This from John MacIntyre on the track record of the WB and IMF in Senegal, and Mackey Sal's administration, is blistering. open.substack.com/pub/johnmcin...

how cheap is power from grid scale batteries? Not as cheap as this - at the @britishintinv.bsky.social green tech conference on Friday, the CEO of Energrid said 6.5 rupee kwh (0.07 USD) is a more like a realistic minimum viable price. But that's still cheap! www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Today I’m back in the FT with an op-ed on how we can learn from the last few weeks of post-Budget discussion about our finances. We are unusual as a country in our fixation on a single point headroom figure, which is not helpful for long-term fiscal policy www.ft.com/content/3727...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) can accelerate development in the countries hosting them, both directly with their presence, and indirectly through linkages to local economic actors. Read our VoxDevLit on FDI to learn more: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/foreign-direct-investment

New MCC scorecards exclude 2/3s of poorest eligible countries, compared to <40% of the richest ones. The MCC board just scrapped a whole load of existing compacts in poorer countries. These are the very countries MCC was originally designed to help. www.cgdev.org/blog/millenn...

How did we end up with a queue that is so much larger than needed? Still, at least it means the connection problem is less of a problem

The WSJ reports on the historic news yesterday that Eavor has begun operations of the first commercial-scale multilateral closed loop geotherm power project in the world! It's not every day that a new power tech has its "world's first" moment. Don't miss this www.wsj.com/articles/a-g... 🔌💡

this looks interesting, if I understand correctly it's about winners compensating loser after a reform that creates a potential Pareto improvement, but doing so through the income tax system not some imaginary lump sum www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"'Low estimate is 60,000 people have been killed there in the last three weeks.’” As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for Why, might be appropriate for our leaders, intellectuals, and activists who profess to care about our shared humanity to actually do or say something

An extremely annoying thing. Received (important) reports from NHS and education system, with text in boxes it doesn't fit in so only half can be read, and told nothing can be done. Is this widespread? How long's it being going on? Why isn't it fixed?

Hello! I'm starting a new blog/newsletter thing. First post is about aid and growth, and what I think is missing from the renewed enthusiasm in DC to subsidize private investment in developing countries: i.e., export discipline. 1/

clearing out my dad's house, found 1984 middle-earth role playing game - this one en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-... - and D&D rules from about same time ... anyone on here fancy them? if you are willing to pay postage

this extreme annoying article (which does not discuss how parents would cope with a 4 day school week) reminds me of the single most welfare improving policy the govt could enact - a 5 day school week for children and a 4 day working week for adults. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Interesting new working paper that studies chains of movers after the construction of a new apartment building in Honolulu. Paper finds that the project resulted in the opening up other, lower cost, housing on the island, benefiting the housing market overall.

Importantly, making unfair dismissal a "Day One" right would likely have been counterproductive for workers. It would induce firms not to "take a chance" on candidates who seem risky or have unusual profiles. ...

For fellow south Londoners, this place is a bone fide hidden gem, a somewhat eccentric (owner and menu) BYO restaurant, cheap too. And the pub over the road is 👍 simplyindianlondon.co.uk

Another coup in Guinea-Bissau (I couldn't find a complete list, but there've been several). This time, it looks like it was successful. AFP reports soldiers said they were taking "total control" of the country, suspending its electoral process and closing its borders, three days after elections

v interesting work showing Indian bureaucrats successfully picking winners. iirc a set of blanket benefits for starts-ups results in more duff firms surviving, but discretionary awards of R&D benefits and tax holidays fare v well. www.rschhina.com/_files/ugd/6... (via @afinetheorem.bsky.social )

I was looking at my employer's investments in battery swapping and 3-wheeler EVs in India and it turns out 16% of 3-wheelers were electric in 2023 (prob earlier, reporting lag) and the latest number is now 57% - that is quite astonishing growth. I wonder if it's noticeably improving air quality

In development finance, we often hear that the risk of EMDE investing is lower than the market thinks and so mobilising investment using publicly supplied credit risk guarantees is almost a free lunch. Here is a blog about why there's a bit more to it than that www.bii.co.uk/en/news-insi...

would this virtual power plant (assembled from putting batteries in people's homes) work in the UK? It looks like regulators must allow participation in grid markets - does anyone know if that is possible here? I guess if anyone will do it here @octopus.energy will www.ess-news.com/2025/10/09/b...

what the local constabulary has done here, to improve its response to shoplifting, seems so basic, this article just makes me worry about widespread incompetence elsewhere. www.ft.com/content/38e5...

how the hell does anyone infer from bumper sales by the selling shovels to gold prospectors company that there is no bubble?

