon in some countries, Tanzania in particular.   

Bankers are people too!

Where might you find a bank president, an ambassador, an attorney, a journalist, a café owner, and other assorted characters in a single place? On stage, of course! The UB Players, an expat theater group, just put on Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. It was a great show, and to my surprise, I recognized about half the cast.

One of the advantages of living in a place like Ulaanbaatar is the mix of people you meet in day-to-day life. You bump into them everywhere. I last saw Sergeant Trotter, played by the President of TDB Bank, Randolph Koppa, at a workshop on housing finance. TDB has a trade finance guarantee with IFC and hosts the Mongolian SME Toolkit, an online business planning tool for small businesses. I didn’t expect to see him trying to solve murders!

Adam Smith, the egalitarian

Today is Blog Action Day! This year's topic is poverty, and here's what Adam Smith, the proponent of the "invisible hand," had to say about it:

A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.

In other words, if we're concerned about poverty, then we can't be completely indifferent to inequality. But just how much we should be concerned about inequality is still a question that's often debated. For dueling views on the relative importance of inequality in poverty, see Branko Milanovic, particularly Why we all do care about inequality, and Martin Feldstein on Reducing poverty, not inequality.

(Full disclosure: Branko Milanovic was my professor for a course on the economic development of post-communist countries.) 

SoCap08

The Social Capital Markets 2008 conference is underway in San Francisco. (See this earlier post for a little background.) Here are some of the interesting bits so far from the SoCap08 blog.

Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy:

...I ran into an acquaintence who works for the The Institute for the Future. She was explaining to me that trends take 30-50 years to play out. So the Internet was first developed in the 1960’s, but it took 30 years for the internet to go mainstream and yet we’re still likely 10+ years from the Internet being fully “mature” in its growth cycle. I think the same is true in social investing. The first socially responsible investment fund was launched in the 1970’s, so we’re now 30 years into the trend. I have the sense (and the panel today was a nice affirmation) that we’re hitting the “knee in the curve” of growth in social investing. But that means that if you compared our industries to the growth path of the Internet, we’re probably sitting at around 1995. 

China jigsaw puzzle

See how the populations of 34 countries could fit into China's provinces.

And for another take, see how China is an island.

Capitalists of the world, unite!

Although Marx thought that workers would somehow spontaneously recognize their shared interests, Lenin realized it would take a little prodding by an avant-garde. It now looks like capitalists are running into the same problem.

Reactions to the new poverty estimates

Last week the Development Research Group released new estimates of poverty around the world, and the press and the blogosphere have definitely taken notice. Here are some of the reactions.

First off, the Economist covered the new estimates in a piece called The bottom 1.4 billion. The author gives a pretty neutral review, although she comes to the defence of the numbers in one particular instance:

The discovery of another 400m poor people will not satisfy some of the bank’s critics, who think it still undercounts poverty. Its cost-of-living estimates are based on the prices faced by a “representative household”, whose consumption mirrors national spending. But the poor are not representative. In particular, they buy in smaller quantities—a cupful of rice, not a 10-kilogram bag; a single cigarette, not a packet. As a result, the “poor pay more”...[However,] even though they buy in smaller quantities, they save money by buying cut-price goods from cheaper outlets.

Doing Business now on Facebook

 

This is just a quick note to let PSD blog readers know that Doing Business now has its own place in the world of Web 2.0. You can check out the Doing Business Facebook page here, complete with photos, videos, updates on new publications, and a number of other features. And if you want to get updates on Doing Business publications and events or just show your support for the publication, you can become a fan when you visit the page.

NB: You've got to have a profile to become a fan - if you don't, you can set one up here. Also, your personal information is NOT viewable by other fans of Doing Business unless they are already in your network as specified in your Facebook privacy settings. More on privacy issues here.   

Cross-posted on the Doing Business blog.

Democracy and growth

Although it's not a new paper, I thought it would be good right about now to dig up a little bit of wisdom from Dani Rodrik and Romain Wacziarg called Do Democratic Transitions Produce Bad Economic Outcomes? The short answer is no. But I'll let them speak for themselves:

We show in this paper that the data do not support the view that democratization is bad for economic performance. Our analysis reveals that major democratic transitions have, if anything, a positive effect on economic growth in the short run...this is especially true for the poorest countries of the world and those that are marked by sharp ethnic divisions.

Libertarian paternalism

Libertarian paternalism - aka choice design or nudging - is better left to the markets. At least that is what Tim Harford, PSD blogger emeritus, argues today in the Financial Times. Money quote:

Libertarian paternalism is now "nudging", as described by Professors Sunstein and Thaler on this page last Wednesday. I asked Professor Thaler to tell me about his favourite nudge and his first response was to describe the urinals in Schiphol airport. They bear etchings of black houseflies, which apparently serve to reduce "spillage".

