Executive Summaries and Blogs

We've scoured the web to bring you the latest and best of development blogs and posts.

Are there any we're missing? Send us suggestions for blogs, whether in English or another language, by emailing Chrispine at crl2 (at) williams (dot) edu, and we'll put them up!

Our Latest Recommendations

Blog: “Kremer’s O-ring theory of economic development”

Economist Jason Collins provides a short analysis of Michael Kremer’s 1993 paper on the “O-ring theory of development,” a suggestion for why development might break down when just one component fails.

Blog: “Two Bright Ideas to Reduce Drug Prices”

In this commentary, Alex Tabarrok of George Mason responds to an idea to introduce innovation and reduce the cost of drugs: patent buyouts.

News Article: “Worming our Way to the Truth”

A column by Tim Hartford summarizes and responds to the controversy of the “Worm Wars,” a dispute about the relevance and methodology of a 2004 study on deworming children.

Blog: Three Problems with Randomized Controlled Trials

This blog post on Brookings from Jeffrey Hammer covers three big reasons not to think of randomized controlled trials as the next “magic bullet” for development.

VoxDev Executive Summary: 2009 VAT Reform in China and Lumpy Investment

This executive summary discusses the VAT reform in China that took place in 2009 and how that has affected investment.

New from the Source:

Infrastructure Ideas

  • From Bernard Sheahan of the World Bank, a blog about the newest updates and ideas in the rapidly changing world of infrastructure.
  • Bernie visited the CDE for a CDE seminar in February, 2020.

Our favorite sources for the latest research

En Español

Nada es gratis

Nada es gratis is a Spanish-language blog with some of the most prominent Spanish-speaking economists as regular contributors. They focus a little more on the European situation, but there’s a lot of good general content for the hispanohablantes.