Friday links

1/ Foreign investors crowding out African producers. Not sure how much I agree with the sentiments behind this article. Given that this talks mostly about agriculture and given that land is clearly a limited resources, the preposition is likely to be true. But the tone suggests that this is necessarily a bad thing, which I'm not sure I agree with. If foreign investors are likely to increase agricultural yields, then there can be a learning effect and there can be more food for everyone, which the right deal can ensure everyone benefits from. The aim of farming is to produce food for everyone regardless of who controls the factors of production. Creating the right incentives to do this is important, as is the repartition of the food. But no or low food production necessarily means no or little food for everyone - not everyone wants to be a Mugabe...

2/ Is philanthropy killing business in Africa? One I've got more sympathies with. Again, production matters. No production, no consumption - unless someone else gives it to you... But then again, maybe aid can actually revive business... Again, I have some sympathy - contradictory though it may seem. The 'right' aid can help...

3/ Changes of religious affiliation between birth and death in the US. A great graphic.

4/ Interviews with atheist preachers.

5/ The disingenuous anti-Tory press.

6/ Global executions.

7/ Football fouls more likely to be given when play heads left. Seems strange, but yet another thing to show how we may (i) be less 'individual' than we often like to think and (ii) have less free will than we might like. Also, if you want a free kick, run left - I wonder if footballers have already intuitively picked this one up...

8/ Smarter people drink more. Not that that will come as a surprise to anyone who has spent any time in an academic institution. So do left-handed people. Again, lefties seem to be over-represented in academia... I'll let you think about causality... Oh, and both candidates at the last US presidential election were lefties...

9/ Social ties boost survival

10/ How can you control your dreams?

11/ People start by over-estimating their abilities, then underestimate them.

Fake HIV/AIDS treatment or The Devil went down to Pioneer Mall

READ about the encounter I had with The Lady V with a man selling multi-vitamins that "increase the number of CD4 cells (immune cells) in your body and lower the amount of HIV virus in your body".

Xenophobia in South Africa

A fellow ODI Fellow based in Pretoria has written two great blogs about xenophobia in South Africa. They are beautifully entitled: A is for Ayoba, B for Bafana... W for Waka Waka, X for... Xenophobia?! and Leaving loopholes (referring to the above image)

As always, Hayibo also has a great take: Xenophobia all in the minds of delusional hysterical pathetic foreigners.

Why do we work for charity?

I'm just watching Mary, Queen of Charity Shops. A fashion person tries to improve a charity shops. Improve in the sense of 'sell more' and 'make more money'. Alternatively put, improve in terms of selling things people actually want or maybe, providing a service people actually want.

There is a target amount of money to raise of Save the Children and changes have to be made in order to meet the target.

It seems that - sometimes at least - people who work there don't care much about the charity - or raising money for the charity. Rather, they prefer that things be as they want to be.

I wonder if NGOs and other donors might be able to learn something. Is everyone really doing things to help 'development'? Or are they in it for themselves (only?)? Are beliefs and preferences dogmatically applied or are choices practical? Do we care more about dogma being correct than people? That is, would we rather see something we are 'uncomfortable' with fail in order to prove ourselves correct or would we change our minds?

Regular subscribers to this blog

I've been using Feedburner for about a year now. Whilst eating my breakfast, I just decided to download the number of subscribers trend and the below graph is what I got (I added the trend line). I must admit, I don't totally understand what all the ups and downs mean, but I am a big fan of graphs.

Friday links

1/ ODA, Philanthropy and Remittances - which are more important by country.

2/ We are happier when busy but our instinct is for idleness.

3/ People living on different income levels in different regions in 2000.

4/ What interventions cause long term improvements in people's lives? A very readable academic paper by IFPRI by a former colleague of mine at Bath. Apparently, agricultural interventions in Bangladesh have little long run impact... Wonder if we could learn something in Lesotho from that...

5/ Faith and foolishness. The National Science Foundation every year produces a report on the public's understanding of science. For the first time, in many years US adults are more likely to accept the Big Bang and evolution. But they dare not publish the report. More pandering to religious lies?

6/ The marginal impact of violent acts in the Middle East.

7/ The number of birds killed by BP compared with those that die in other ways.

8/ Top secret America.

Give me money.

THIS story makes me want to cry. It also makes me amazingly angry.

The English FA come out to Lesotho and run a workshop to assist people administering local/grass-roots football/soccer in Lesotho. Very nice. I am sure all of the people who attended did so because they would like to go back home with some new skills that would help them organise and promote better sport in Lesotho. Sport has the power to do amazing good.

As well as acquiring new skills to go and help people, participants at the workshop got bags, pens, notepads and certificates. Although, you might think that they didn't require any of that to attend.

You might think that, but you'd be very wrong. In fact the participants got pissed off because they were not given t-shirts too.

Well f**k me - I have no words.