I am no more in favour of spillage than the man standing at the urinal beside me, but how is this libertarian paternalism? "We recognise your right to wet your shoes, but in case that is not your objective we will structure your choice environment to help you."

The housefly trick is a good idea. But it is not a platform for government...

And in case you were curious, here is a picture of the ingenious fly below the jump, via www.urinal.net.

Terrorism as instrumental variable

Perhaps my econometrics is a bit rusty, but I found this summary of new research on Vox kind of odd:

There is both casual and formal evidence from the post-war period that abrupt movements in the price of oil have significant effects on the macroeconomy...However, the price of oil and the state of the world economy are endogenously determined and the links and interactions between the two are far from simple. The authors of DP 6937 experiment with terrorist acts as the instrumental variable, in order to examine the relationship between the price of oil, terrorist incidents and the resultant effects on profitability and margins.

How is it that terrorist acts are exogenous to the functioning of an economy? This book might suggest otherwise.

A birthday, and no more Terrible Twos

We're celebrating our third birthday, and the PSD blog continues it's inexorable climb to the top! The blog now has nearly 3,000 RSS subscribers, and that's definitely something to celebrate. The other big news is no more Terrible Twos:

Some signs that your toddler is in the terrible twos are temper tantrums, screaming for no reason, banging head on things and plain old not listening.

So no more not listening - we'd like to hear from our readers! The comments section is open; what topics would you like us to focus on in the next year? The food crisis, education, privatization, climate change? Are there any new topics you have in mind that we haven't picked up on yet?

One topic that has been catching more and more attention is Development 2.0. Fellow PSD blogger Giulio Quaggiotto first got me interested in this topic with his post on Clay Shirky. I think the application of Web 2.0 technologies to development issues holds a lot of promise. I've added a Development 2.0 category to the PSD blog sidebar, but here are a few of the more interesting posts so far:

• Cognitive surplus - the untapped potential of Development 2.0
• Development 2.0 in healthcare
• The end of Doha and the World of Warcraft

Finally, I'd like to say thank you to our loyal PSD bloggers. In the past year we've received posts from many outstanding contributors: Thorsten Beck, Robert Cull, Andrea Dall'Olio, Lucie Giraud, Michael Jarvis, Rachel Kyte, David Lawrence, Colleen Mascenik, Chris Monasterski, Alan Pereira, Jim Rosenberg, and Giulio Quaggiotto. Many thanks for all the great contributions!

The spread of the staycation

The staycation - an ugly neologism for the decision of many American consumers to stay at home this summer, instead of heading to Disney World or some beach resort. Rising food and gas prices have led to hard times for much of America's tourism industry, as this article in Slate points out. But it looks like Americans aren't the only ones resorting to a staycation. A press release out today (in Russian) from the Levada Center reports the results of a survey of urban Russians on their summer actitives last year. It looks like some 43 percent of respondents said that they didn't take a vacation in 2007 ("не был(а) в отпуске").

The origins of capitalism

I spent part of the weekend reading The Captive Mind, a noteworthy book by Czeslaw Milosz. Milosz was a Polish emigre and wrote this book in 1953 - also a noteworthy year, since both Joseph Stalin and Klement Gottwald died in 1953. It's a quick read on the plight of eastern European intellectuals during and after the Second World War, and well worth the investment of time.

There was one passage that particularly struck me that seems to give a bit of insight into what we might call the origins of capitalism. In a chapter entitled "Man, This Enemy", Milosz had this to say about the petty bourgeoisie in the people's democracies:

The petty bourgeoisie, that is the small merchants and craftsmen, cannot be taken so lightly. They constitute a powerful force, one that is deeply rooted in the masses. Hardly is one clandestine workshop or store liquidated in one neighborhood than another springs up elsewhere. Restaurants hide behind a sliding wall of a private house; shoemakers and tailors work at home for their friends. In fact, everything that comes under the heading of speculation sprouts up again and again. And no wonder! State and municipal stores consistently lack even the barest essentials...      

Coke vs. kvas

I suppose after the attention it got with the Big Mac Index, the Economist couldn't help but continue to rely on mass-produced food items as economic indices. In this week's Economist, there's an article that purports that Coke can serve as an index of happiness. In this case, the analysis is restricted to Africa. The Economist argues that "[a]t a macro-level, when Coke fails, the country whose market it is trying to penetrate usually fails too." By this measure, it predicts a bright future for Africa:

...if Coca-Cola's predications are anything to go by, Africa's future is mostly bright. The company expects sales in Africa to grow by an annual 10-13% over the next few years.