In Nigeria, 30% of workers experience delays receiving their wages. In today's JMP, Daniel Sonnenstuhl runs an RCT and find workers work harder when faced by delayed pay - but making pay reliable increases willingness to accept job offers blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...?

First, here’s a link to my essay about the shift (on our brand new website, click around!) and what we're trying to do in our second decade: coefficientgiving.org/research/op...

John Banville starts this review by knifing Updike but then fails to explain why www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Guardian doing its thing. Outrage over worlds biggest emitter getting climate finance www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

HMG is recruiting DG Economics and Chief Economic Advisor to the Treasury. Lots of expertise on display on my feed today, but will any of you step up?

The replacement better have a wave machine and this article does not mention one www.timeout.com/london/news/...

He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard

Dangote follows his move into Ethiopia with a move into Zimbabwe. In both cases giving countries a fossil-fuelled path to development that Western development agencies and investors won't. (Not saying it's good, not saying it's bad). www.reuters.com/world/africa...

📚New CEPR #eBook out now! Frontiers of Digital Finance, edited by Dirk Niepelt, explores how new technologies are rapidly reshaping international #finance. Topics include: #stablecoins, #DeFi, tokenisation, regulation, implementation, and more. 📥Free download here: cepr.org/publications... #EconSky

I hope Italy isn't the only country trying to find people who did this. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

I am pleased to see Ron Smith is still working. He introduced me to the survivorship bias aircraft in 2005 (he was no spring chicken then) - to my surprise, 2005 turns out to be the same year that image was created, based on Wald www.cameronmoll.com/journal/abra...

Here’s an archive for UK people blocked with the Internet Online Safety message. archive.ph/2025.11.08-2...

Great essay about the World Bank 1993 East Asian Miracle report, and its downplaying of industrial policy, by Nancy Birdsall, who as acting chief economist become the "designated defender of the book" for its in-house review and saw "the resistance inside the Bank" pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

I am really enjoying this account. It turns out painting dreary people in late night diners guy was mostly a paint light outdoors guy

New substack: why governments cannot offer competence alone: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/on-compete...

research here suggesting AI soundly beats analysts at stock picking, who make predictable mistakes. I wonder how the market will behave if dominated by AI decisions www.nber.org/papers/w34420

this nonsense really grinds my gears. Financing "profitable projects" is "adding to debt burdens"? Objecting to investments needed to decarbonise large carbon emitting UMICs is just nuts.

In today's blog, I discuss how much I'm updating my priors on the effectiveness of wage subsidies in developing countries based on several new studies: quite a bit on shaping who is hired, much less on whether they create new jobs, a bit on coping with shocks blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

I did not realise the EIB has so much spare capacity - it should be building interconnectors across Europe (and into Africa). Among other things. @stephenpaduano.bsky.social findevlab.org/financing-eu...

Does 3D printing mean it's going to be affordable to start making buildings with twiddly bits again like, I dunno, the Louvre

Presumably there are parallels here to UK policy towards foreign students

If you were looking for one of the lowest cost ways of preventing climate change, you might head for the “deforestation frontier” in the Amazon rainforest. economist.com/the-americas...

this is a whopper - 600+ pages - but the intro by Besley and Velasco is short easy reading. Is this really the mainstream consensus? A lot of big names are in here, and other big names give positive blubs. If so, it differs from the "mainstream" econ of the popular imagination.

35 years after the Washington Consensus, is a new economic paradigm emerging? Read a new interview with Irene Bucelli, Tim Besley and Andrés Velasco, editors of The London Consensus @lsepress.bsky.social @lsepublicpolicy.bsky.social

Thread on India @thepolycrisis.bsky.social: "What provides India greater freedom of choice & sovereignty? Locking into hydrocarbon coalitions or doubling down on a green electrostate track?How India chooses will shape the destiny of 1.4Bn citizens—& the world" www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ind...