I am glad the newspaper called it an 'embarrassing episode for local football'.

(BIG HT to MM)

Payments to girls in poor countries can slow spread of HIV

The full article is available here.

This makes sense. Younger girls often have sex with older men, both for cash and to ensure that potentially useful men are in their social circle. Having wealthier people* in one's social circle means you can call on their support during times of trouble.

By giving girls cash, a *potential* result is that sex is sold less and that girls feel more independent and are less likely to require assistance from older men if their economic circumstances decline.

*Or indeed, those whose income patterns not perfectly correlated with your own.

Comment s'est détruit notre monde?

C'est l'an 2222 et l'humanité s'est détruite. Sauf dans quelques enclaves où vivent des humains de façon pré-historique la terre se trouve en ruine:

"Des champs dévastés. Des paysages en ruine. Des routes défoncées, rongées par les ronces. Des immeubles éventrés où se terrent des rares humains prêts à tuer pour s'approprier la moindre nourriture"

Dans l'une des enclaves, un vieillard s'adresse à des enfants attentifs pour leur expliquer l'histoire du désastre de ce monde:



J'ai tiré ces paragraphes d'un livre de Bernard Werber, Nous les dieux. En générale, je suis fan, de Werber mais ce livre ne me plaît pas trop jusqu'à là. Pourtant, j'ai trouvé bien intéressants ces paragraphes et je voulais les partager.

Why is Frank Lampard playing for England?

My answer is Bayesian inference / updating.

Human beings can't re-learn everything each day so, throughout our lives we formulate opinions and ideas about 'how the world' is. Some people call these prejudices, and they are correct, but they are very useful. We apply these every day of our lives and are constantly testing our pre-conceived ideas.

Sometimes we get evidence that our ideas about 'how the world works' might be wrong, but we don't instantly change our minds. After all, we are constantly bombarded with such ideas, and changing our minds every day would not be efficient. Instead, we wait for a mass of evidence to prove that we are wrong, before changing our minds.

What has all this got to do with Frank Lampard (and others) playing for England? Frank Lampard is usually pretty good for his club, Chelsea. England mangers thus have the pre-conceived idea (prejudice) that he is good. Unfortunately, he is not actually very good when he plays for England.

My own opinion is that there is a massive amount of evidence for this, but apparently, not yet enough for England managers (successive) to change their minds (not sure why - some sort of extreme risk aversion maybe???) and not play him.

He keeps on missing free kicks for England - wasting loads of scoring opportunities (yes, I know that was a goal against Germany - I was there, and yes, I know that the Jabulani ball has come under loads of criticism), but that doesn't take away from the fact that Fat Frank (as he is affectionatly (?) known by fans) keeps on f**king up when he pulls on an England shirt.

Now, not only does Frank miss free kicks, but, if you like to trace goals back to their route cause - as I do - his awful free kicks are actually resulting in England conceding goals. The third goal England concended against Germany was a painful one.

Sorry Frank, you're great for your club, but, for whatever reasons (not necessarily all your fault), you are rubbish for your country. Time to pick someone else...

Friday links

1/ Was poverty in Africa determined in 1000BC? (HT: MM) and here is a nice technological innovation timeline (not much out of Africa in the last 3000 years...)

2/ Don't knock China in Africa. I agree - I think the Chinese do far more good than bad in Africa.

3/ Africa's young changing sexual habits.

4/ Young children use statistical reasoning.

5/ Profiting from the poor. I've no problem with it; you can only make a profit if you provide a service people value (try running a business that provides something no one wants). If you make a profit, you must necessarily be doing something good. I'm a huge fan of Prahalad's book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Bringing people into the global economy is a good thing.

6/ How our brains outwit cruel gods. God is good, right? Well, check out some of the things God has sanctioned in the Bible or Koran. How do people who believe God is good deal with that? A perspective from neuroscience.

7/ Online dating lies.

8/ Ten facts about the UK unemployment statistics.

9/ Monkeys have a sense of fairness.

10/ Get a week-long trial at Stirling Albion for 225 quid! (HT: MM)

I've got a new paper out...

... in Journal of the Family and Economic Issues.

It's called: What Motivates Gifts? Intra-Family Transfers in Rural Malawi

Below is the abstract:

This paper uses Family Transfers Project data collected in rural Malawi during 1999 to ascertain the motivation for gift-giving using discriminating hypotheses. The study models monetary and monetized gifts sent and received between the survey respondents and their parents, their children, and their siblings as a function of sender and receiver characteristics. Individual analyses are compared with household level models to reveal that both individual and household characteristics can matter in different cases. OLS, Probit and Tobit models are compared to conclude that, as with other similar studies, a wide range of motivations exist including altruism, (co-)insurance, and an inheritance motive. Motivations differ slightly depending upon the relationship between the sender and receiver, however, no single motive can be attributed to any given relationship.

The article is available here.