If we were to extend this index to other parts of the world, we'd find one country experiencing a troubling trend - Russia.

Air India and the beauty premium

Over at the New York Times's Freakonomics Blog, Stephen Dubner contemplates the beauty premium. In a recent post, he decided to ask some real people whether looks matter in their career. Most of the people he spoke to said that looks mattered - the only exception was an environmental engineer who works with wastewater! Of course, Dubner's selection of people wasn't exactly random; one of the respondents is in the "adult entertainment" industry. And the respondents rate themselves on average about 8 out of 10 on a scale of attractiveness, which suggests the sample is a bit lopsided (or perhaps just highly self-regarding?).

In any case, while looks obviously matter in the adult entertainment industry, how much looks matter for the rest of us has been open to speculation. Now, at least according to some critics, it appears the High Court of India has decided to enforce the beauty premium as a matter of law. The High Court recently ruled in favor of Air India, which limited overweight staff to working on the ground. Writing in an op-ed in Ethical Corporation, Mallen Baker had harsh words for the decision:

iPhone 3G = Organic Farming?

I haven't quite figured out what the connection is, but some folks have apparently found a link between organic farming and the iPhone 3G. An organization called Waiting for Apples is pulling a bit of a publicity stunt in New York by waiting in line days in advance of the release of the iPhone 3G, due to be out this Friday. What exactly is Waiting for Apples advocating? It's not 100% clear from their website. But here is what they're doing while waiting for the new phone:

• We will drink NYC's renowned tap water.
• We will have local healthy food (especially Apples) delivered by our community gardener friends, Greenmarket farmers, and locavore restauranteurs via bicycles and pedicabs.
• We will compost our foodscraps, to help sustain our fragile soil.
• And most importantly, we will talk to whoever happens to stop by about local organic farming as a critical element to sustainable healthy living, food security, youth education, and climate change mitigation.

The nuts and bolts of development

While development requires many ingredients, perhaps the most fundamental is some combination of ingenuity and an entrepreneurial spirit. I ran across a very interesting blog that covers exactly this topic called AfriGadget. The site is dedicated to "showcasing African ingenuity." And while some development practitioners get interested in the newest technologies - be it laptops or podcasting - they may forget a few more basic pieces of technology that are essential to small businesses around the world: nuts, bolts, screws, hammers, and wrenches.

Unfortunately, I doubt that Snap-on hand tools are easily accessible in markets around the world. Thus, entrepreneurs with a little ingenuity create their own tools, and I'd say this is on display in this picture of two hammers crafted by Rwandan bike repairmen (Hat tip: Street Use).    

Development 2.0, in graphics

An interesting visualisation of the shift from development 1.0 ("high peaks of bureaucracy, with the sight blurred by the disconnection between grassroots and policy making") to the development 2.0 world ("sustainable, collaborative, entrepreneurial and not aid dependent"), for the benefit of budding social entrepreneurs.

Ranking state weakness in the developing world

A new report by the Brookings Institution ranks and evaluates 141 developing nations based on their relative performance in four critical areas: economic, political, security and social welfare.

The methodology includes using 20 sub-indicators to give a snapshot in time of a country’s relative performance when compared to the other countries on the index. Probably not surprisingly, the report finds that there is a very strong correlation between poverty and overall weakness of a state.

Not so simple, Mr. Watson

For the more theoretically minded and for the critics of the logical framework approach - a recent ODI paper attempts to articulate the implications of complexity science for the development sector.

From Robert Chamber's preface:

"Much development and humanitarian thinking and practice is still trapped in a paradigm of predictable, linear causality and maintained by mindsets that seek accountability through top-down command and control. Recent years have seen more emphasis on the mechanistic approaches of this paradigm and the kinds of procedures which are increasingly questioned by successful private sector organizations." Food for thought.

Negroponte's competitor: One laptop per rich child

Classmate PC – Intel's low-cost educational laptop – which was initially designed for developing countries is now going to be distributed in Europe and in the United States.

Here's a cost comparison of the low-cost and educational laptops out there:

• Eee PC from Taiwan's Asustek Computer: $399
• XO from One Laptop Per Child Foundation: $188
• Classmate PC from Intel: $350
• Making a profit from a do-good idea: priceless (or is it?).

Sustainable tourism competition open

Proponents of "geotourism" believe that it benefits local residents in many ways, including economically, since travel businesses strive to use local workforce, products, and services.

A new National Geographic competition aims to raise awareness to ways geotourism may be beneficial to the local communities. Winners will be innovators in geotourism and applications are now open through April 9.

