How Health Aid Undermines Health Systems

The FT is carrying a full page analysis on the impact that “vertically integrated” healthcare aid programs, such as for HIV/AIDS, have on public health systems in the developing world.
There are some startling statistics on just how much is being pumped into these fashionable diseases - HIV, malaria, and into vaccine research. For instance, in [...]

Negotiating Climate Change for the Poor - Part I

Yale Global is carrying an article by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, who led India’s negotiations at the UNFCCC, on how climate change affects the poor, and how a global policy to combat climate change can be agreed upon:

Yet, affluent countries press the poor to accept a very different approach. They urge the developing countries to strike a [...]

US To Lead Climate Change Plans

Today’s Wall Street Journal Asia is carrying an article that shows what is in store for developing countries attending the Bush sponsored Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change. After years of lethargy, and calling on the developing world to act, the Bush Administration and many others in the US have decided that [...]

Reflections on China, Lessons for India

Over the past 2 weeks I traveled to Taiwan, Hangzhou and Shanghai. The trip was ostensibly a vacation, but I met enough people in government and business - that I knew before or ran into in random bars, airports, and planes - that I managed to achieve the real purpose of the trip: establish for [...]

Leave of Absence & Agricultural Subsidies

I am always surprised at how many people land on this blog, often from very diverse and intelligent sources, to give me extremely incisive input. Considering their time spent here, I consider it only fair to mention that I will not be updating this blog very regularly for the next two weeks. In that time [...]

Tropical Virus Moves North as Europe Warms

BBC News reports that a “debilitating tropical virus carried by mosquitoes” is manifesting itself in the norther Italian town of Ravenna. The extent of the disease, is minor - only 160 cases thus far, and 1 death. The disease is known as chikungunya, is relatively rare, and usually found in the tropics. However, it seems to have [...]

Education Reform: A Problem with School Choice

For those that are interested in education, “school choice” is the new buzzword. And with school choice come “education vouchers.” For economists of all hues, these two together are the solution to all that ails our (Indian or American) schools. So loud is the rhetoric, in fact, that nobody really questions whether school choice and [...]