If you are part of a committed organization or governemnt you can also sign the "Geotourism Charter" (p.s.: totally non-binding and unenforceable).

Web 2.0 ideas for the World Bank, anyone?

A colleague down the road is collecting ideas for Web 2.0 business models and services that could be adopted by the World Bank Group. Here are some initial thoughts and there's a number of projects well on their way.

So if you have any suggestions or recommendations help brainstorming and leave a comment below. (By the way, if you happen to be a developer, you might want to move from thought to action at the Social Innovation Camp in April).

A sign of things to come?

Earlier this week IBM and Nokia let go of 31 "eco-patents" and released them to the public. By doing so, the technology giants hope to tap into the wisdom of the crowds. This very web 2.0 move is a sign of their recognition that when it comes to complex issues, such as spurring innovation or identify new business opportunities in the area of clean technologies, the best knowledge may well reside outside their organizational boundaries.

Also recently McKinsey added its voice to the choir of the wikinomics prophets and included "distributing cocreation" and "using consumers as innovators" among the eight emerging trends to watch in business technology. The global consulting firm predicted that "in the US economy alone roughly 12 percent of all labor activity could be transformed by more distributed and networked forms of innovation."

Intuitively, the development sector should be at the avant-garde of the adoption of openness, peering and sharing - the cornerstones of the web 2.0 era. And yet, ironically, the private sector seems to be ahead of the game.

Big thoughts on BigThink

Dubbed "YouTube for ideas," BigThink - the brain child of Peter Hopkins with backing from Larry Summers - is a place where leading public intellectuals answer questions asked by an unseen interviewer.

For a starter see Bill Easterly opine on Jeffrey Sachs' approach to aid.

Does poverty kill?

The relationship between poverty and infant mortality is well known. But does it also hold for adults?

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo from the MIT Poverty Action Lab studied the data from 15 countries to find out if "the poor die more in developing countries."

See also their earlier study on how the very poor spend their money.

Happy New Year

Regardless of when you celebrate new year, we would like to wish you a prosperous 2008.

We are going to take a short break and will be back in early January, continuing to bring you news, resources and ideas on the role of the private sector in development.

Meditation for development?

If meditation is scientifically proven to increase the IQ, should governments interested in promoting socio-economic well-being invest in meditation rather than biotechnology?

This is apparently the type of questions that arise when you start applying futures thinking to development.

Prison with a paycheck or a cruise ship ride?

A short video shows Albion Village, Shell's $12billion facility housing 2,500 workers in Wood Buffalo, in Alberta, Canada, where oil deposits are comparable to those in Saudi Arabia.

Though some call it a prison with a paycheck, the company hopes that the Albion's five recreational directors, a golf simulator, and a generous three-pound weekly steak allowance will be enough to prevent losses of millions of dollars caused by labor shortages.

Dyslexics make for fine entrepreneurs

Thirty-five percent of entrepreneurs surveyed in a new study self-identified as dyslectic. As it turns out, this common disability can be good for business:

dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses

I say development, you say développement

Maybe it's because I am under the influence of Spoken Here, but one of the key messages coming out of the GK3 conference last week was the increasing importance of promoting local content and language to address the digital divide.

It is well known that out of the 6,000 languages spoken on the planet, only a tiny percentage is represented on the web. Perhaps less intuitive are the factors that preclude multilingual digitization of content.  They range from the problems of recognition of minority languages, the lack of local language computing capacity, through the plethora of internet governing bodies involved in encryption projects, to the lack of interface between linguistic and IT expertise.

History didn't help either. 

A low hanging fruit?

According to IETA, carbon capture and storage – CCS for the connoisseurs - is a low-hanging fruit which could potentially be one of the main solutions to climate change. Friends of CCS met today to exchange their latest news. The European Commission is only days away from presenting to the Parliament and the Council new legislative amendments to allow for the transport and storage of carbon.

Rio Tinto and BP have together created Hydrogen Energy, a company investing in hydrogen fuelled power stations. This is how it works: coal is burned, the CO2 is extracted and stored, which leaves hydrogen as a fuel. CCS should really fall under the Clean Development Mechanism, argued Eskom, the South-African power utility.

So how low is this fruit exactly? Enel, Italy's largest power company, warned that the technology for power plants is not yet ready. And because the process of capture and storage is in itself high energy, it requires very efficient power plants. Rio Tinto confessed that none of Hydrogen Energy's plants are yet in operation. One plant requires a capital investment of about $2 billion, and finding adequate reservoirs is extremely difficult and costly. Furthermore, some plants are faced with objections from a public which has not yet bought into the idea. ECN, the Dutch energy research center, called "emotional" those reactions against CCS.